Kindergarten News
Jan. 25-29, 2010

Weekly Theme:
Ocean Life/Whales

Help your child develop comprehension skills

• Talk with your child about the story and pictures
• Have your child predict what a story will be about
• Have your child retell the important parts of the story

JANUARY

We have enjoyed learning about Antarctica, winter, and penguins. We will now begin studying whales and other sea mammals. The students are working hard. We are emphasizing the importance of always doing nice, neat work. The year is going by so very quickly! Thank you for making it so enjoyable and for helping your child have a successful year. Please continue reading with your child each night and send the take home library books back and forth. It really makes a big difference in your child’s reading success!

The students did well on their DIBELS assessment. It is exciting to see improvement in each child. We love to celebrate their successes! Have a wonderful week and thank you again for your support at home.

linda.wood@ironmail.org
ginger.ekker@ironmail.org
586-2850

Kindergarten News
Jan. 18-22, 2010

Weekly Theme:
Penguins/Ocean Life/Whales

Thank you for sending box tops and Lin’s receipts with your children. It helps earn money for our school and is greatly appreciated!

JANUARY

I hope you enjoyed your long weekend! Your children are making great progress and I am thrilled with the things they are doing. Next month we will begin our third quarter assessment. Please make sure your child can write his/her last name. Also, it would be helpful if you could look over the kindergarten assessment and review any concepts your child did not master in the first and second quarters. Thank you for your support!

We have learned all twenty-five-kindergarten sight words and will now begin learning some first grade sight words. The students are required to read all twenty-five-sight words as part of the third quarter assessment. Please look on the assessment for the list of sight words. If you need another copy, please let me know. We will also continue reviewing numbers from 11-20, graphing, and simple addition. We will continue with lots of practice on writing with a capital, spaces between words and punctuation when writing sentences. We will also continue to work on rhyming words.

I appreciate all you do to help unsure a quality education for your student!

linda.wood@ironmail.org
ginger.ekker@ironmail.org
586-2850

Kindergarten News
Jan. 11-15, 2010

Weekly Theme:
Penguins

Early Literacy Idea
Encourage your child to write the names of the people in your family. Drawing pictures to go along with the names is fun too.

JANUARY

We had a great week back in school and the children are adjusting well after the long break. January is a good learning time and I am excited to see the continued progress of your wonderful children. Each one is improving. Please look over the second quarter assessment to review the skills your child has not mastered. It is a great help if you work on these skills at home (especially the phone number, birthday and address section) and we will continue to work hard on these skills at school too. Your help is greatly appreciated!

We will continue to talk about winter, Antarctica and penguins. We will discuss the characteristics of wintertime, fascinating facts about Antarctica, and learn about penguins and how to categorize animals according to similarities and differences. We will conclude that there are many different types of animals found around the world.
We will learn the sight word run this week, which is the last of the twenty-five kindergarten sight words! We will now learn some first grade sight words. What a great accomplishment for them!
On Friday the students can bring a toy to play with in P.E. that they are willing to share with the other children in our class.

Thank you again to all of you for your help and support at home! Please let me know of any questions or concerns!
linda.wood@ironmail.org
ginger.ekker@ironmail.org
586-2850

Kindergarten News
Jan. 4-8, 2010

Weekly Theme:
Winter/
Antarctica


Please ask your child to tell you his/her address, phone number and birthday!


JANUARY

Thank you so very much for the nice gifts, cards and remembrances. I appreciate each of you and your thoughtfulness!

Happy New Year! I hope that you had an enjoyable and relaxing Christmas holiday. January will be a great learning time for us in kindergarten. Your children are progressing nicely. Thanks for your support at home. Please send back the December reading calendar by Wednesday for the free pizza certificate. Remember the minimum goal for kindergarten is 15 minutes a night, 5 nights a week, which includes when someone reads to them and when they read to someone.

This week we will start a unit on Antarctica and oceans. It will be exciting to learn about this strange and beautiful place. We will also be reviewing skills in preparation for the next DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) assessment. These skills include letter recognition, beginning sounds, nonsense words (for example: ig, xup, taf) and segmenting words (for example, the tester says, “Tell me each sound you hear in “hat” and the student would say /h/a/t. Each segment of the assessment is also timed for fluency. The sight words we will learn this week are: we, run. We will continue to practice recognizing and writing the numbers 11-20 and have lots of writing experiences.

Thanks again for all you do to help ensure your child is having a successful school experience. You truly make such a difference!

linda.wood@ironmail.org
ginger.ekker@ironmail.org
586-2850