Mrs. Ruggieri’s Classroom News
October 9, 2015
Dear Families,
As always, we had a very busy, fun week in Kindergarten! I
am so proud of the super work our students are doing. Here is a
look at what we learned about this week:
• We learned about Isla, Matthew, and Santiago through the
All About Me bag. This concludes our All About Me bag
activity. The children had fun sharing their special items
and learning about each other!
• We learned about the letters Ss and Ii. Can your child find
items at home that begin with either of these letters?
• We continued to practice rhyming and learned about one,
two, and three syllable words. Ask your child to clap the
names of your family members and tell how many syllables
each name has.
• We read the nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle”- another
rhyming addition to our poem folders!
• We learned two new words this week- “we” and “a.” These
are words we might see frequently in print. They are called
high frequency words or as we like to call them in
Kindergarten, “snap words” because we want to recognize
them quickly, as in the snap of our fingers.
• We consistently read quietly for 10 minutes in Reading
Workshop. The children enjoy reading letters, pictures, and
words on their ABC charts, poem folders, and books. This
week, we focused on warming up our brains before
reading. It is important to warm up your brain,
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just like you might warm up your body before playing a
sport. You can do a short reading warm up by looking at the
illustrations on the front cover and thinking about what the
book might be about. We also learned that you can do a long
warm up by taking a “picture walk” through the story
and thinking about what you notice in the story. We
also learned about special print (bold, italics, larger
font, etc.) that can give important information about
a story.
We studied the works of Eric Carle and how he creates his
illustrations. We had so much fun creating Eric Carle paper
at our Hullabaloo! We will use this paper for projects
throughout the school year. Thank you to all of our
volunteers!
We continued to stretch out our words like bubblegum and
write down all of the sounds we hear in Writer’s Workshop.
We also did our best to write “hard to write” ideas. The
children are practicing trying their best to draw and write
on their own. I encourage you to support your child in this
manner with writing at home! Our writing slogans are “When
you think you’re done, you’ve just begun!” and “This is hard,
but I will try!”
We made patterns with shapes in math. We also played
games with dot cards, matching cards with the same number
of dots and also “Top It” which is like the card game “War.”
We will end up sorting our leaves by size and color next
week. Thank you for sending in so many fall leaves!
In Science, we learned about acids and bases with the help
of cabbage juice. Acidic liquids turned red when mixed with
cabbage juice, while bases turned green when mixed with
the cabbage juice.
In our social learning this week, we learned about keeping
our bodies together (“not too close and not too far”) when
we are in a group. When everyone keeps his/her body in the
group, we feel happy, included, and we are all safe. We have
been playing a fun “bodies in the group” freeze dance game
to practice this skill.
• Books we read include: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The
Grouchy Ladybug, The Mixed- Up Chameleon, The Very Busy
Spider, The Lonely Firefly, The Way I Feel, Splish Splash,
Read a Zillion Books! and Andy Acid.
Next week, we will learn about the letters Gg and Oo. We
will continue to practice syllables and listen for the beginning
sounds of words. In Reading, we will continue to build stamina
to read for longer periods of time as well as retelling a story
with pictures and words. In Writing, the children will write
teaching books with multiple pages and planning our books page
by page. In Math, we will get to know triangles and counting out
objects on a number board. In Science, we will learn about gas
with our Quirkle Gilbert Gas. We will continue to study the
works of Eric Carle. We have a very exciting week ahead of us!
* Special Notes *
• I will be placing our first Scholastic Book Order this
weekend. If you’d like to order books, there is still time!
Check out the Scholastic attachment for ordering
information.
• There will no school for students on Monday, October 12th
and Tuesday, October 13th. Enjoy the long weekend!
• Your child brought home a math journal last week. This
journal contains activities and games that complement our
math curriculum. They are optional and should not be
returned to school. They are for your and your child’s
enjoyment at home. J
• Our class will do a triangle finding activity in math next
week. We would greatly appreciate donations of magazines
or catalogs that you are no longer using!
Michelle Ruggieri J
[email protected]