Week in Review

Have you noticed how your child is turning into a reader? We work on reading each day! This week we worked on reading books with characters. While reading the books, we really thought about what the characters say and read the exact words. We took a look at how many words are on the page and thought about if we were going to read a lot of words or a little. We're working hard on reading more and more of the correct words on the page. It is so exciting to see the light bulbs go off in our new readers. We heard, "look! There is the word see!" or something similar all week.

When reading at home with your child, here are some things you can do to support what we're doing in class:

• Ask your child to find words he or she might know in the book your reading. They can be the sight words we've been working on or character's names, etc. Hint: sometimes we spell out the letters before reading the word. For example, if your child is struggling with the, say, "take a look at the letters: t, h, e." And I bet they will say the. 
• Keep connecting the pictures and the words. When your child turns the page and seems stuck, remind him or her to take a look at the pictures, remember what is happening, and then read the words.
• Work on retelling the story. What happened first? What happened next? After that, what happened? How did the book end?

The highlight of the week had to be reading our "new old favorites" to our classmates. Thank you very much for your help with this at home. The students were so proud, and Mrs. Scott and I were impressed!

We have been working on telling our own stories as well. First we start with telling our big news. Then we have been learning to draw big, bold, beautiful pictures that tell our story. Now we are ready to be like readers and make the pictures and words match.

We're learning that numbers can be made in many different ways. For example, we can make five with two and three. Also, we've been working on adding one more (or two!) to a set and figuring out how many we have. We're been doing the reverse as well. What happens when we take one away? Another thing we've been working on is talking about math. For example, when someone thinks he or she knows the answer, the rest of us decide if we agree or disagree, and we work on explaining our answer. That has been really fun to see.

To continue the learning in math:

• Practice counting to 100. A lot of kindergartners get stuck in the teens. 13, 14, and 15 can sound very similar to little ears. Also, numbers that end in 9s, like 29 and 39 can be tricky. You can play a mini-version of Count and Sit. You say a number, then your child says the next number, then it's your turn to say the next number. Repeat the process until you get as high as you can.
• Put math in context. When cooking, for example, talk about how you added two cups of water and then you need to add one more, so how many cups of water did you add? Maybe you had pizza for dinner. First you ate three pieces of pizza and then you ate one more. How many pieces did you eat?
• Think of combinations of numbers. Maybe you have a fruit basket with five apples. Three apples are red. How many are green? Etc. 

This week was filled with a lot of spirit. College wear, fun socks, wearing blue and gold . . . it was a very fun, bonding week.

The week was capped off with an annual Carmel Elementary tradition: the Carmel High School Homecoming Parade. We loved going with our 5th grade buddies. What was so special to me was overhearing the fifth graders talk about their times in kindergarten to their kindergarten buddy. These are memories that last awhile.