Kindergarten Capers
September 26, 2010
Artist of the Month: Jackson Pollock
Thanks to all the parents that attended the “Back To School” event. I am looking forward to a wonderful and productive year with all of you!
This week in language arts our focus will be the letter “Aa”. We are working on the short vowel sound of the letter “Aa” that we hear in words like apple and astronaut. We will be working on oral blending. The goal of oral blending activities is to lead the children to understand that spoken words are made up of smaller units of sound. Becoming aware of syllables and word parts is the first and step towards this end.
In math this week our focus will be:
- Counting backward by ones
- Recognizing and understanding zero as a number for “none”
- Representing numbers with concrete objects
- Using one-to-one correspondence to count objects
- Recognizing and representing numbers with objects
- Finding ways to sort objects
Last week the students were introduced to the artist Jackson Pollock and we began to create our own Pollock inspired art. I have found a fun website for our young artists, JacksonPollock.org. Here they can create in the same style that Jackson Pollock made popular but without the mess. This site is especially great if you have an ipad. Check it out!
This week we will be doing all of the great apple activities mentioned in last week’s newsletter. I will bring a variety of apples to school on Monday and look forward to enjoying them with my students.
The Friday poetry recital was wonderful and I invite parents to join us for this great event. The students recite their poems first thing on Friday mornings. It was great to see that our little friend Gage wanted to go on first this week! Great job to all!
I am in the process of a classroom volunteer schedule for parents to sign up. Thanks for your patience.
A big thank you to all of the dedicated and supportive parents that have found extra time to come in and help out. We so appreciate you and all that you do.
Many of you have said that your children are bringing home their unfinished lunches. In an effort to encourage them to eat their lunch, in the afternoon we are giving snack to students that have eaten their entire lunch. It was nice to see my little friends finishing up sandwiches and fruit before being given a snack.
Looking forward to another fun week,
Diana de la Peña
