Dear Kindergarten Families,

This is a very special, eventful week for our kindergarten class for many reasons. First, since we have no school on Monday (September 6) and a “half day” on Friday (September 10), this will be a short, but productive, week for us.

I am also looking forward to Back to School Night this Thursday evening (September 9), starting at 6:30 p.m.

Another way this week is special is that we will have a guest visiting our classroom this week. On Wednesday (September 8), Suzanne Peterson will be joining us to observe our class, since this is my first year of teaching. This should be very helpful for our class and for me as a teacher.

In addition to these special events, the week will also be full of learning.

Our Self-Discipline topic for the month of September is “listening,” so we will continue to talk about listening and practice our good listening skills.

For Language Arts and Literacy, we will learn the letters Ff, Gg, and Hh, and will review all the letters we will have learned about so far, Aa through Hh. Also in language arts, we will study classifying and categorizing, rhyming, and poetry, and we will be introduced to the high frequency words “a” and “the.” We will read two pre-decodable texts, A Farm and The Lunch. Our read-aloud will be the delightful story Boomer Goes to School. We will also learn new vocabulary words and will talk about writing and writers.

In Math, we will wrap up our first unit, “Sorting,” which is Chapter 1 of our textbook. We will review each section of the chapter, including alike/same, different, and sorting by shape, by size, and by color. To solidify our understanding of the sorting concepts, we will have Sorting Workshops (centers) and will read a story about sorting, Sorting with Sally. Finally, on Thursday (since we will not have math on Friday because of the half day), we will have our first Math Summative Assessment. Students do not need to study for this “test” and will be well-prepared after our class activities on sorting. This will finish up our unit on sorting. Next week, we will begin our second unit, “Geometry and Patterns.”

For Religion, our class will continue to learn about prayers and about the Bible. We will also celebrate Mass with our school on Wednesday. We have been working on learning the Sign of the Cross, the Our Father (that special prayer Jesus Himself gave us), and the Prayer Before Eating, and we will continue working on learning these three important prayers. We will also continue studying the Bible stories of Creation and Adam and Eve. Students will have the opportunity to retell these important stories in their own words and will engage in discussions on the topics and ideas.

We only have one day of Social Studies this week, Wednesday. Our lesson will be “Family Days.” We will talk about our own families and will learn about how we – and our families – grow and change over time. Also, we will talk about family celebrations we share, such as holidays, traditions, and special occasions.

In Science, we will be focusing this week on “Nonliving Things.” On Tuesday, our topic will be identifying nonliving things, and on Thursday, we will focus on classifying living and nonliving things. We will use our flip chart and will make observations about nonliving things such as rocks and toys. Last week, we focused on living things and their needs, so we will compare what we know about living things with what we are learning about nonliving things.

We will also have P.E. on Tuesday, Music on Wednesday and Thursday, Art on Thursday, and Spanish on Friday.

This should be a great week for us in kindergarten! We will be busy, and we will enjoy learning. Thank you for your time in reading this online newsletter, and I look forward to seeing you at Back to School Night on Thursday.

 Have a nice week!

Sincerely,

Ms. Carly McGillick

Kindergarten Teacher

cmcgillick@stclareparish.com