December 8th Newsletter

Mrs. Burgin’s Kindergarten News

We have a lot of fun and exciting things coming up!! It’s hard to believe we only have one more week of school until Christmas break!

Literacy Focus for Next Week:
· 4 W’s ( Who, what, where, when)
· Elements in a story-characters, setting, and events
· Concepts about print
Writing:
· Starting sentences with a capital letter
· Writing complete sentences
· Stretching words to hear sounds
Phonics:
· Letter Ii
Sight Words:
· up
Math Focus for Next Week:
· Place value
· Using ten frames to count
Upcoming Events and Dates:
Don’t forget we are making gingerbread houses tomorrow at 8:20! We would love to have your help so please join us if you would like!
Grandparent’s luncheon is Tuesday December 13th at 10:30.
Christmas Party is Wednesday December 14th at 1:00. If you would like to bring snacks, drinks, plates, napkins, cups, etc please let me know! We are planning on playing fun games and opening stockings during our party!
Polar Express day is Friday December 16th. Students can wear their pajamas to school!

Thanks for all you do!

The Elves and the Shoemaker

We have been learning how to measure things this week for Math. I found several fun Smart Board activities to help teach my students how to measure things!

Here they had to count how many cubes tall the giraffe was

Here they had to line up the objects from tallest to shortest

We are definitely enjoying our new Smart Board!

For Literacy today, we read The Elves and the Shoemaker.

And then we discussed the characters, setting, and events

After retelling the story we finished our Community Helpers anchor chart.

For writing today the students had to come up with an elf name and job and write two sentences about it. They did such a good job!! This has been their best writing all year! Here are some examples:

"My elf's name is Santa. And his job is give toys to boys girls."

"My elf's name is Pointen. My elf makes shoes."

"My elf's name is bubble. My elf's job is wrap new shoes."

"My elf's name is Sarah Murphy. My elf helps santa. I have a Christmas tree with decorations. I like to play in the snow. I love you."

I so excited to see them writing on their own!

Update!

We finished up last week by reading Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree! This was my first time to read this book and I loved it!

We created a 5 W's anchor chart to practice retelling the story.

So far this week, we have read Jobs Around My Neighborhood

and Officer Buckle and Gloria

After reading Jobs Around My Neighborhood, we discussed what community helpers are and identified some community helpers in our neighborhood. Later, we will discuss community helpers in our school and in the North Pole!

We created another 4 W's chart to retell Officer Buckle and Gloria. The students learned all about safety and who in our school and community help keep us safe.

We have practiced a lot of writing this week!

Here are some writing examples from Parent Night:

Parents, thank you so much for helping your children write! They did a great job!

My favorite activity this week would have to be the job applications my students filled out for Rudolph's position. Rudolph decided to retire this year so my students pretended to be a reindeer and filled out a job application for his position. They had to write why they thought they would be a good reindeer.

So cute!

Here are some new centers for this week:

Counting syllables and sorting pictures according to the number of syllables each picture has.

I have several of these cards posted around the room for our Write the Room center.

The students have to find these cards and fill out the page below:

Here they have to read the number on the page and decorate the gingerbread house using that many pieces of candy

Here they must find the correct number, ten frame and picture that match.

This is our shared reading for the week. Such a cute poem!

And our updated Christmas tree with poinsettias!

These are the blogs I got my centers and reindeer application from:

Little Miss Kindergarten

Lil Country Kindergarten

Pre Kinders

And the Stockings Were Hung...

Our stockings are hung and ready to be filled!! Parents, you should have gotten a letter today about stuffing our stockings. Each child needs to bring 19 items of something small to put in our stockings! Your letter should say what day your child is to bring their items.

I have some examples of our Christmas writing so far this week:

{I am going to make a gingerbread house.}

{I like to open presents in front of my family.}

I love to see how well they are writing and sounding out their words!!

Today we read The Legend of the Poinsetta and discussed Christmas in Mexico! We had a great time learning Christmas traditions in Mexico, learning Spanish words and singing Feliz Navidad!

Before reading the book, I had the students draw a picture of what they thought the book would be about and then they shared with the class their predictions. They always do such a great job!!