Classroom 1 - Kindergarten II
April Showers...Bring May Flowers!!
Mrs. Serra’s May Newsletter Dear Parents, May has arrived and so has the pretty blossoms on the trees! It has been so exciting watching the arrival of spring. This month we will be learning about different kinds of insects, their habitats, life cycles and what that they eat in our Ant Homes Unit. The children are very excited. We can’t wait to see our butterflies come back and lay eggs and hopefully they will find their way to our Whitehouse Prep Butterfly Garden and make it their home. I have written a brief overview of the activities that we will be doing this month. Happy May!!! Sincerely, Mrs. Judy Serra Literacy In literacy the children will be working on the phonemic awareness skills of phoneme matching and isolation. This means that they will be listening for beginning and ending sounds, as well as counting the sounds in words. In phonics, they will be working on blending words with the short u sound. Each child will continue to work on their individual sight word list. Please review the words in with your child at home. You can work on sight words by having your child repeat the letters after you to make a word cheer. The children love to play that game. As we read our stories in shared reading and read aloud this month, the children will work on literacy skills such as identifying the problem in a story, dialogue, action words and retelling activities. As a part of our Insects Unit, the children will be doing a fact book about insects. They will be reading leveled text to find and record information that they learn about insects. It will be so exciting seeing them use their reading skills to learn now!! All of the children have blossomed into readers and I am so proud of all of them!
Come Along Daisy, What’s What?, Ladybugs, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Mr. Buzz
Writing During Writing Workshop, the children are now using writing folders. They will continue to work on the skills of stretching out their words; spacing, lowercase letters and making sure that their pictures match their words. In addition, they will be checking to make sure that the sight words from sight word list A are spelled correctly. This will help them to remember how to spell them. They will continue to make sure that their stories have titles and they will make dedication pages as well. I will be publishing the children’s stories on our "Winning Team" bulletin board. Their stories have taken us on many new adventures. They have been writing stories about their friends and some exciting things that they do. They enjoy using their imaginations and taking us to far away lands. I am always amazed at how creative they can be! adding details, adding details, adding details, adding details, adding details
Math This month in math the children will continue to go “shopping” and spend some of the money that they collect in their exchange bags. The Beanie Baby Rental Shop has given them an authentic experience with using coins. They will continue to earn coins and they can decide how to spend them at the store. In addition, they will continue playing the Raft Game, The Disappearing Train Game, The Coin Exchange Game and The One Dollar Game. These games are a fun way to reinforce the names of the coins and their values. They will also be working on the skills of graphing, telling time and measurement. A penny’s worth 1 cent, a nickel’s worth 5 cents, a dime’s worth 10 cents and a quarter’s worth 25 cents!
Science This month we will be studying insects in our Ant Homes and Ladybugs Units. The children will be experiencing first hand the observation of many different insects. In addition, we will be learning about their homes, life cycles, what they eat and what makes them different. We will be observing our butterflies and put our ladybugs into our gardens. We will watch the ladybugs we release and see if they really do eat aphids. During our Ant Homes Unit, the children will learn about an ant colony and the many roles of ants in each colony. We will perform investigations outside in our gardens where we will observe insects in their natural environments. Our investigations will be a lot of fun! Happy May! Mrs. Serra |
