Ask Your Child . . .

Ask your child about . . .

something he or she learned this week.

something he or she shared this week.

someone who is his or her friend in the class.

Learn, share, and friend are our vocabulary words this week.

Word Work at School and at Home

During class this week, we spent time focusing on three letters:  Mm, Aa, and Tt.  We thought of words that begin with these letters.  Try it at home!  Which words can your child think of that begin with m?

We can find words that begin with the letter m.

We spent time rhyming this week as well.  One of our favorite games was I spy.  I would say something like I spy with my little eye something that rhymes with star.  Another game we would play went like this: Which of these don't belong:  bat, dog, mat?  How do you know?  Try these at home!

I spy with my little eye something that rhymes with clock.

We practiced reciting nursery rhymes, too.  We did Humpty Dumpty, Hey Diddle Diddle, and Mary Wore a Red Dress this week in class.  Find the rhyming words with your child.  Then try changing the words slightly to practice rhyming or to make it more personal to your child.  You wouldn't believe the laughs we had in class when I changed the names of the rhymes to the students' names.  For example:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a log, humpty dumpty had a big hog
Jenny Penny sat on a wall, Jenny Penny had a big fall

We are working on listening to sentences and determining how many words are in the sentence.  Try giving your child a few sentences (one at a time) and helping him or her figure out how many words are in the sentence.  This might be good to do in the car running errands.

Lastly, we practiced writing the capital letters of F and E this week.

Working on letters, their sounds, words in a sentence, and rhyming will help your child develop phonemic awareness.  Phonemic awareness is the building block to reading.

Here we are this morning finding words that begin with the sound /m/.

Learning How to Count

Lately, we've been learning how to count objects.  We've learned how to count using our eyes, ears, hands, or other parts of our bodies.  We're trying to use as many of our five senses as we can to help us get an accurate count.

Here we are with partners using some of our senses to count.  We're moving the object with our hands. We're listening to the sound of the object hitting the container or table, and we're watching with our eyes to make sure we're only taking one object at a time.  Working with a partner helps us practice.

Can you see us moving each object as we count it?

Counting in kindergarten can be fun!

What Can We Do with Pattern Blocks?

To get us familiar with one of our tools that we'll use this year, we explored with pattern blocks.  Students could do what they wanted with the pattern blocks, as long as the blocks stayed on the table.  :)  Check out what the students did.  Warning:  lots of pictures ahead!

 Did you see us building, sorting, creating, designing, and working together?

Then, for more intentional learning, we made patterns.  These are pattern blocks after all!

Another way we used the pattern blocks was to sort them.  Can you see the students sorting by color? by shape?  by sides?

Ask your child about which way he or she likes to use pattern blocks.