Happy November!
The Senior Kindergarteners had a wonderful month of October, leading up to the excitement of Halloween! The festivities began with Trunk or Treat on Saturday before Halloween. It was a blast to see EVERY SKer there dressed as a witch, baseball player, ninja, dinosaur, fairy princess and Flash. We loved hunting for glow necklaces, checking out the creative trunks, playing the freeze dance and of course collecting candy! Halloween continued on Tuesday at school with an all-school parade around the Warson Woods neighborhood followed by a party in the classroom with a fun craft and yummy treats.
In Language Arts this past month, the Seniors completed the unit on the Red, White and Blue and moved onto Teamwork. This is an important and applicable concept for five- and six-year-olds learning how to work together and moving towards thinking of others viewpoints. Through the big books stories and word games, the Seniors are learning about beginning, middle and ending sounds to blend and read words. We continue to emphasize the short vowel sounds to spell and read simple consonant-vowel-consonant words. As a class, we read decodable books containing simple word family patterns and high frequency sight words. This class also LOVES learning new sight words and practicing each week at school and home.
Math in Focus; Singapore Math lessons this month focused on numbers to ten and organizing by size, length and weight. The Seniors have worked hard writing the single-digit numbers without reversals or visual model. We have practiced counting on one more from a given number and creating sets that are more or less than a given number. Finally, we talking about items that are taller or shorter, heavier or lighter.
In Writing, the class is working on writing teaching books. Each student choose a topic that they know a lot about that they could teach someone else about. Current selections include how to carve a pumpkin, Halloween and favorite animals. We are making sure that all pages of the book remain on topic and stretching out words like a rubber band to spell on our own.
It’s been a fun and busy month in SK!
Fondly,
Kristen Masiel
Senior Kindergarten Teacher