It was so fun to see many of you and your children at movie night. That was my, and my preschool age son Zachary's first AV movie night!
Please help me in welcoming new student Aaron Yang and his family. His parents are Albert and Martina. He will start in our class on Monday. A couple students asked if they could draw him a welcome picture over the weekend, so I said I would tell the parents this. I thought that was so thoughtful. :) If your child wants to draw Aaron a picture or write a note welcoming him to our class, they can bring it on Monday.
Thank you everyone for bringing your children for their afternoon assessments. This will help me to best meet the differing needs of the students in my class during small group instruction. I am continuing to meet with students both this week and next week. If you need to check the schedule, you can do so here. When you arrive for your assessment, please wait by Gate E (the gate we enter through in the morning). I will meet you out there and let you in when you arrive.
Language Arts
In language arts, we continue introducing letters and letter sounds and will introduce our first vowels this week, Ii and Uu. For information about the formation of these letters, please see the Fundations Family Letter. We will also introduce the sight words in and it. If you're also interested in further review of the letter sounds with your child, you can find the letter sound video we watch in class, called "The Better Alphabet Song" here.
We will also launch our beginning writing unit, which starts with teaching drawing. We will be working on directed drawings of people this week. As children take an interest in writing more, parents can support them by encouraging independent spelling. If your child asks, "How do you spell ____?" respond by asking them how they think it is spelled and refer to the better alphabet song. For example, if your child is asking how to spell "cat", you could say, "Let's think about the sounds we hear in the word cat and the letter sounds we sing in the better alphabet song. What letter says /c/?" and then "/a/ and /t/." Once you've heard the better alphabet song a dozen times you could sing, "_____ says /c/, /c/, /c/. ____ can also say /s/, /s/, /s/." It's ok if their spelling is not correct at this time! If they spell cat like any of these: c, ct, kat, kt, then that's great for right now! We want children to go through the process of connecting sounds to spelling themselves at this age. Encourage your children in their writing by having them make lists or write notes to friends and family. They can also label their pictures (something we will work on explicitly during writing time in class soon).
Thank you for returning those Wednesday envelopes. You might be wondering what are the papers that come home in my child's backpack on days other than Wednesday? Any papers that are a part of our morning tub play time activities go home that same day. They are usually cutting funny pictures, pokey pins, etc. Your child may also choose to draw or write during choice time, which can contribute to papers in the backpack. Any work in the Wednesday envelope is work your child turned in that I have reviewed. They are great discussion points to begin with when going over their classwork with them.
Math
In math, we will continue with the topic Numbers to 10. More information on this topic can be found here.
