Magical Kindergarten Week

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Greetings,

I hope you all have recovered from the wild weather we had and are now where you need to be if you are traveling. 

We had a magical kind of week in Kindergarten this week. We celebrated the Winter Solstice in several ways.  May we all hunker down in these cold months as the light comes back to us! 

Thank you all for your classroom and personal gifts that you so generously shared.   I want to share that I feel so lucky each day to be able to guide these loving, little learners. Underhill Central is a wonderful community that I am just so happy to be a part of now.

Have a wonderful holiday and break!  

See you in 2023!! 💚

 Snowy greetings to you all!

Finally, lots of snow to play in!  I bet there are many happy kindergarteners playing in all of this fluff! I hope you all enjoyed yesterday's snow day!

This week it was lovely to see many of you at the Mask Parade visit.  It was fun to see all of the amazing art that was created by UCS students.  

Kindergarteners continued to work hard to create more pattern books in writing this week. They are enjoying these. Students also had fun getting messy with shaving cream while practicing letters and words.

In Science/ECO we continued our talk about trees.  We played a game called Meet a tree.  In this game, students lead a partner with closed eyes to a tree.  As they kept their eyes closed they felt the tree and notice the unique traits that the tree had.  The partner then led them away from the tree and told their friend to open their eyes and see if they could find their tree!  Later, students chose a tree friend that they will use throughout the year to make observations and lean on during sit spot time. Many trees now have names such as Wewe, Pokemon, and Tree. 

Greetings!

We had a great week of learning!  We continued our month's theme on Empathy through stories.  A few students created a kindness game for the whole class to partake in.  It was a beautiful game!

Students continued with shape exploration and counting in Math.  In Literacy, students played digital games that ranged from letter bingo, sight bingo, and word family game.  They also continued their work on their writing books that they hope to share with you during the mask parade visit.

During ECO we continued our talk on migration.  Students were given the challenge to help solve a real-life migration problem.  They brainstormed and built ways to help animals move safely through a migratory path where a highway has been built.  These clever kiddos thought of solutions very similar to what scientists and engineers have discovered!  

Report cards for the first trimester were sent home. Please read over the report and then sign and return the envelope to be used for the next trimester. Most of the assessments were done at the beginning of November in order to have enough time to complete them for all students before November break. I've already noticed students are recognizing more letters, sounds, words, and numbers! It's amazing how much growth happens in a short period of time. 

Hope to see you at the Mask parade on Tuesday at 1:15!

Peace

 

I hope everyone had a nice break.  We had a wonderful week back at school this week! Students eased back into routines and expectations. 

This week in literacy we talked a bit about word families.  For example if  you know the word CAT you can also know the words SAT, RAT, etc.   Recognizing these patterns can help us with our reading and writing.  Students began writing  pattern books this week about things they like. These patterns will help students grow the amount of words on their pages.  

During ECO this week we talked about how animals must do something to survive the winter's cold conditions.  They may migrate (like Mr. Smith will be doing this winter 😊), hibernate, go dormant, or stay active.  We had 4 volunteers that dressed up to show what these animals might do in a silly way: the animals who were going to sleep needed to wear pajamas and hold an alarm clock, the migratory animal needed a backpack and hat for his travels, and the active animal needed to grow a fur coat!  Kindergartners thought this was hilarious!  After that everyone had a chance to play charades and act out an animal and the strategy it uses. 

In math students continued to explore and manipulate shapes through building patterns, creating a shape landscape picture, and a fun computer game found on the program Starfall.

We welcomed in December this week with some winter themed activities.  Students painted beautiful northern light pictures after we read a favorite book, from a local VT author called The Fiddler of The Northern Lights.  If your student was out on Friday you can read this story HERE. 

Reminders and notes:

**You will find some of your student's first Writing pages from our first unit in their folders.

**Some kindergartners are bringing in a small stuffy to play with during explore time.  It seems to be working okay right now because students are being respectful about asking when they can take them out and then they put them away in their backpacks. so if your child would like to bring a small one in that is okay.  I'll keep you posted on this if anything changes.  Thank you!

12/7:  Early Release, 12:15

12/13:  Mask Parade, 1:15

12/23-1/2:  Winter Break