Welcome to KM!

Archive for November, 2011

Yesterday we were surprised to find that one of Santa’s elves has decided to pay us a visit from the North Pole! We have yet to give him a name but apparently he is going to watch our behavior over the next few weeks and report back to Santa if we have been naughty or nice! If you are a family that doesn’t celebrate Christmas, that is okay too, because the elf will instead email mom and dad about your behavior so “you better watch out”! The kids have really had a good time discovering him and looking for him each morning!

We also are very lucky to have a MimioTeach in our classroom on loan for a few weeks until our own is ordered and installed. A MimioTeach, in conjunction with a projector and my laptop, turns our regular whiteboard into an interactive white board! We used it today during Workboard jobs and the kids really thought it was pretty cool. As I become more familiar with the software, I will be creating more and more lessons to use it with and the children will be able to also come up and manipulate objects and write on it as well. I see it becoming a valuable tool in our language arts and math curriculum.

We are doing a great job learning our lines for the performance on Wednesday. More than half of the children know them by heart already! We will be rehearsing with the other 2 Kindergarten classes next week so we would like everyone to have their line memorized by then and confidently enough to say them loud and clear! Please keep practicing this weekend! We really think you’re going to enjoy the performance on Wednesday!

It has come to my attention, through talking with the children as well as looking at the days and times of play on each student’s log, that many parents who have older children have guessed their Kindergarten child’s login and password for playing Lexia and IXL  and have been allowing their Kindergarten students to play these games at home. I would like to respectfully request that you stop allowing your Kindergarten student to play these games at home for now. We have just recently introduced these games at school and I would really like to supervise the children while playing these games at school for a while before I allow them to play at home. When I decide that they are ready to play these games at home, I will send home instructions on how to access the games as well as guidelines as to how often and how long they should be playing at home. For now though, they are getting more than enough practice with these games at school. Thank you for respecting this request.

Yoga was a huge success today! The children had a lot of fun so be sure to ask all about it.

We also began practicing our lines for the Thanksgiving Story today and will continue to do so daily until the performance. Your child’s line(s) is coming home in his/her VIP today. Please be sure to dig it out and put it in a safe place so that you can practice their line(s) with them at home. They will need to memorize them so that they can say them loudly and clearly by the 23rd! Thank you so much for all your help!

The PTA is once again generously providing a yoga program for the Kindergarten classes this year. Yoga will take place in the gym approximately every other Thursday afternoon from this week through April and will be taught by a certified children’s yoga instructor. Please be sure you dress your child in comfortable clothes (i.e. sweats) that they can do a variety of poses in. Please refrain from sending the girls to school in dresses, skirts, and tights on yoga days. Sneakers are not necessary as we will be removing our socks and shoes. This was a wildly successful and fun program for the children last year so I’m sure the kids this year will really enjoy it as well. I know I do!