Newsletter: Week 3

Friday, September 11, 2009
Miss Wagenaar
Reminders/Notices:
• Morning Greeters: If you are interested, there are two orange vests available in the morning for parents to put on and help patrol our Kindergarten Gates. If you arrive and still see vests on the fence, grab a vest and help us in the yard.
•Next week we will be continuing Color Week, the order is as follows Monday-Blue, Tuesday-Purple, Wednesday-Pink, Thursday-Brown, and Friday-Black (International Talk Like A Pirate Day).
• Please submit Roster Information (red form from Thursday folder or submit electronically) as soon as possible. I am aiming to send out a roster next week.
•Parent Volunteer schedule has been sent out. If there are any changes that need to be made, please notify me. We will start inviting parents into our class the week of September 21st. I will also send out an updated final schedule next week.

This Week:
This week we read several of Marcus Pfister’s books, including The Rainbow Fish and Rainbow Fish to the Rescue. We did a directed draw of a fish, and students used watercolors to paint them in a variety of colors. They look amazing! We also worked together as a class to retell the story, including the most important plot details. Our pocket chart that we practiced this week was “Orange is a Carrot”. We worked on a color book each morning as we came into the classroom by gluing the color words onto construction paper of the same color. We began Readers and Writers Workshop. We talked about procedures for Readers Workshop and how to gather our mind and eyes to get ourselves ready to read. In social studies, we talked about rules and why we have and follow them. We created a list of guidelines for ways to stay happy in room 4. In Math we practiced sorting objects, including linking cubes, kids, and rainbow goldfish. We focused on the letter Ss, writing it and practicing the sound that it makes.

Next Week:
We will continue working on our procedures for Readers and Writers Workshop. We will continue talking about rules and citizenship in Social Studies. We are going to be starting our Foss Unit: Animals by Two, introducing goldfish and guppies. We will continue sorting, focusing on using different features to sort (color, size, shape, etc). On Friday we will be celebrating International Talk Like a Pirate Day, we will be focusing on incorporating colors that we’ve learned about throughout the color weeks into a book called “I Am a Pirate”. Next week we will have our first Citizenship Assembly, recognizing a member of our class who is demonstrating exceptional citizenship.

Questions to ask your child:
1.Ask your child to tell you the story of Rainbow Fish.
2.Have your child show you what their mouth looks like when they make the sound of the letter s. (teeth together, sounds like a hissing snake.)
3.Ask your child the name of at least one friend in their class or another.