Welcome back!  I hope the break was amazing and refreshing for your family!

We are still going strong with daily centers and math stations.  I am asking anew for volunteers!  About this time of year we see a tapering of volunteer time, but we really need to keep it up and stay strong!  Check the schedule on this class website and please see if you can come in during centers or math stations and help up really raise the level of what we are doing in class!

Our kids are working hard on reading skills in class.  Please remember to support them at home by reading DAILY for at least 20 minutes with your child.  5-10 minutes of that time should be your child reading to you, the rest can be you reading to your child.  The end of Term 3 benchmark is to have mastered Level C and be taking that level home for Leveled Library.  We have 4 1/2 weeks to make this happen, let's really go for it!

Thanks to all of your for your support of our reading contest this year.  The kids did great, and our AM class was 2nd in the school for overall reading minutes!  Thank you for helping them read so much!

Our new IB unit started this week, it is called How We Organize Ourselves, and has to do with community helpers (jobs).  We will be learning about how the jobs that people do help our community.

And we’re off…third term!  I can’t believe that the Kindergarten year is actually half gone!  So much is happening, please be sure to keep up on any emails that are sent home!

Report cards were sent last week.  Please let me know if there are any questions on those.  Here are some updates about a few subjects:

Phonics:  At this time, ALL letter names AND sounds have been presented as have all word families for the vowels “a”, “e”, and “i”.  Benchmark is FULL mastery of these.  This term, we will be presenting word families for the vowels “o” and “u”.  We will also introduce “sh”, “ch”, “th”, and “wh” near the end of the term.  Feel free to practice these skills with your child at home.

Phonemic Awareness:  In the first term we worked on rhyme, in the second term we worked on syllables.  Benchmark is mastery of these skills.  This term, we are working on hearing and segmenting beginning and ending sounds in words.  This will be assessed at the end of the third term.

Penmanship:  We are working through our textbook and have now started writing letters.

Spelling:  As before, new lists go home at the first of the week.  Tests are on Friday!

Reading:  As always, minimum reading is 20 minutes per day for a total of 140 minutes per week!  At this point, 5-10 of those minutes need to be your child reading to you, and the remainder can be you reading, an older sibling reading, or the child continuing to read.

Math:  We have completed our introduction to addition and are now working on subtraction problems.  We should now be able to count to 50, recognize all numbers up to 20 and count by 10’s to 100.  We should have mastered number sense through at least 4 by now.

Our current IB unit is “How We Express Ourselves”.  We are focusing on visual art and music as tools for self-expression.  We will be visiting the University of Utah Museum of Fine Arts in February!

Our reading contest begins this week – check your emails for more details!