News for the Week of August 27th

We are settling in to our kindergarten routine more and more as each day passes!  After our first 12 days of school, the students are ready for a nice, long 3 day weekend!

In math this week, we continued working on our unit, Introducing Number Concepts to 5.  We will continue this next week and go into our next unit, Developing a Sense of Quantities to 10.  The students are looking at numbers in many different ways such as, five frames, tally marks, domino and dot arrangements, the actual numeral, various amounts of objects and number lines.  We learned a couple of fun concentration/memory card games this past week.  We also began working in our math journals.  The students matched up the appropriate amount of objects to the correct number.  

In language arts, we continued our word study by putting together name puzzles that we will keep in our book boxes, we made a chart about how many letters are in our names, and we matched up pictures that rhymed such as dog/log, mouse/house, etc.  We read the poem, In My Book, and focused on the sight word, "the."  We wrote the word "the" several times and looked for rhyming words in our poem.  We read the book A My Name is Alice and created a picture of ourselves and added the words, "__ my name is _______, and I like ______."  This was fun!  We created sentences such as, "K my name is Kim, and I like kites."  Be sure to check them out in our hallway!  We read the book Chrysanthemum again this week and we discussed how many letters are in our names.  We then created a class chart of how many letters are in our names.  We will begin learning about predictions next week and work on retelling evens in a story.  In writing, we reviewed expectations for writing workshop time and shared our stories about things we like.  We worked on talking about our pictures as if we were telling a story.  Next week, we will focus on talking slow like a turtle when saying the words for our story.  This will help us hear the letter sounds in our words.  We continued work in our handwriting book this week, too. We are learning to start forming our letters and writing them from the top.  We worked on D, E, P, R and B.  

In social studies, we are continuing to focus on why we have rules at home, at school and in the community.  We will start learning about authority figures in our school that help us this next week.

In science, we continued working on a unit called "I Am a Scientist."  We discussed the difference between "tools" we use in science and "toys."  We sorted pictures in our science notebook under the categories, "Tools" and "Toys."  We read and signed our Science Safety Contract and glued it into our science notebook.  We also had fun making play dough in science this week and focused on using safe practices while working with materials.  The Monkeys were then able to explore the play dough we made.  We will finish talking about how scientists ask questions, observe and measure things next week and will then begin a new unit called, "Properties of Objects."

Reminders

Book orders are due on Tuesday, September 4th if you would like to purchase books for your child.  Please send the book order and check or money order made payable to Scholastic Reading Clubs in your child's folder or order and purchase online.

If you have not filled out and returned the permission form from our counselor, Mrs. Hougham, please do so as soon as possible.  This form will allow your child to work in social skills groups with our counselor and Westwood PROS (high school students who mentor).  The students LOVE having this opportunity.  

Please be sure to check out the "Dates to Remember" below. 

Upcoming Dates to Remember: 

Sept. 3      Holiday, No School

Sept. 6      WatchDOGS Kick-Off,

                 Cafeteria, 6 p.m.

Sept. 11     Kindergarten Open House, 6:00-6:30 p.m.

Sept. 11     PTA General Meeting, 6:30 p.m.
Sept. 14     Kona Ice, after school
Sept. 19     Bush's Chicken Spirit Night, 4-7 p.m.
Sept. 20     Coffee Chat for parents, Library, 7:45-8:15 a.m.
Sept. 25     Family PE/Wellness Night, 6-7 p.m.

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

None

Morris September Birthdays:

Mozelle-9/14
Ethan-9/26

Happy Birthday Leighton!