February News
Welcome to February!
Our focus for this month will be kindness. We will discuss positive self-talk (being kind to yourself), the characteristics of a good friend and we will continue to practice solving problems in a peaceful manner. It is expected that there will be conflict between classmates (and in life! lol). This is normal. These conflicts are an important opportunity for the growth and development of your child’s social skills. Together we discuss ways to solve problems in respectful ways, and find solutions that will not disrupt the peace in our classroom. I ask for your patience and grace as these little ones learn and develop the skills they need. Thank you for demonstrating kindness!
This month the children will learn new routines in Language Arts. Many children are beginning to ‘Sound spell’ by adding letters in their written work. This is a big developmental step. The process of writing down sounds/words/sentences, is a very difficult task for most Kindergarten (and Grade One) students. It requires the learner to: remain mindful of a large chuck of language (a sentence), divide the sentence into words, segment the words into sounds, think about the letters that represent those sounds, visualize how the letter looks ( as well as upper or lowercase?), remember how to form the letter correctly (not backwards), remember to start on the left hand side and move to the right, remember to leave spaces between words…… Yikes! It is a skill that proficient writers take for granted; but for a young child, the cognitive load of this task is enormous! You can see why they just want us to tell them how to spell words! That is definitely the easy way out. I have a little homework for you. This You-tube link does an excellent job of explaining the developmental stages of writing and how you can help your child develop their literacy skills. Check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtp58ffDyP8
Here is a quick outline of the steps that your child is practicing in Writers’ Workshop:
Journal Writing
The children are expected to:
Happy Writing!
In math we continue to work on counting. This month the children will explore counting up and down beginning from different numbers to ten. The children are learning to match numerals to sets of objects, compare two amounts (more/less/fewer/equal), print numerals to 10 and make one number in different ways: all important skills for future math tasks. It is a great advantage for Kindergarten children to be able to divide an amount in different ways (for Example: 1+4, 2+3, 3+1+1, all = 5) and to be able to manipulate amounts, up to 5, in their head.
Lunar New Year
We are celebrating the Lunar New Year on February 9th. I have planned some fun activities for that day and we will parade around the school, making as much noise as we can. 😉
Valentine’s Day
If your child wishes to give out Valentine cards, please send them to school between the dates of February 12th- - 14th . It makes my life a lot easier if the valentine cards only have who they are from. If you wish to address who the cards are for; please ensure that the names are printed clearly. It can make for a very difficult day to read 400 names printed in ‘kindergarten font’. Lol!
A list of class names are on our website.
Thanks!
Some Dates to keep in mind:
Feb 9th and 23rd Hot Lunch
Feb. 16 Professional Day -No school
Feb. 19 Family Day – No school
Feb 28 Pink Shirt Day
Welcome to February!
Our focus for this month will be kindness. We will discuss positive self-talk (being kind to yourself), the characteristics of a good friend and we will continue to practice solving problems in a peaceful manner. It is expected that there will be conflict between classmates (and in life! lol). This is normal. These conflicts are an important opportunity for the growth and development of your child’s social skills. Together we discuss ways to solve problems in respectful ways, and find solutions that will not disrupt the peace in our classroom. I ask for your patience and grace as these little ones learn and develop the skills they need. Thank you for demonstrating kindness!
This month the children will learn new routines in Language Arts. Many children are beginning to ‘Sound spell’ by adding letters in their written work. This is a big developmental step. The process of writing down sounds/words/sentences, is a very difficult task for most Kindergarten (and Grade One) students. It requires the learner to: remain mindful of a large chuck of language (a sentence), divide the sentence into words, segment the words into sounds, think about the letters that represent those sounds, visualize how the letter looks ( as well as upper or lowercase?), remember how to form the letter correctly (not backwards), remember to start on the left hand side and move to the right, remember to leave spaces between words…… Yikes! It is a skill that proficient writers take for granted; but for a young child, the cognitive load of this task is enormous! You can see why they just want us to tell them how to spell words! That is definitely the easy way out. I have a little homework for you. This You-tube link does an excellent job of explaining the developmental stages of writing and how you can help your child develop their literacy skills. Check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtp58ffDyP8
Here is a quick outline of the steps that your child is practicing in Writers’ Workshop:
Journal Writing
The children are expected to:
- Think about a story from her/his life (something they’ve done and a topic he/she cares about)
- Turn and Talk with a friend about their story
- Create (visualize) a picture in his/her mind(make a mental image); noticing all the details- Then draw it
- Using letters, or words; ‘write’ the story
Happy Writing!
In math we continue to work on counting. This month the children will explore counting up and down beginning from different numbers to ten. The children are learning to match numerals to sets of objects, compare two amounts (more/less/fewer/equal), print numerals to 10 and make one number in different ways: all important skills for future math tasks. It is a great advantage for Kindergarten children to be able to divide an amount in different ways (for Example: 1+4, 2+3, 3+1+1, all = 5) and to be able to manipulate amounts, up to 5, in their head.
Lunar New Year
We are celebrating the Lunar New Year on February 9th. I have planned some fun activities for that day and we will parade around the school, making as much noise as we can. 😉
Valentine’s Day
If your child wishes to give out Valentine cards, please send them to school between the dates of February 12th- - 14th . It makes my life a lot easier if the valentine cards only have who they are from. If you wish to address who the cards are for; please ensure that the names are printed clearly. It can make for a very difficult day to read 400 names printed in ‘kindergarten font’. Lol!
A list of class names are on our website.
Thanks!
Some Dates to keep in mind:
Feb 9th and 23rd Hot Lunch
Feb. 16 Professional Day -No school
Feb. 19 Family Day – No school
Feb 28 Pink Shirt Day