Weekly News & Homework: August 29th-September 2nd

We had a wonderful second week of school together! 

We are ready to begin our Friday parent volunteers THIS WEEK!! We are excited to have you join our class for Reading Stations and Fun Friday Centers!  Our center time is from 10:45-12:30.Thank You!!!

The very first Scholastic Book order went out last week. If you would like to order books for your child, please submit your orders online. With every order, we also get one free book for our classroom library. Place your orders by Friday, September 2nd! 

Please do not forget that while most of our homework in kindergarten is done at home, we do have "Turn-In Homework" every week. This is either a sentence to be written at home and turned in or something to bring in to share. Homework can be turned in ANY day of the week. Please scroll down to the bottom of the homework section to see the "Turn-In" topic of the week, as well as reading, writing, math, and phonemic awareness ideas. Thank you! 

Mrs. Stanley has also posted additional QR Code resource activities on ParentSquare.  These include video lessons on our sight words, letters, letter teams, word families and more.  If you haven’t already checked out these resources please take a look at them.  You may download and print the activities for your child to work on at home. 

There is no school on Monday, September 5th due to the Labor Day holiday. Enjoy the time off with your families! 

School picture day will be Friday, September 9th! Be on the look-out for a flyer coming home soon!

What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: I, like, my. 

Letters and sounds: l, k, m, y, and the long and short vowel sounds a, e, i, o, u, y (the vowel sounds e or i)

Letter Team: sh (like in "she" and "push") and er (like in "her" and "mother") - ask your child to tell you about Mr. er - he is one crazy driver!!!

Word Family: ip - like in dip, chip, rip, sip, tip, etc.

Reading: We will continue to learn that vowels make 2 sounds - a short sound and a long sound. Ask your child to sing you the vowel song! We will continue to read big books to help us with our reading strategies. This week, we will also read many books about colors and our five senses. 

Writing: We are writing a new book together about our five senses using our sight words of the week. We are continuing to use an uppercase at the beginning of a sentence, finger spaces between our words, and a period at the end. We are also learning to use our sight words in our sentences and to listen for the sounds in all unknown words using our sound chart. You can help your child at home by using the same sound chart on the back of  your Homework Folder to help with sounding out words and writing at home.

Math: We will continue to practice number identification, number writing, days of the week, months of the year, shape names and shape attributes and counting on. 

Leadership: At ILCS this year, we are ROARING. The acronym ROAR stands for Respect self, others, and property, Own your actions, Act safely, and Rise to servant leadership. For the next several weeks, we will be discussing the first O in class -  OWN YOUR ACTIONS. We will talk about what that means and how we can own our actions at school. Our goal is to have students take ownership of their own behavior as we all strive to be leaders in our classroom and school. 

Homework now includes Smarty Ants and DreamBox!  Your child also has access to Raz-kids reading for independent reading practice.

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO THE HOMEWORK POST TO SEE ALL OF THE HOMEWORK FOR THE WEEK.

Homework: August 29-September2

Please take a moment to read each section of homework. I understand this can be very overwhelming. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or concerns.

Flashcards: Please make flashcards for our sight words (I, like, my), letters/sounds of the week (l, k, y, long and short vowels a, e, i, o, u, y) our letter teams of the week (sh and er) and our word family (ip - tip, lip, chip, etc.) Study these flashcards every day. Have your child read the word, spell the word, read the word. Please see our Sight Word tab and scroll to the very bottom for more flashcards tips and ideas. We will have a Sentence Test on our sight words every Friday. A sentence test means we will be asking your child to write a sentence that we give them using our sight words of the week. We will not only be looking for correct spelling of our sight words, but also for an uppercase at the beginning, spaces between words, a proper punctuation at the end. An example of a sentence is, "We can see a man." It may be a good idea to have a practice Sentence Test with your child on Thursday night. 

Phonemic Awareness: Please work with your child on the following Phonemic Awareness skills: rhyming, blending, segmenting, syllables, beginning/middle/ending sounds, and adding, changing and deleting sounds in words.  

Reading: Reading at home is SO IMPORTANT! In a few short weeks, your child will be bringing home little books that we have been reading in class to read at home for YOU! Reading to your child is also important. Children need to hear frequent fluent reading to become a reader themselves. 

Reading homework every week will include Smarty Ants. 

Your child’s login info was sent home last week. THE HOMEWORK REQUIREMENT IS 40 MINUTES PER WEEK OF SMARTY ANTS.  You can achieve these minutes any way it works best for your family, 10 minutes per day Monday - Thursday, 20 minutes 2 days a week, etc. 

Reading homework will also include Raz-kids Reading. This is a web sight reading program where your child will access digital books online. The books can be read and listened to and then your child can take a quiz to check for understanding as they progress through the levels. Your child’s login info was sent home last week. Here is the link:

http://www.raz-kids.com/

Writing: Our writing homework will change throughout the year and may look different for each student since each student may be at a different place developmentally. I would like all students to practice writing your name with an uppercase only at the beginning. Practice writing your ABC's both uppercase and lowercase. You can also practice writing your sight words of the week in a short sentence. We are learning to start our letters at the TOP! Keep practice writing the ABCs uppercase and lowercase letters!

Math: Practice counting 1-30 or higher. Make number flashcards and have your child identify numbers out of order. Practice drawing shapes, identifying shapes, or even creating shapes out of play-dough and sticks. Ask your child to name different attributes of shapes. For example, "What shape has three sides?" or "How many vertices does a rectangle have?" Your child will also be bringing home "Daily Math" practice pages that we do every morning in class. Please take a moment to go over these practice pages to see if there is anything specific your child needs to work on. 

Math homework every week will include Dreambox. DreamBox is up and running and ready for you to play at home. THE HOMEWORK REQUIREMENT IS 40 MINUTES PER WEEK OF DREAMBOX You can achieve these minutes any way it works best for your family, 10 minutes per day Monday - Thursday, 20 minutes 2 days a week, etc. 

Our school code is X2we/inlandlcs

QR Codes: Each week, these will be uploaded on ParentSquare. Please print these pages for your child to work on at home each week. One great idea is to put these pages in sheet protectors and add these pages into a binder for your child to refer to all year long. 

Turn-In Homework:  THIS IS THE ONLY PART OF HOMEWORK THAT NEEDS TO BE TURNED IT!    This week, we will be learning about our five senses. For Turn-In Homework this week, please write one sentence about your favorite sense and how you use it. (Example: I like my nose because I can smell cookies with my nose.) Draw a picture to go with your sentence. Your child may attempt to write this sentence themselves, or you may dictate the sentence your child would like to write.

Note: If you visit the following link (Sharing Paper), you'll find a great printable writing page with a spot for writing and for a picture! Feel free to print off a bunch of these pages to use for turn in writing homework each week :) 

Weekly News & Homework: August 22nd-26th

What a great first full week of school! I am the luckiest teacher to have such a great group of students with me and I am excited about our year together. We are having so much fun getting to know one another and adjusting to this crazy little thing called kindergarten :) 

It was wonderful seeing so many of our parents at Back to School Night!  It is so nice to see we have an enthusiastic and very supportive group of parents!  This year will be amazing!!

Thank you again to the parents that signed up to help us out in the morning with Daily Folders. If you are a Daily Folder helper, please grab our Folder Basket down at the tables on the playground and walk it up to class for us! Here are our wonderful Daily Folder Parents: 

Mondays: Mrs. Sarenana

Tuesdays: Mrs. Huber

Wednesdays: Mrs. Wilcox

Thursdays: Mrs. Sweis

Fridays: Mrs. Sweis

Last week I sent home a Sight Word CD with our sight word songs. This is a fun way to learn our sight words and reinforce letter identification too. Have your child point to each letter on their flashcards as they sing the letter name and have fun singing! 

On Friday your child took his/her first spelling/sentence assessment (which will come home on Monday). On the front side we have our spelling test, and on the back you will find the sentence test. Please take some time to go over the spelling sentence with your student and reinforce any errors your child may have made.  We will have a spelling sentence assessment each Friday that will include our current and often previous spelling words.  We are looking for correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation as well as appropriate spacing between words.  We understand this will take time, but with reinforcement and practice they will all achieve this standard.  Your students are off to a great start!!

                                

Our first Scholastic Book Order is available online!   Check out the over 500 titles at the Scholastic Website. Here’s how it works:

1.GO ONLINE to www.Scholastic.com/bookclubs  On the Scholastic site go to Parent Page, click “Don’t have a Username and Password? link, then register for your own username and password to use all year long!  Whenprompted, enter the one-time Class Activation Code (MD2GY).  This code ensures your order is sent to our class.

2. SELECT the books you’d like to order from over 500 titles.

3.  SEND your order to me online by the due date.  Books will be delivered directly to our  classroom within just a few weeks of ordering.

        BOOK ORDERS ARE DUE ONLINE BY FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2nd

There is no school on Monday, September 5th due to the Labor Day holiday. Enjoy the time off with your families! 

What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: is, the, me, or.

Letters:i, t, h, m, o, r

Letter Team: th (we are learning that TH has two different sounds - a hard sound, like in MOTHER and THE, and a soft sound, like in THUMB and WITH). 

Word Family: ap (cap, tap, rap, etc.)

Reading: We are learning the vowels! Ask your child about our special vowel song and what sounds the vowels can make! We are learning that each vowel can make 2 sounds - short and long. We are also learning the parts of a book, including title, author, illustrator, and title page. You can help at home by having your child point to each part of the book before you read. Students will continue pointing to the words, and we will learn a few more reading strategies, including, "Get your mouth ready for the first sound", "Know the Letter Sounds" and "Stretch out the sounds”.

Writing: We are writing a new book together about our shapes and colors using our sight words of the week. We will practice that a sentence starts with an uppercase letter and ends with a period. We are working on putting finger spaces between our words. We are learning that our ABC Sound Chart helps us to identify sounds/letters in words. (You will also find the ABC Sound Chart on your child's Take Home Folder!!)

Math: We will practice number identification, number writing, days of the week, months of the year, and shapes. We will also focus on identifying what number comes next without having to go back to start counting at 1. 

Leadership: At ILCS this year, we are ROARING. The acronym ROAR stands for Respect self, others, and property, Own your actions, Act safely, and Rise to servant leadership.  For the next several weeks, we will be discussing the first R in class - RESPECT. We will talk about what it means to respect, as well as what it looks like. Our goal is to have students take ownership of their own behavior as we all strive to be leaders in our classroom and school. Our TURN-IN HOMEWORK this week is to write a sentence about how your child can show respect at school.

Homework will now include Smarty Ants and DreamBox! 

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO READ THE ENTIRE HOMEWORK POST BELOW!!!! 

Homework: August 22-26

Please take a moment to read each section of homework. I understand this can be very overwhelming. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or concerns.

Flashcards: Please make flashcards for our sight words (is, the, me, or), our letter team of the week (th) and our word family (ap - cap, tap, rap, etc.) Study these flashcards every day. Have your child read the word, spell the word, read the word. 

Phonemic Awareness: Please work with your child on the following Phonemic Awareness skills: rhyming, syllables, beginning/middle/ending sounds, and adding, changing and deleting sounds in words.  

Reading: Reading at home is SO IMPORTANT! In a few short weeks, your child will be bringing home little books that we have been reading in class to read at home for YOU! Reading to your child is also important. Children need to hear frequent fluent reading to become a reader themselves. 

Reading homework every week will include Smarty Ants. 

You can access Smarty Ants online or you can download the app on your iPad or tablet.  Your child’s login info to access Smarty Ants will be coming home this week. Be on the lookout for information on logging in soon!

Reading homework will also include Raz-kids Reading. This is a web sight reading program where your child will access digital books online. The books can be read and listened to and then your child can take a quiz to check for understanding as they progress through the levels. Your child’s login info to access Raz-Kids will be coming home this week. Here is the link:

http://www.raz-kids.com/

Writing: Our writing homework will change throughout the year and may look different for each student since each student may be at a different place developmentally. I would like all students to practice writing your name with an uppercase only at the beginning. Practice writing your ABC's both uppercase and lowercase. Your child took an ABC Writing Assessment in class and these will come home on Monday so you can see what your child needs to practice. You can also practice writing your sight words of the week in a short sentence. We are learning to start our letters at the TOP! 

Math: Practice counting 1-30 or higher. Make number flashcards and have your child identify numbers out of order. Practice number writing - your child took a Number Writing Assessment in class and these will also come home on Monday so you can see what needs to be practiced! Practice drawing shapes, identifying shapes, or even creating shapes out of play-dough and sticks. Ask your child to name different attributes of shapes. For example, "What shape has three sides?" or "How many vertices does a rectangle have?" Your child will also be bringing home "Daily Math" practice pages that we do every morning in class. Please take a moment to go over these practice pages to see if there is anything specific your child needs to work on. 

Math homework every week will include Dreambox. DreamBox is up and running and ready for you to play at home. Below is a link to DreamBox.  You can also download the free app to play on your iPad or tablet.   THE HOMEWORK REQUIREMENT IS 40 MINUTES PER WEEK OF DREAMBOX You can achieve these minutes any way it works best for your family, 10 minutes per day Monday - Thursday, 20 minutes 2 days a week, etc. 

Our school code is X2we/inlandlcs

https://play.dreambox.com/login/x2we/inlandlcs

Turn-In Homework:  THIS IS THE ONLY HOMEWORK YOU MUST TURN IN! For Turn-In Homework this week, please write one sentence about how you can show respect at school. Draw a picture to go with your sentence. Your child may attempt to write this sentence themselves, or you may dictate the sentence your child would like to write.

Note: If you visit the following link (Sharing Paper), you'll find a great printable writing page with a spot for writing and for a picture! Feel free to print off a bunch of these pages to use for turn in writing homework each week :) 

Weekly News & Homework: August 15th-19th

We had a great first two days of school! It has been so nice to meet all of you and your awesome kiddos! I have a wonderful group of students and I am truly looking forward to a fantastic school year! 

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Thank you for ALL of your generous donations! Don't forget to attend our Back to School Night Celebration on Thursday, August 18th from 4:00-7:00 at CSC. There will be food trucks, a short presentation from our director, and our kindergarten team will have a booth set up to give more information about our classes. We will also have sign-ups for room parent and volunteering in the classroom. Hope to see you there!

I will start sending home our Take-Home Folders this week. Please check this folder every day, removing any papers to stay at home, and sending it back to school every day.

We are excited for our first full week of school - we will be learning sight words, reading books, learning math, writing in our journals, and even starting homework! Please see our Homework section for more information. More information about our kindergarten homework program will also be given at Back to School night. 

What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: WE, CAN, SEE, A.

Letter Team: EE (like in SEE and BEE).

Reading: We are reading many books about beginning school! We are reading books about our shapes and catching our sight words as we read. We are also learning a few reading strategies to become better readers: Make Your Finger Match the Word, Look at the Pictures, and Retell What You Just Read.

Writing: We are learning to neatly write the alphabet using correct letter formation.  We are writing a book together about shapes using our sight words of the week. This week we are learning that a sentence starts with an uppercase letters and ends with a period. We are working on putting finger spaces in between our words. We are learning that our ABC Sound Chart helps us to identify sounds/letters in words. (You will also find the ABC Sound Chart on your child's Take Home Folder!!)

Math: We are learning to identify, order, write, and count numbers to 30, identify and name shapes and sort them by different attributes.  We are also learning songs for the days of the week and months of the year. 

Leadership: At ILCS this year, we are ROARING. The acronym ROAR stands for Respect self, others, and property, Own your actions, Act safely, and Rise to servant leadership.  For the next several weeks, we will be discussing the first R in class - RESPECT. We will talk about what it means to respect, as well as what it looks like. Our goal is to have students take ownership of their own behavior as we all strive to be leaders in our classroom and school. 

Homework: August 15-19

Please take a moment to read each section of homework. I understand this can be very overwhelming. More information on how we run our kindergarten homework program will be coming to you soon! 

Flashcards: Please make flashcards for our sight words of the week (WE, CAN, SEE, A), our letter team of the week (EE) and our word family (AN - man, can, pan, fan, etc.) Study these flashcards every day. Have your child read the word, spell the word, read the word. We will have a Spelling Test/Sentence Test on our sight words every Friday. A sentence test means we will be asking your child to write a sentence that we give them using our sight words of the week. We will not only be looking for correct spelling of our sight words, but also for an uppercase at the beginning, spaces between words, a proper punctuation at the end. An example of a sentence is, "We can see a man." It may be a good idea to have a practice Sentence Test with your child on Thursday night. 

Phonemic Awareness:  (These activities can be done anywhere! No paper and pencil necessary! It could be in the car, while playing catch, in the bathtub, at the dinner table, in the grocery store, etc.!) Please work with your child on the following Phonemic Awareness skills: rhyming, syllables, blending, and beginning/middle/ending sounds. A great way to practice phonemic awareness is to play word/sound games with your child. For example, you can play rhyming games by giving your child a word such as hat and ask your child to produce a new word that rhymes with hat.  Continue taking turns until all words are exhausted (hat, bat, cat, fat, rat, sat, mat, splat).  You can also work on helping your child identify the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words.  You can give your child a word, or show them a picture and ask what is the beginning sound in the word.  For example, say the word moon and ask “What is the beginning sound you hear in the word moon?”  The correct response is the sound “m”. You can also work on syllables by clapping out words.  For example, the word elephant can be clapped out “el-e-phant”.  Ask your child how many syllables are in the word elephant?  “Three, the word elephant has three syllables”. You can work on blending by asking your child to guess the word you are saying as you say each sound one at a time (c-u-p).  You can work on segmenting words by asking your child to tell you all of the sounds they hear in words.  For example, in the word dog your child should say three separate sounds (d-o-g).

Reading: Reading at home is SO IMPORTANT! In  a few short weeks, your child will be bringing home little books that we have been reading in class to read at home for YOU! We also have a wonderful online reading program called Smarty Ants that we will introduce in class in the weeks to come. Next week, this will become an integral part of your reading homework, as we ask that you complete 40 minutes of Smarty Ants per WEEK at home (approx. 10 minutes per day). Reading to your child is also VERY important. Children need to hear frequent fluent reading to become a reader themselves. 

Writing: Our writing homework will change throughout the year and may look different for each student since each student may be at a different place developmentally. I would like all students to practice writing your name with an uppercase only at the beginning. Practice writing your ABC's both uppercase and lowercase. Your child took an ABC Writing Assessment in class and these will come home this week so you can see what your child needs to practice. You can also practice writing your sight words of the week in a short sentence. We are learning to start our letters at the TOP! 

Math: Practice counting 1-30 or higher. Make number flashcards and have your child identify numbers out of order. Practice number writing - your child will take a Number Writing Assessment in class and these will also come home this week so you can see what needs to be practiced! Practice drawing shapes, identifying shapes, or even creating shapes out of play-dough, sticks, straws, etc. Ask your child to name different attributes of shapes. For example, "What shape has three sides?" or "How many vertices does a rectangle have?" *This can be done anywhere, anytime! We also have a wonderful online math program called Dreambox that we will introduce in class next week. Next week, this will become an integral part of your math homework, as we ask that you complete 40 minutes of Dreambox a week at home.

QR Codes: Our class uses QR codes in our learning. Our wonderful partner teacher, Mrs. Stanley, has created many QR code activities for students to scan and work on at home. Each week, these will be uploaded on ParentSquare. Please print these pages for your child to work on at home each week. One great idea is to put these pages in sheet protectors and add these pages into a binder for your child to refer to all year long. More information about to use QR codes will be sent home later!

Turn-In Homework: Every week, we will only have ONE thing to bring back to school and turn in to the classroom. The expectation is that the rest of your homework will be done at home together. Turn-In Homework can be brought in ANY day of the week but must be turned in by Friday. Sometimes Turn-In Homework will be a special project and sometimes it will be a piece of writing. For Turn-In Homework this week, students will be sharing their Book Boxes made at home. A note about Book Boxes was sent home on Friday so that you can work on these boxes over the weekend. Please bring your book boxes ANY day this week to share with the class. Our goal is to share a few book boxes a week so that we do not have 21 book boxes to share on Friday.