Individual assessments were completed the week of January 11. Children worked on lots of individual practice of skills during this week, so there is not much to report. Your child should have brought his/her report card home on Thursday, the 21st. Please sign and return the envelope. You may keep the report card. Thank you!
Lexia Reading Computer Practice
Students at Kalona Elementary have begun reading practice on a program called, Lexia Reading. Kindergarten students have worked, first on iPads and then twice in the computer lab. They are ready to try this with your help at home! Please see the information in Friday folders about this program. Thank you!
Reading/Jolly Phonics
Children continued to work on identifying story elements in order to help in comprehension of stories. We also worked on summarizing these stories, this week.
We continue to review sounds and tricky words. The new tricky words for last week are: by, one, only. Please find the new word cards to add to the tricky word ring in the Friday folder. Thank you!
Math
We discussed probability again this week in math. We talked about how probable it was to grab certain colors of bears on a tray if all were the same color, then with equal numbers of two colors.
We continue to work on patterning. We have created a pattern of colors for the numbers written on the January calendar. It is an aabbc pattern. We do actions to represent the pattern each morning. Children snap, snap, slap, slap, clap to represent the pattern this month. We have focused a lot on rote counting and counting backwards from 20.
We created a class graph of favorite colors. Each child placed a picture of themselves next to the word for their favorite color. We discussed which colors had more, less and the same amount of votes. We use these pictures each day to check in for cold lunch or hot lunch in the morning. This also creates a graph on the board each day!
Science/Social Studies
Children used decoding skills to read a booklet called, People Who Help. They will read it to three friends in class and then bring it home to read to others. Please remind your child to point to the words and read for you!
With Valentine's Day on the way, we are learning several songs about friendship. Each child chooses a partner to sing, Will You Be My Special Friend? and Will You Be My Valentine? We have several Brownie Scouts in class that lead us in the song, Make New Friends. Please find the Valentine note and list in your child's Friday folder.
Pam Holz was in to present her lesson on animal tracks in the snow. She brought a large white sheet with tracks printed on it to represent the snow. Children pretended to get dressed with snow gear and get on the bus to go out for a field trip. They sat around the sheet and discussed that tracks can tell a "story". They talked about what stories they could tell about the human, deer, coyote, rabbit, squirrel and mouse tracks. They discussed what could have happened to create the tracks (looking for food, hiding, escaping from enemy, etc.). Ask your child to tell you about it. Here are some pictures!
