News from Miss Christie’s Kindergarten for week of 9-7-07
Although the week was short, we filled it up with learning! In Torah time we learned the three types of blowing for the shofar and we were busy little bees working like crazy to get ready for Rosh Hashanah. The kids are really understanding centers and the rotations, they enjoy working in their groups and they are starting to understand that centers are on-going and you don’t have to finish every center everyday. I think this was comforting to the children, it helped them understand they can work at their own pace (as long as they’re working).
In our classroom, we stress the importance of letting the children make as many independent decisions as possible. We structure their day so much, we feel it’s important they know they also have control of some of their time as well. This helps the children become decision makers and improves their self-esteem as well. They develop such pride in themselves when they know they can do it on their own. From something as simple as putting the straw in the juice bag to deciding how to solve a problem they find in their work. I’m going to include some phrases we use, try it at home and let us know what kind of results you get, we love success stories!
Situation 1:
Child: “Miss Christie, can you do this?”
Teacher: “I want to see you try first, then I’d love to help you.” When they do it themselves, make this a celebration, “Wow, smartie, I knew you could do it, how does that make you feel?”
Situation 2:
Child: “I can’t do this!” (in their best whining voice)
Teacher: “It looks like you’re frustrated, how can you solve your problem?”
Child: “I don’t know”
Teacher: “I’m going to give you a minute to think about it, then let’s talk”
After a minute (or two)
Teacher: “Did you decide how to solve the problem?”
Child: “I tried it this way but I still can’t”
Teacher: “That’s great, you tried, doesn’t that make you feel good? Would you like some help now, or do you want to work on it more?”

This type of dialog encourages their individual thinking and makes that thinking the important part of the action, not just the action itself.

Literacy news: We continue to work on rhymes daily, it’s so important for the kids to recognize and hear them. It’s also important that they can make a rhyme, even if it’s a nonsense word that rhymes, it all counts!
A note from Miss Christie…I know how exciting it is to want to help your child read, right now our Kinder minds are not able to process all the information it takes to actually read “words”. Familiar texts are wonderful in that they give comfort in knowing the actual story without the pressure to “read”. This week I did our school assessment on each student, I had several students who were trying to read the words by putting the letter sounds together, this is a skill that comes along later in the reading instruction. Please don’t encourage your child “sound it out” when they are attempting to read. There are primary skills that they need to acquire (that I haven’t taught yet) before they can actually read the words on the page. If anything, telling your child to “sound it out” slows their reading progress. Make your reading time with your child pure pleasure, if you want to encourage their literacy, have them locate a letter on the page, or rhyme with a word that you have read. Let them “read” familiar books they have memorized, this alone builds confidence in their skill and enables them to be encourage to learn more skills.
Writing: We are continuing to practice our writing, forming letters top down, not bottom up.
Math: We worked with the letters in our names and used them in a Ven Diagram, the kids loved this “big” word. It was very interesting to see at the beginning they needed the diagram to see the letters before deciding what they had in commom, then by the end of the activity they could look at each other’s names and see what they had in common before using the diagram. We also explored more math materials and there were so many things created it was amazing! Problem solving, sorting by attributes (up to three!!) building and collective reasoning.

A few last notes:
* Thank you to Natasha Leftin for bringing a beautiful menorah for our classroom display!!
* Kindergarten boys need to wear a kippah daily. The Bukhari style seems to stay on very well, most Judaic stores in the metroplex carry them, or I use an online source through ebay called “Rachel’s Treasures”, she makes them in fun kid fabrics that may be more appealing to those who are reluctant.
* Next Wednesday is early release at 12:00, there will be no lunch that day.
* We play outside everyday, and on Tuesday/Thursday we have PE, please send them in shoes they can run and play in comfortably.
* Photos are downloaded to shutterfly.com

Dear Parents,
In the last two weeks the children and I have became familiar with Bentzi, the turtle puppet, who has a very unique way of teaching. Bentzi, who came here from Israel, only speaks in
Hebrew so whenever he is around everyone must speak in Hebrew or he will not understand. Whenever Bentzi shows up the children get so existed they greet him with their best Hebrew.


Here are the words we have learned so far:

Shalom (hello, good bye) Achshav (now)
Aht (you/girl) Boker Tov (good morning)
Atah (you/boy) Ani (me)

We’ve learned the letter Alef and started working on our Alef Bet book. To introduce Rosh Hashanah I brought a bag of surprises. The children took turns pulling out items such as the Shofar, Tapuach (apple), Rimon (pomegranate), and Dvash (honey). They had so much fun that they were trying to say all the words in Hebrew. Today we will taste a pomegranate and have some apple with honey for a sweet New Year.

Shana Tova ya’ll!
Morah Leah