Guardian Update 9/24-9/28

Happy Saturday K-117 Guardians,

Cannot believe we completed our first full week of school! I hope your children are

resting a lot this weekend. I know last night I slept like a log.

Contact List: ​Regarding the contact list, I again was waiting for the hard copy because

we got another new student this week. So just be patient with that.

HW: ​I felt this week we worked out a lot of the hw related kinks so thank you for

bearing with us concerning that. The vast majority of your children are being responsible for

giving us their folder each morning and collecting it in the afternoon. Some children who have

forgotten have been responsible enough to check their bookbags at the end of the day and

realized they forgot. I hope we can continue to reinforce this independence both at home and in

school. I will send home the hw packets that I looked over. I do not believe Ms. Marilyn put

them in the folders. But we will get to that asap!

All About Me Project: ​MAJOR THANK YOU TO ALL WHO COMPLETED THE

ALL ABOUT ME PROJECT. I was so proud, as were your children! As we know Friday was

the due date and I was blown away by the boxes. I also appreciated you not all sending them on

Friday. Having them trickle in this week really broke up the presentations which was ideal for

their attention spans but also to break up our days.

● I know a lot of you asked your child to bring them home. I wanted to leave them

in the classroom so that you could see them during Learn With Your Child. Then

you are more than welcome to bring them back home. I like how they look all

around our classroom. Each box is different from the next, just like our learners!
 ● I made sure to take photos of every child presenting their box since I am sure you

would have loved to have been there. You can find those in our ​Google Photos

Album.

● I will be in touch with our next project in the near future. So keep an eye out for

that.

Katherine Presenting her All About Me Box

Individual Reminders: ​Thank you for all who sent me your dismissal plans. I have

constructed a color coded copy in our classroom which has made dismissal much easier! I will

reach out individually to those who I still need confirmation from.

● I will also reach out individually for those who have yet to send in their extra clothes for

your child. Thank you to those who have sent them in already.

Learn With Your Child: ​Friday 9:30-10am, following the PTA meeting.

● I will send out a google doc with materials needed

 Photos: ​I added the photos for this week to the ​Google Photos Album.

Class Trip: ​Thank you to all who have already sent in the permission slips and the

payment for our farm trip. If you have yet to do so please send it in asap. Anna and I have

already been planning our next trip. So the sooner we finish collecting for this one the sooner we

can start planning for the next one!

● Many thanks to those who donated extra money to students in need. The entire

Kindergarten grade is going. We want every student to be able to come. Your generosity

is ​much​ ​appreciated!!

● We had such high interest for chaperoning. If you have not sent in your slip yet you do

not need to send in chaperoning money because we had overwhelming interest. For this

trip I did chaperoning as first come first serve. So if you do not chaperone this trip I will

be sure to keep you in mind for the next trip.

○ Those who are chaperoning I will be sure to reach out closer to, just to provide

you with expectations for the trip, such as when to arrive at school, what to bring,

etc.

Class Parent: ​Thank you for those who expressed interest. Again I will be in touch with

that information. I must first confirm with the PTA. That too had major interest, which I am so

thankful for.

Weekly Recap: Evacuation Drills: ​As you know we had our second evacuation drill of

the school year. Happy to say this went beyond my expectations. Especially because we had

new students with us who were not with us for the first one this year.
 ● There will be many more this fall. Do reinforce the importance of evacuation drills at

home to ensure a seamless transfer in school.

Enrichment: ​Our learners had double enrichment this week!

New Subjects: ​As I mentioned last week, I have tried to slowly incorporate new

curriculum into our days, so I do not overwhelm the class. This week we started our Phonics

program: Fundations.

● In Phonics this week we started exploring the materials that we will use in phonics.

● We met Echo the owl, feel free to ask your learners about this new friend. They love

him! Many students created pictures for him, so I even made him his own area of our

classroom.

● We have started learning letter formation. Each line on our writing paper has a focus.

Feel free to ask your learner about the skyline (top line), plane line (middle line), grass

line (low line), and worm line (bottom line). So now when they do their hw or any other

work at home you can remind them to stay in the lines since we are reinforcing this skill

in school.

● Our first letter that we focused on was lowercase t. Fundations focuses first on lowercase

letters because most often Kindergarteners write and know their letters but with a focus

on uppercase letters. I have actually noticed some of your learners trying their lowercase

letters in interactive writing!

● We learn the letter, a picture of a top to help us remember it, and then the sound /t/. This

is different from the /tuh/ that many children use to pronounce t.

 ○ We practiced writing this letter while staying in the lines. We go from the skyline

to the grass line and cross in the middle at the plane line. In ​Google Photos ​you

can see photos of your learners practicing this!

● Morning Meeting: ​I have begun by introducing science into our meetings! This week

our focus was on the 5 senses. We shared about our favorite smells (mine was fresh

baked cookies from the oven, yum)! On Friday we shared about our favorite sounds

(mine was a kitten purring). They had such diverse answers, some of which even

connected to their peers: Sutter’s voice, and Eli’s laugh were two memorable responses.

○ I have incorporated more SEL into our morning meetings as well. So we had our

activities connected to community building games.

○ I have introduced some new ways to say hello into our greetings. We have

learned how to say hello in many different languages. This week we learned hello

in Italian and Hebrew.

○ Our Morning Messages were sneak peeks or reinforcers of our learning.

● Reading: ​This week we began reading story books. As you know we began our year in

reading workshop reading all-about-the-world books. But now we have expanded our

minds to storybooks. Many photos of reading in ​Google Photos.

Jude and Adi engaging in partner reading together!

● Writing: ​My favorite lesson of the week which we have been reinforcing as a new skill

is being the Boss of your writing. As our writers wrote their pieces about something they

know about, we have taught them they are in charge. They decide when they need to get

more paper, they decide how to sound out a word, etc.

Mila taking pride in her writing

 ○ We also created a map of our hearts. Something very common in writing

workshops across schools. This helps our learners figure out what to write when

they are stuck without an idea.

Here is Eli’s map of his heart

○ Do be sure to continue to review sight words at home. They have been added to

our word wall. However, we eventually want our learners to know these words

without support.

● Math: ​We have continued our unit on counting and exploring our math manipulatives.

Now we have expanded to have an attendance stick which will help us to break apart

numbers to expand our understanding of how numbers are constructed.

Oliver sorting the pattern blocks

● Social Studies: ​As we learned about the classroom students were determining how

different aspects of our classroom help them to learn.

Olivia sharing her work

● Social Emotional Learning: ​Students have continued to practice their brave breaths and

to regulate their own need to take a break. Some even practice their breaths during quiet

time. I thought it was adorable when I came back from a prep for one student to share

with me that during Spanish, she had to use Alaska because she was upset. This allowed

us to open up and have a conversation about what bothered her while she was in a calm,

relaxed state. Much harder to have this discussion when someone is upset.

○ Our new SEL topic for the week surrounded how it takes courage to express your

feelings. Our feelings can change throughout the day and we wanted to introduce

how these feelings look. Students worked in partners to produce emotions based

off the Book Today I Feel Silly by Jamie Lee Curtis. Below is an example of

sadness. Don’t let the sad face fool you, Ronin was just practicing!
● Shared Reading: ​Our read for the week was a favorite of mine and of our learners, If

You Give a Mouse a Cookie.

● Interactive Writing: ​Our focus for this week was creating a card for Ms. Storms. As

we discussed Back to School Night, our learners are obsessed with her presence in

school. I connected this to SEL because Ms. Storms was sick, so we could make her a

Get Well card to feel better. Connecting our interactive writing to her was too funny

because they were all incredibly focused and motivated to share their ideas of what to

write and then they of course all wanted to write on the note as well. We all signed our

names so she can hang it up in her classroom.

Date to keep in mind: ​PTA Elections October 5​th​ at 8:30am

As always let me know if you have any questions!

Enjoy the weekend, 

Ms. Litt