Mrs. Bagby's Kindergarten: Hello Again!

Welcome back! We have been busy continuing learning about letters, shapes and numbers! I hope you enjoy this blog and like getting a peek inside of our classroom through the information and pictures presented here. I am enjoying this class immensely! Working with your children every day makes me believe that I have the best job in the world.

I would like to thank you for continued support. This includes reinforcing things we are learning in school (letters, name writing, shapes, sight words, etc.) and also reminding your child about what it means to make good choices in school. Thank you!

Some things to know/remember:

If your child is signed up for the Trojan Triumph after school program I must send them every day unless I get a message from you.

Please collect BOXTOPS for our classroom! We can win a party if we bring in the most! :) Ask grandma, grandpa, aunts, uncles, etc. to help out too! :)

The Scholastic Book Fair will be here the week of September 9th. If you send money with your child for the book fair please put it in an envelope labeled with what the money is for. I will schedule a class time to go down to the book fair also and will send out an e-mail after I do that.

Grandparents Day is on Friday, Sept. 6th from 7:15 to 8:20 a.m. Grandparents may visit the book fair after breakfast! :)

I sent home September and October's Snack Schedule. If, for some reason, you did not receive one please let me know.

There is an early dismissal at 11:25 this Friday 8/30/13. No Trojan Triumph on early dismissal days.

There is NO SCHOOL on Monday, September 2nd, in honor of Labor Day.

School PICTURE DAY is Wednesday, September 11th. I am sending home the picture envelopes today!

Help?? I am trying to update my file folder games. File folder games are GREAT independent activities used to reinforce skills being taught. Unfortunately, making them requires a great deal of time as there is a lot of cutting involved. If you would be willing to help cut out file folder games it would be greatly appreciated. Just send me a note/e-mail and I will send home some for you to work on. Don't worry if you can't! :)

Our first class book is going home! Please make sure you read the rest of this post to learn more about class books. :)

WHAT WE'VE BEEN LEARNING:

Language Arts

We've been busy learning letters Dd, Cc, and Ee. Ask your child to give you the visual phonics sign for these letters. We have begun our Phonemic Awareness program. We are continuing PREDICTING in our balanced literacy curriculum. Our sight words are fast paced and must be practiced. Please help your child with these sight words at home:

I, a, go, big, at, the, can, to, am

Math

We have moved on to shapes! We are learning about spheres, cubes, cylinders and cones. We are working on mastering the triangle, square, circle, and rectangle. We are learning how to discuss shapes using words such as "vertex," "3-Dimensional Shape," "2-Dimensional Shape," "Solid," and "Flat."

Some other things we've been doing:

The letters "b" and "d" are commonly confused. I have taught the "bed" method where the "b" is at the beginning of the bed and the "d" is at the end of the bed. Another good method is making them with your hands. If you notice your child confusing "b" and "d" please remind them of "bed" or use your hands. :)

D is for "DOG!"

We have started listening centers! Students will listen to a story, and then work on a listening center sheet where they will have to rate the book, draw a picture of an "important" part, and tell why they liked, or didn't like it. :)

C is for "CAT!" We made furry cats with puffy paint! :)

Writing, writing, writing!

I love teaching the letter "Ee" because I love, love, love ELMER THE ELEPHANT!

"Elmer" is a lovely story by David McKee about an elephant that just isn't like the rest of the elephants; he is patchwork! We read this book, using our predicting skills, and discussed what made Elmer special and how we all have things about us that make us one of a kind! Then we made this class book:

I send home class books. When you get the class book read it as a family, and make sure it gets back to school the next day to go home with the next family. We have 22 kids, so it takes awhile for everyone to have a turn taking it home. At the end of the year I will take all of your children's class book pages and compile them into a nice kindergarten keepsake. After we made our class book we made a patchwork elephant ourselves! The kiddos did great with this!! :)