News for week of 12-10-07

What a great week we’ve had! The children had so much fun with the rest of our Hanukkah activities. They LOVED the surprise pizza lunch on Wednesday! The Hanukkah party was great, they got to move between the two classrooms and enjoy being grouped with students from Miss Liz’s class. The activities were lots of fun and creative and it was like having our own little “Hanukkah Carnival” right here in Kindergarten. I hope you enjoyed the mosaic tiles, they all worked so hard on them for two weeks and it was such a satisfying feeling to see the finished product. I think most of them were surprised they would turn-out so well. When they grouted the tiles, everyone got a bit concerned about how it would work out. I think they were all so beautiful, I had a hard time parting with them. I told them, we will definitely have to do mosaics again this year!
Back to work…
Centers:
The kids worked hard at centers this week. When they bring home their “pile of papers” ask them to tell you about them. I think it gives them pride in their work to show off for you.
Writing: They used dreidel shapes to create words with word families. We’re really focusing on this now, as it will empower them in their reading when they can recognize familiar words.
ABC: They worked on ending sounds. This was a new concept and a little tough for some. It’s a transition to go from knowing beginning sounds to adding an ending sound. It was unfamiliar territory, but I think with more practice the kids will catch-on quickly.
Pocket Chart: This was a cute poem about a pig “Mistress Pratt”. It was great practice for word families also and a cute poem too!
Science: In honor of our “Vv” week, we did an experiment using vibration. It was great to see the kids really thinking as they tapped the different glasses and noted their findings. We also talked about vibration having two qualities: sound and movement.
Overhead: The kids worked on dreidel math. It was simple adding game, played with a partner.
Math: They had to build a menorah and follow the directions for building it using their number recognition.

In Writing this week, we worked on writing in our journals, completing a sentence:
“I like to…” They also started using a title for their writing. I explain this as: “one or two words that explain what you are going to write about”. We also worked on writing the steps to a process, I demonstrated with “making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich”, they had to write the steps to making a volcano.

In Science we made our own volcano! We measured and mixed the batter and molded the volcano deciding what colors to use to make it look more authentic.

We completed the assessment for Theme 3, which was included in their Friday bags. This test was assessing the specific skills we covered in our last unit. I tell the kids I only use it to show me what I need to teach them more.
Dear parents
This week we added to our vocabulary the words “aba” (dad), “ema” (mom), “veh” (and).
The children can now make short sentences like: ani eme (I am mom)
Aba veh ema (mom and dad),yeld veh yaldah(boy and a girl).
We use pictures and words printed on cards to make sentences, I show the cards with the pictures and the children produce a sentence.
The children love to do it and feel so proud of themselves.
Our favorite word to say to each other is the praise word yofi (great).
The letter of the week is “kaf”.
Vocabulary for “kaf”:
Kelev – dog
Kipah – yamakah
Kovah – hat

Have a great week
Leah

Chag Sameach!! We started off the week so excited that Hanukkah is here! The kids were asking if we get out early though, and wondering why we have school on Hanukkah…we didn’t have any answers they liked.
Our letter this week is “Hh” and it fit perfectly for our first week of Hanukkah. I’m trying to rearrange the letters of the week to fit better with what is going on in the kid’s lives. I think it makes it much more meaningful to them and they are able to internalize the meaning because they can transfer the letters to so many things in their lives outside of school. For example, the letter “P” in the curriculum is supposed to be the week we get back from winter break. I plan to move it to Pesach along with “Gg” and “Ff”. What a better way to reinforce the learning of a letter than to be involved with it in every aspect of your life, Pesach, green and frogs.
Centers-
Science-the kids worked on a “sink/float” experiment. They really enjoyed the idea of making estimates and checking their hypothesis.
ABC-they loved a game called “Creepy Cave”. It reinforces beginning consonant words with color matching. The game pieces are creepy monsters which made it even more fun.
Writing-the children wrote in their “This is” books, once again, reinforcing initial consonant knowledge.
Math-the kids wrote numbers in “salt boxes”
Overhead-we continued working with our word families
Pocket Chart-they sorted pictures based on beginning sounds and matched the words with pictures
Writing we worked on a Hanukkah card for our families. It was lots of detailed folding and following directions. It was a tough activity, but the kids were so proud of the product and the fact that they actually folded paper to make a house!
In Math we worked on money and started counting backwards. Counting backwards seems simple, but when you take a row of objects and cover an amount, you would be surprised to see how hard the concept is. When I present information and ask for input, I always follow-up with asking, “why”. Sometimes a good guess can fool us into thinking they fully understand the concept at hand, when you go deeper and ask them how they got to that conclusion, it’s very interesting. It really shows me what I need to teach more, when asking your child a question, follow it up with, “why”, and let the learning begin. The kids could understand taking objects away in a group up to 10, but many couldn’t answer how they got to the number they ended-up with. That let’s me know, some of them don’t know they are actually counting backwards. Some were counting the remaining objects to get the answer. Some counted backwards on their fingers, it was a good start!

Please continue to work with your child on the sight words, you can now add the second page if they have the first page memorized. These words should come to them immediately or they still need to work on them.
This is part of our “whole language” approach to reading. Some words are known by sight only, they don’t follow the rules of “sounding it out”, some of the words that can be sounded out are taught phonetically. The sight words are just as important as learning the phonetic words, please continue to reinforce this with your kinder, you will see a real difference in their reading.
When you’re reading a book at home, ask them to find a word they know: the, and, or like, in the reading. You will be surprised how much pride the have in themselves, we want to give them as many successes as possible.
Your student will be coming home with paper books to keep. These books are leveled and work on specific skills as you may have seen from the “Dan the tan Man” book. We’re really working on word families and these books reinforce everything they are seeing in other parts of the classroom. You can keep them in a basket by their bed and they can read them over and over again. I know in the past week or two I have seen tremendous progress in their reading with me, let me know if you have seen any changes. I actually got goosebumps the other morning reading with them, it was a real “lightbulb” moment for several of the students, and I was so proud of their progress. I can tell the learning is coming together and they are connecting all of the skills. The best part for me is that they are having fun while learning, and I think that because we try to present the skills in a fun way that is connected to happy emotions, they are really starting to take-off!
Next week we will work with the letter “Vv” and have more Hanukkah plans as well.
Hebrew Circle:
This week we immersed ourselves in Hanukkah activities. We learned the Hanukkah story, talked about the characters and what role they had in the story. The children learned the Hebrew letters on the sevivon (dreidel) and how to play the game. They sang songs and danced to the point that if we just said the word sevivon it was like a magic trigger to start them singing. We played lots of games, made sufganiyyot (doughnuts) and levivot (potato latkes) and decorated the room to get that Hanukah feeling. The children are so excited about the holiday that I am afraid eight days might not be enough.
The letter for this week was “Yud” but now they also know “Nun” and “Shin” thanks to the sevivon.
Hanukkah vocabulary:
· Chanukiyah – menorah
· sevivon – dreidel
· ner – candle
· kad – jug (the oil jug)
· Sufganiyyot – doughnuts
· levivah - latke
Yud vocabulary:
· Yeled –boy
· yaldah –girl
· yeladim – children
· yad – hand
· yadayim – hands
· Yareach – moon.

Happy Hanukkah!
Leah