First Day Excitement

We hope you'll all be using some Jitter Glitter on Monday night to help calm hearts before the first day of school on Tuesday! Teachers are just as excited and nervous as every student and parent. It will be a big change from our easy going summer schedules. Our prayers are with you for a smooth transition. As any big change, please be patient with your student and teachers and yourselves as we all adjust. Eat healthy, go to bed early and give all your worries to the Lord. 

What will be be doing this first important week of kindergarten? Our main focus will be to get to know each other, learn routines, procedures and how to manage our materials at school. In other words: we are learning how to be safe, comfortable and learn together at school. This is a big task for our kids and it takes time, practice, time and practice. You won't see a lot of  'schoolwork' coming home. Much of our practice work will be completing baseline assessments or doing projects to decorate our classroom.

In Bible, we will learn about how God is providing for all our needs in our daily devotions. We will pray, praise God and attend chapel with the whole school on Tuesday.

In writing we will define and practice good tracing skills. Students will go on to trace and writing letter Mm. We'll be moving through the alphabet fairly quickly; reviewing or learning each letter and sound.

Students will take several days to complete an initial math assessment.  We'll do a little each day, then teachers can evaluate where the class is with math skills and move forward. Students will see how we update our calendar each day and count the days of school in number line form.

We'll see Mr. Reyes for Spanish and Mrs. Youngstrom for PE in the afternoons. In music, our class will discuss why they think music is important. We'll listen to two different kinds of musical pieces and  respond with drawings to express how music causes us to have specific feelings.

At story time, we will teach the parts of a book through song, then listen to stories about starting school.

Everyday, we'll snack, move and dance often, you'll see us going out to recess a little early if we need to and we'll play a lot outside and inside. Students will be learning playground rules, how to make friends and how to be a friend. 

The first week is a wonderful time where we learn a lot about our class and how to help each student. We want our students to see that their teachers are loving, fun and  helpful. Our aim is to build trust with each student and family. Please help us by communicating when you have any questions or concerns.

It's going to be a great first week!

Mrs. Luoma