Thursday, September 18, 2003

Dear Kindergarten Families,

We have been having fun talking about apples and doing apple art during our special apple unit. We will continue our apple unit through next week as we celebrate Johnny Appleseed’s birthday on the 26^th. This week we have focused on the letter Aa and have become experts at the sound it makes and how to write both an uppercase and lowercase Aa. Be sure your child brings in something that begins with Aa for show-and-tell tomorrow. Next week we will study the letter Tt.

The children are beginning to become more familiar with their learning centers routine. This week during our center time we have done our Aa journal page, practiced the letter Aa in sand, made shape books and learned how to write and read shape words, made color books and learned how to read and write color words, as well as learned to write the numbers 0, 1, and 2. I have begun to introduce science and we have discussed living and nonliving things. We will continue with living vs. nonliving as we discuss things that living things need.

We had our first visit to the computer lab yesterday and the children did a fabulous job finding their last names to log in. We just explored all the different activities and next time I will give them specific instructions so they are all taking part in a purposeful activity.

I would like to start a couple new classroom activities and they are the share bag and special person of the week. Be looking for a red bag with a pad of paper inside. This will be our share bag that will go home with a different student each day. The instructions will be inside the pad of paper. I will be compiling a schedule over the weekend for our special person of the week. This is a time for each student to be featured on our All About Me board. I will send home a schedule and when it is your child’s week you will receive a manila envelope with all the instructions that you need.

I want to give a special Thank-you to Kris and Mark LeSarge for bringing in a monarch caterpillar. We have had the wonderful opportunity to witness our caterpillar in its chrysalis stage and our butterfly was born on Tuesday. We set it free right outside our classroom. What an awesome experience! Thank-you so much Kris and Mark

Questions to ask your child this week are the following:

• Can you tell me 3-5 words that begin with the letter Aa?
• Can you draw the following shapes? — square, triangle, circle, rectangle, oval, diamond.
• Can you write the numbers 0, 1, and 2?
• Can you tell me something that is living and something that is nonliving?

Here are a couple very important announcements:

• -Picture day is Tuesday October 7^th. You have received picture packages in your Thursday folder.
• -Regarding snack: We have a child in our room with a peanut allergy. Please do not send a snack with your child that has peanuts or peanut oil in it.

Thank-you!! Have a wonderful weekend! Enjoy the outdoors. It looks like it will feel a little like fall.

Sincerely,

Miss Schultz