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Archive for October, 2009

Today your child is bringing home a special activity for you to play together. Take-Home Games are designed to help parents and children experience a variety of hands-on literacy and math activities together. The activities will give you an opportunity to reinforce important early literacy and math skills with engaging practice. 

Included in the Take-Home Games are activities and a set of plastic letters and frogs to use in conjunction with the activities. These materials are yours to keep at home to use with each activity for many weeks. Please take very special care of these letters and frogs and store them in a special place as it costs $10 to replace each set. When we are finished with the activities the set of letters and frogs will need to be returned to school.  

Each Monday your child will bring home a new activity to play that week. Please read the activity description and work with your child to explore the activity. You may choose to do the activity just once or you may choose to play the game several times during the week.  

These activities are also a great way for you to get to know your child as a learner. Take cues from your child: if he/she seems engaged and motivated, play the game often but, if he/she seems too tired, bored, or frustrated play less often. Be creative! Feel free to make the game more challenging if it seems too easy for your child or less challenging if it seems too hard. And remember, this is supposed to be fun! If either of you are feeling frustrated, put it away! Your child is still very young and works very hard all day in school. It may be too much to ask to keep up that level of attention at home as well.  

At the end of the week, please take a few minutes to complete the Show And Tell sheet included with each activity and send it back to school. This form is a way for you to let me know about you, and your child’s, feelings about the game as well as his/her success or frustration with the activity. You may keep the activity cards at home as it can be fun and helpful (good practice) to revisit the activities. 

I hope you enjoy the activities and the time spent with your child as you get some insight into what they are learning in school.

I can’t believe it has been over a week since I last posted. Well, the long weekend turned into a longer weekend for me as I have been fighting a cough/cold for nearly 3 weeks that has caused a bruised rib (VERY painful) and I suffered an allergic reaction to an unknown substance that landed me in the ER! Now, I’m not trying to elicit sympathy (as I know many of you are dealing with kids who have had colds recently as well). I’m just saying sorry for neglecting the blog!

We have begun our second week of Readers’ Workshop/Workboard Jobs. The kids are really enjoying having jobs to complete, partners to work with, and a new variety of books to read in their browsing boxes. We are beginning to look at and discuss concept books like alphabet books, counting books, color books, feelings books, etc. We will be talking about ways we can read these books (alone, with a partner, by reading the pictures, retelling, etc.), what is the same about different books on the same concept, what is different about them, and what connections we can make between these books and our own lives.

During Writers’ Workshop, we have been orally telling stories from our lives and asking appropriate questions to draw details of the story out of the teller. We have also been working on picturing our stories in our mind to include setting and characters so that we have all the details in our mind before we draw them on paper. While the children are working in their drawing books, the teachers conference with the kids about making their drawings look real, adding details to their drawings, and having the children orally tell us their story and asking questions to be sure we understand their story. Repeating their story back to them helps them to understand that the “reader” is interested in understanding their story.

We have been working on Counting Books in math and being sure the children have a strategy for counting and are checking and double checking their work. We are also working on subitizing (instantly recognizing small numbers of objects in a group without having to count, such as the dots on dice) to 6. I have been completing early numeracy screenings of the class that I will share with you at conferences.

And as always, we are working on appropriate behavior during transition times (coming to the rug quietly, walking quietly in the halls) and appropriate behavior during whole group discussions and story times (looking at the person who is talking, raising your hand and waiting to be called on before you speak, listening, and especially keeping out hands, etc. to ourselves).

All About Me is a time for your child to shine! On your child’s All About Me day, they will share some information about themselves to help us all get to know them a little better. Every Tuesday, a My Book About Me will go home with one child in our class until everyone has had a turn. Your child, with your help, will have until the following Tuesday to complete and return the book. On Tuesday mornings your child will have about 10 minutes to share the information they have assembled .  This is similar to “Show and Tell” but it focuses on your child and promotes self confidence, verbal skills, discussions, and celebrates all of our unique differences.

The All About Me book has a sentence on each page that they need to complete and an area for them to either draw a picture or to attach a photo. Most children will need your help with the words, especially early on in the year. Once completed, the books will stay in school in a special basket for the children to read over and over. These usually become favorite books in our classroom library.

Your child may also bring in one special object to share with the class (a special drawing/painting they created, a special stuffed animal, a model they built, etc.).  The object must be small enough to fit in their backpack and light enough that your child can carry it to school. The object will return home with your child that same day.

Enjoy the time you and your child spend working on this special project!  Thank you for your help.

The Kindergarten kids from the Sheehan School have been invited to Fox Hill Village for their annual Halloween magic show. On October 23 we will travel by bus to Fox Hill Village, we will show off our costumes to the residents, have a snack, and sit for a very funny magic show. The children will need to bring (not wear) their costumes to school on the 23rd. We will be getting dressed in the classroom with the help of some parent volunteers before we leave. We will be leaving the building at approximately 10:10AM and returning to school around noon at which time we will change back into our regular clothes. Because we will be returning after out regular lunch time, the children will be eating lunch in the classroom but will still have the opportunity to go through the cafeteria to buy a lunch if necessary. More information and permission slips will be coming home in VIP baggies today.

It is cold in our building these days. With the mornings being chilly and the afternoons being variable it is advisable that the kids come dressed in layers. Please be sure they have a sweater or sweatshirt that they will be comfortable wearing in the classroom as the heat is not on consistently yet. Also, please be sure to label everything your child brings to school, lunchboxes and outerwear especially. You’d be surprised how many kids have sweatshirts that are similar and get left behind for days at a time…or lunchboxes that get left behind and end up…well, stinky!

Tomorrow is the last day to send in October Scholastic Book Orders or to order books online so if you want to order books, please be sure to get it in by Friday afternoon.

Any notes for me about your child, an illness, dismissal change (early dismissal, someone else picking up our child,) etc. should come to school in your child’s VIP baggie! Notes should only come to me via the office if there is a change in dismissal that we need to be aware of after school starts for the day. We have a very systematic way of making sure we check and read and direct the notes to the appropriate people who need to see them so please be sure you’re using the VIP baggies in this way. Thanks!