November 14, 2014 Newsletter

November 14, 2014

Dear Parents,

We've had another busy week in Room 115!  The students have been completing an impressive amount of work as we continue preparing for our “Thanksgiving Feast”.  We have completed most of our Native American costumes and have started learning about Pilgrims.  We read a story called “Samuel Eaton’s Day” which is about a day in the life of a Pilgrim boy and we will be reading a similar one called “Sarah Morton’s Day” which is about a day in the life of a Pilgrim girl.  We talked a lot about the chores Pilgrim boys and girls had to do and I tried to encourage them to be helpful at home too!

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving will be a half day of school.  Dismissal will be around 11:15am.  A form will go home on Monday for you to complete and return that will let us know if children will be riding home on the bus or getting picked up by parents.  Please return the form as soon as possible.  We will be having a “Thanksgiving Feast” on that day, which will consist of the students wearing their costumes and eating their snacks in the cafeteria with the other Kindergarten classrooms.  All costumes will be made ahead of time at school.  Lunch will not be served on that day.  We will also sing a few songs all together with the other Kindergarten classes.

It's hard to believe that it's already time to start thinking about all our December activities!  We will start practicing Nutcracker dances in preparation for our Nutcracker performance and to help our trip to the ballet be more meaningful.  We are going to see the Nutcracker Ballet on Wednesday, December 17th.  Please be sure to send in the $10 for the field trip.  We are tentatively planning to have our own Kindergarten Nutcracker Performance on Monday, December 22nd at 9:00am.  An invitation will go home once the date and time have been confirmed.

We will be starting a new writing project next week.  We will be researching animals and writing reports!  There will be a homework component to this, where students will need help finding facts about their animals.  Information will go home later about that.

We have been doing a lot with rhyming but I would encourage you to practice it at home with your child too.  You can ask them to sing “Willowby-Wallaby Woo” or listen for rhyming words in books or even just try to list as many words as possible that rhyme.  It would also be wonderful if you could help your child practice with counting, ordering, and writing numbers to 10 and even into the teen numbers.  We finished our unit on numbers 1-10 and will be moving on to the teen numbers next week.  Even simple things like counting stairs as they walk up them or counting how many bites of food they eat would be helpful!

I showed the students a website that has some great activities to support rhyming, early reading skills, and even math practice.  It is www.starfall.com.  I told them I would pass the address on to you.  Also, the password for the Scholastic Let’s Find Out papers is Duncan2014.

Have a great weekend!

Melanie Duncan and Kerry Marsh

Thank you for all the paper bags you have been sending in.  We have all we need for right now. We are now looking for paper towel tubes, as we are looking forward to start our Nutcracker unit. Thanks so much!

Also… Please make sure your child brings warm clothes to wear outside for recess now that the weather is getting colder and please help them practice putting all their stuff on too!