Week of September 12

Mrs. Borden & Mrs. Jones’ Nifty Newsletter (week of September 12)
Homework
Monday- ½ sheet (sentence) and decodable reader
Tuesday- ½ sheet (colors) and decodable reader
Wednesday- ½ sheet (counting & shapes) and decodable reader
Thursday- ½ sheet (capital letters) and decodable reader

*Due to the cancellation of school this past week, the Luau has been moved to Friday, September 16. Please dress in your Luau outfit that day.*

Please continue to help your child practice their 4-digit computer number. This will help them log into their computer quickly and give them more time to work. They also need this number for lunch.

Decodable readers will begin to come home next week. They should be kept in the plastic sleeve inside your child’s folder. The reader should be read nightly and someone should sign off on the paper attached. This could be a parent, grandparent, older brother or sister or friend. When it comes home on a Friday the book is yours to keep. We will also practice during small group time in school. Students with all four signatures will receive a small treat on Fridays.

The following sight words were introduced so far: the, is , I, am, have and love. These will also be placed in the plastic sleeve for practice.

In Reading, we will read one of Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Jones favorite stories, Plaidypus Lost. We will talk about how we live, work and play together. Our reading skill will be sequence.

~In Math we will continue to work with counting bears, pattern blocks, and linking cubes. We will also practice counting to 5 with 1:1 correspondence, creating an AB color pattern, identifying most and fewest on a graph, and using positional words and phrases: over, under, on top of, behind, in back of, in front of, beside, inside, and outside. Students should practice writing the numbers from 0-9 while singing the number writing verses on their practice pages. Our first math assessment will be identifying the 4 basic shapes; circle, square, triangle, and rectangle. Take some time over the weekend to review them at home.

~Our Phonics letter for this week is “Oo” as in octopus. The letter Oo is a vowel and has 2 sounds. We will focus on the short sound, but will also introduce the long sound that “says its own name”.

~Our Kindergarten class has begun a science unit called Trees. We will observe and compare the trees in and around the schoolyard. We will adopt a tree as our “class tree” to watch throughout the seasons. We’ve been learning about the tree parts; roots, trunk, branches, and leaves. **Your child may come home with lots of information and questions about trees and their parts. You can join in the tree study by taking your child for walks in your neighborhood to observe trees and to compare how they are alike and how they are different. See which trees lose their leaves in the fall and which keep them all year? Look closely at the leaves. Do the trees have buds, flowers, fruit, or seeds? You might notice things about trees that you never thought about before!!!

~This week our class met their 4th grade Reading Buddies from Mrs. Fey’s homeroom! Boys and girls were matched up with 4th graders to listen to stories and eventually practice their own reading skills. Be sure to ask your child about his/her buddy.

~The School-wide Book Fair will also take place in the Large Group Instruction Room next week, September 12-16. Information was enclosed in your child’s folder. **Parents will be able to shop and/or browse with their child on Monday night from 4-7 p.m. if interested. Kindergarten will be shopping in school on Tuesday, September 13th. (Monday, September 19th will be a make-up day as needed.)

Don’t forget to check our blog on northschuylkill.net under Homework Helpline, click on Borden, Jessica.

The PTO meeting is scheduled for Monday evening at 6:30.

Monday is Day 4. We will have Gym. Don’t forget your sneakers!!!

Have a great weekend!

Week of September 5

Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Jones’ Nifty Newsletter (week of September 5)

Homework

Tuesday – Homework signature page & First name practice page
Wednesday – Circle Capital and Lowercase Letter page & L Handwriting page (Please have your child complete the front and back of the handwriting sheet to the best of their ability. Please also have them write their name on the top.)
Thursday - Trace & Color shape page

There will be no school Monday, September 5. Have a great holiday weekend!

Monday is Day 1. We have Art.

All About Me Tees will start to come home. These are posters that need to be filled out and returned so that the children can share facts about themselves with the class so they can get to know each other better. You will have two days to complete the poster, so if your poster comes home on a Wednesday, it will be due on Friday. You and your child can be creative when completing this project, use pictures, stickers, crayons, etc.

We had so much fun on our “Chester Chase” this week. We tried to find Chester the Raccoon from “The Kissing Hand”. He lead us on a chase to find the important places in our school building, but had to return to his book after leaving us a cookie treat. We will continue to read theme books to welcome us to Kindergarten and to school.

Academics next week include: Saxon Math, we will be working on numbers 1-5 and working with the manipulatives and materials that we will be using throughout the course of the year. Saxon Phonics, we will continue to work on the letter Ll so that we can write it, make its sound, identify it, and identify words that begin with the letter. The Phonics newsletter that is coming home to explain the program is very important, please keep it as a reference for the entire year of Kindergarten. Sight words that we will be working on include the and is. Please ask your child about these words and if they can find them at home or in the community.
We began Reading with the story, The Little School Bus this week. Watch for your Family Times newsletter to come home with details about our upcoming story and skills we will be working on in Reading. Please review the Amazing words, the ordinal numbers first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth, letter recognition of letters Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, and Ee, the story element “character”, and the high frequency words I and am.
Thursday is the Luau for Kindergarten only. It is our very special activity for completing our first letter in Phonics. More information will come home early next week.

Friday is Picture Day. Please dress your child in dress code approved clothing and send in your picture forms and money. If you need a picture form, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can get one home.

A Few Reminders

Your child needs a drink and a snack every day. There are several children that have had no snack or had a snack and no drink. Please bag their snack separately and label it “snack”. If your child’s snack requires a fork or spoon, please send it. We do not keep these in the room.
Please discuss with your child if they are buying a lunch and what they should choose. We’ve had a few children order lunch because it sounded good, but they really had a packed lunch.

Please send a change of clothes to be kept in your child’s cubby incase of accidents or messes.

Put your child’s name on everything. Many students have the same backpack, lunch bag, coat etc.

Every Friday of the school year is Spirit Day! This is optional. It is done to promote school spirit and enthusiasm for our sports teams. The children are allowed to wear any North Schuylkill t-shirt and uniform bottoms.
We thank you for your continued involvement and participation in your child’s Kindergarten year. Please write a note or send an email if you have any questions or need any additional information. Thank you!

week of August 29, 2011

Welcome to Kindergarten! We are very excited to have you in our class! There are many fun and exciting things to do and to learn. Please check our blog each week to check out what is happening in our class. Have a great first week!

Love, Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Jones

*** Students may wear their Spartan T-Shirts on Friday, September 2 for Spirit Day!***

week of May 31

Have a healthy and happy summer!

week of May 16

Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Jones’ Nifty Newsletter (week of May 16)
As we are coming to an end to the school year, we will be wrapping up the formalized lessons for both Math and Phonics. We will continue to review the rules for coding, long vowels, digraphs, combinations, and Decodable Readers that go along with our Phonics series. We will continue to work on counting patterns, shape and color patterns, money, time, addition and subtraction in Math. However, the daily papers that usually come home will not be coming home for the remainder of the year.
There will be no more homework for the rest of the year. Please continue to review sight words, the readers that have been sent home, or any of the materials in the practice packet. We will be sending home practice packets for the summer in the next few weeks.
In Reading, we will be working on the last three stories of the series. The last unit for reading is focused on a building theme and we will continue to talk about theme, setting, characters, plot, and cause and effect. The children will also be able to work on their Reading workbook that is in their desk when there is free time for it.
We had much fun in the baseball field on Thursday for the “Teens Against Tobacco” activity. We learned all about the dangers of cigarettes and smoking.
We will be going over to the High School several times next week to practice for graduation as well as to see the Spring concert one morning.
Please send back the DVD orders as soon as possible if you are interested in purchasing a Kindergarten DVD. If you need an extra form, please send back a note to let us know.
Also, if your child would like to order a hoagie lunch for carnival day, the orders are due back by Wednesday, May 18. Please don’t forget to put your child’s number on the top.
If there is a lunch balance due, please pay it by May 27. The payment is due to the cafeteria.
We will have Gym on Monday and Friday. Also, all Library books and materials are due next Tuesday. That will be our last Library class as well.
Upcoming Important Dates:
May 23 (6:30 pm) Kindergarten Graduation at the High School (more information will follow)
May 26 Field Trip to the Circus
May 27 Carnival Day for the Elementary School
May 30 No School due to Memorial Day
June 2- Last Day of School (dismissal at 11:45)

Week of May 9

Mrs. Borden & Mrs. Jones’ Nifty Newsletter

We are so proud of our class because of how well they did on our DIBELS testing. Everyone showed progress. Their hard work is paying off. Give yourselves a cheer!
Our end of the year Kindergarten testing will take place this coming Monday and Tuesday. Students will need to write as many words as they can think of from memory in 10 minutes, copy a sentence that is dictated to them and name words that begin with each letter of the alphabet (long and short vowels).
See your child’s folder for fieldtrip information. Please send back as soon as possible.
Next week in Phonics we will work with combination ar like in star, or like in horse, er, like in butter and learn the VCCV rule. This will help us find vowel patterns and divide words by syllable.
In Math we will share a whole by separating it into equal parts, identify halves and fourths and create pictographs to compare temperatures during different seasons.
Our new Reading stories are Old McDonald had a Workshop and Building Beavers. We will discuss character and main idea.
Upcoming Dates:
On Thursday, May 12 we will be participating in the Teens Against Tobacco Kick Butts Event. T.A.T. students from the high school will come to assist us activities.
Our Kindergarten Graduation will be at 6:30 on Monday, May 23rd in the High School Auditorium. Details will be sent home at a later date.
Our fieldtrip will be held on Thursday, May 26th. We will be attending the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in Hershey at the Giant Center.
Monday is Day 4. We have Gym and Book Exchange on Tuesday. Don’t forget your sneakers and library books.

Happy Mother’s Day!

week of May 2

Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Jones’ Nifty Newsletter (week of May 2)
This week in Phonics, we are learning Digraph “ch” like in cheese and Digraph “ee” like in sheep. We will also be reviewing all of our Digraphs (two letters that come together to make one sound) and our “sneaky e rule” to make a vowel long like in “cake”.
In Math, we will continue our addition and subtraction stories. The children do a very lovely job of acting them out and enjoy the elaborate stories and adventures that involve our math concepts. Also, we will be continuing to work on all coins and their values and adding them together to buy things. Symmetry will be introduced as well along with a review of using different objects to measure items.
In Reading, our new story is “This is the Way We Go to School” and we will continue our discussion on different ways to travel and transportation. We will also work on predictions and drawing conclusions about the story. A new practice reader will go home this week as well because we didn’t do one previously due to the Easter holiday and short week.
We will have our monthly Guidance lesson on Friday this week.
Library is on Tuesday; please bring your books in that day.
Gym will be on Wednesday, please don’t forget sneakers.

Kindergarten Graduation will be on Monday, May 23 at 6:30 pm.
Our Kindergarten Field Trip will be May 26. We will be going to Hershey to see the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.