Reading and Writing with Confidence

We aim to make confident readers and writers in kindergarten. This trimester is an exciting time where we see students with enough basic skills begin to bloom. We apply our reading and writing to many areas; our chapel play, expressing ourselves in math, science and social studies. Encourage your child to read to you daily and to write often about their thoughts.

This week we will be presenting our chapel play on Wednesday. We hope everyone watching learns something new about the last days of Jesus before the cross. We hope you can relate to the confusion the disciples had and understand that faith grows best when we don't know everything that will happen and have to trust Jesus with the future. After our play, we'll begin studying a few stories leading up to Easter. 

In literacy, we'll begin to learn the digraph 'ch', and read and write words using this sound. Students will practice short and long vowel sounds. They will read and spell words correctly using the open and closed vowel rule we learned last week. We'll be writing our first and last names, writing about our play and writing a fact and supporting detail. Students are beginning to branch out to write about their own ideas and using the rules of phonics to spell words. We always check our sentences for good sentence structure. At story time, students will see teachers write a topic sentence and supporting facts. Red words this week will be color words.

Students will begin finding groups that add to make a certain sum in math. Our new module is about decomposing numbers. We'll be using block towers to  understand how groups make a whole.

In social studies we'll start examining the map of Washington state, noting certain land marks. Next we'll see how our state is known for producing certain goods. Students will learn that many of the goods we purchase are made and produced all over the world, not just locally.

Our art project will combine science and St. Patrick's day by illustrating a rainbow. Students will learn how a rainbow is produced and the folk tale of what is at the end of every rainbow.

In music, we'll begin learning some new songs of praise and practicing keeping the beat with Mrs. Arnold.

Everyone loves our new iPads and the learning apps we play during tech time. This week we'll be reading on Epic.

We're looking forward to a good week ahead!

Mrs. Luoma