Week of September 10, 2012

Hello Room 4 Families!
     The first week of school was spectacular. Your children are friendly, kind, and hard working. I feel so lucky to be spending my days with them!
     This week we will be working more on curriculum as we practice the procedures and routines we learned last week.
     The first unit in our language arts curriculum, Open Court Reading, is called School. We will be reading stories and poems about kindergarten and school. We will also be practicing writing letters and first and last names. When writing names, please help your child begin with a capital letter and write the rest in lower case. We will be reading several rhymes such as "One Two Buckle my Shoe". Practice rhyming words with your child. Ask him or her to think of rhyming words for a word you say (their rhymes can be real or nonsense words).
     In math, we will be beginning chapter one on sorting and classifying. The math vocabulary for this week is: same, different, sort, and equal groups. We will begin by looking at how objects are the same and different, and then move to sorting objects by one and then more than one attribute. For example, we may sort shapes of various sizes and colors first by shape and then by color.
     Homework also begins this week! Your child will be taking home a folder with a homework packet each Monday. The completed packets are due back to school on Friday morning. Your child will have a weekly reading log and one math and one language arts page to complete each night. Please complete the pages as they are assigned and try not to let your kids do the whole packet in one night! I would like them to do a little work each night.
     Thank you to those families who turned in the forms from the first day packets. There were some questions about the emergency cards. The office does need two cards for each student, so if you didn't fill out and return both, please do so. Thanks!
     Thank you also to those parents who have expressed interest in volunteering, either during the school day or at home. For those parents who signed up to help during the first hour of school for centers time, this will begin next Monday, September 17. For those parents who would like to help in the room before then, you are more than welcome to! Please just send me an email the night before you plan on coming in and I will be sure to have something ready for you to do. I also have some projects that parents can take home to work on. Again, please send me an email and we can arrange pick up for these items.
     Whew! I know this was a lot of information. Thank you for reading, and please email me if you have any questions! carrie-relles@scusd.edu