Welcome to All Day Kindergarten!
Hi Everyone!
Well you have probably heard from your child that we started our bear unit last week. The kids were delighted to see the dramatic play area transformed into a bear cave and they have had a lot of fun pretending to be bears.
This is a very well developed unit that crosses across all of the content areas of our curriculum. Some of the activities we will be in doing are:measuring grizzly bear paw prints, making world maps which we will trace color and label before we place bear cut outs on the continents they inhabit, re-telling the story of The Little Polar Bear through drawings and dictation, write our own bear fact book, create a torn paper collage of the character "Corduroy", and create a class book based on the story "BrownBear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?"
We will study about bears until the holiday break in December and we will end the unit with a Teddy Bear Picnic which involves a scavenger hunt around the school. I will send out more information about the picnic as we get closer to the date.
NEW ROUTINES
TRAVELS WITH CROAK
We will be starting to send our class mascot"Croak" home with one student every Friday beginning this week. Croak goes home with a binder titled"Travels with Croak" which is a journal. Students will have a chance to draw a picture and write a page in the journal describing what he/she did with Croak during the weekend. The student brings Croak back to school on Monday and shares the journal page with the class. Every student will get a chance to take Croak home. I send home a schedule so you will know when your child will have Croak for a weekend.
ALL ABOUT ME
We will also start to have one student create and share an All About Me poster with the class each Monday. The student shares the poster with the class on Monday and the poster is displayed on our All About Me board for the week. Posters are usually a compilation of pictures, drawings and labeling. A reminder and sheet explaining the poster will go home with your child on the Friday before the poster is due.I will send home a schedule so youwill know when your child will have a turn doing All About Me.
OUR MANY COLORED DAYS
We have started a color chart in class to show students that weare noticing how hard they are working to remember the rules in our Kindergarten classroom. Each child has three colored cards in a pocket chart.The cards are green, purple and red.
When students arrive each day, their cards are green which symbolizes that the child is ready to learn and behaving appropriately. If we notice that a child is working very hard to follow the rules in the classroom,we tell the child to change their card to purple. Purple symbolizes that he/she is doing a super job. If the child requires multiple redirections, we will tell the child to change their card to red. Red symbolizes that the child needs to slow down and think about their behavior. As soon as the child demonstrates that he/she is following the rules,we will tell the child to turn their name back to green.
Purple behaviors are usually when students are modeling the desired behavior when other students are not. For example I often ask everyone to look at a book on the rug when they finish snack. Some students follow the direction while others might engage in a variety of other behaviors. I recognize the students that are listening to me and showing others what the desired behavior looks like.
Green usually means that the student listened most of the timewith no real problems.
Red behaviors are usually hitting other kids, running through the classroom after repeated redirection, wrestling on the rug or talking through meeting after repeated redirection.
Our color chart helps us manage the typical behaviors we see throughout the day in our Kindergarten classroom. Our goal is to encourage positive behaviors so we can build a better sense of community in theclassroom.
Ask your child what color his/her day was. If he/she tells you it was red for part of the day, don't worry! A very large part of our curriculum involves teaching pro social skills. We know that it is a normal part of development to test boundaries. Helping to guide children through the process of developing positive social skills is part of our job here at school.We know you are working on it at home too!
VOLUNTEERING IN THE CLASSROOM
Please send me an email if you would like to volunteer to comein to the classroom to help out during our center times in December and January. Center times are: Monday 10:30-11:15, Tuesday 9:30-10:15, Wednesday9:30-10:15, Thursday 10:30-11:15, Friday 9:30-10:15. (Please note that theThursday time has changed)
Lastly, Thank you all for making the time to come in for a conference. I have enjoyed meeting with all of you and it is clear to me why we have such a great class this year!
This newsletter will be posted on the website.
Janet and Christine
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