Celebrate Monday!

Superkids
I'm sure you've heard by now but Friday we met our next Superkid!  His name is Oswald and he loves to make and learn about off animals!  While studying Oswald, we will be learning to read and write Oo and the /o/ sound.

Sight words
This week we are learning the sight words: the, little.  Make sure to practice these at home!

R.E.D. Folders
Tomorrow your child will bring home their Read Every Day folder again.  THis week instead of a Superkids book there will be another decodable reader.  This book will focus on sight words I, am.  Please help your child with the names in the book if needed, and make sure to watch for the following:
1.  They are pointing to each word in the sentence as they read it.
2.  They are tracking print from left to right.
3.  They can correctly read the sight words: I, am.

Math
This year we are setting a goal for 100% of Kindergartners to count to 100 by the 100th day of school.  I will often assess the children on counting on their own.  If a child reaches 100 WITHOUT hints or help, and without skipping any numbers, their star in our classroom climbs to 100 on our counting chart, they color a slice of pizza to hang on the Kindergarten wall in the hallway, and they are invited to come to a pizza party soon after we celebrate our 100th day of school in January.  So far we have 5 friends from our classroom that have a slice of pizza hanging in the hallway.  Keep practicing at home!  :)

Box Tops

Don't forget that Creekside collects Box Tops for Education!  When you purchase something that has a Box Top on it (cereal, Kleenex, even some butter tubs!) cut it off and send it in to school!  Each one we send in helps us earn money for projects around the school!

Bingo for Books

Mark your calendars! Creekside PTO BINGO for Books and Pizza Night is September 13, and you do not want to miss this FREE event at Creekside.  Please join us for free pizza and free BINGO on Wednesday, September 13th from 5:30-7pm. Every child goes home with a new book! This event is FREE and for the whole family and loads of FUN!

Picture Day
School Picture Day is September 11th!  Picture order forms are in folders today.  Every child will get their picture taken on the 11th.  If you are interested in ordering pictures, please fill out the envelope and return to school on or before the 22nd.

Scholastic Book Order
Also going home today you will find the first Scholastic Book order form.   I will send home a book order every month from September-April.  Don't forget you can order online if you choose instead of sending a check in to school, and all will be due Friday, September 8th.  There is never any pressure to order, but it's a great way to add to your child's home library if you do choose to order.  Any books purchased by families can also give points to our classroom that I can use to buy books and materials for our classroom!

Have a great week!

Terrific Tuesday!

What a busy, great day in Kindergarten!

DIBELS

After reading the title of this section, you may be thinking, "Huh?"  :)  A few days ago we began DIBELS testing.  These tests are administered by Mrs. McCullough, our wonderful Literacy Coach/Title One teacher and her assistant.  DIBELS simply means Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills.  Translation?  How well does your child know letter names and sounds and picture/sound association? 

These tests give me a really good indicator of what your child is ready for and help me guide instruction to meet YOUR child's needs. The results will be sent home after all Kindergarteners and first graders are done testing.  Please look over them, and practice needed skills at home.  We will be doing lots of practice at school!  And of course, please feel free to ask any questions about the test or results! 

R.E.D. Folders

• Tonight your child is bringing home their first R.E.D. (Read Every Day) Folder assignment!  Inside the folder you will find the Superkids book, worksheet, comprehension questions, and reading log.  Please do the following things:
  1.  Have your child read (the first few books have no words--have them practice retelling the story to you) the book.
  2.  Complete the worksheet that goes with the book--return to school tomorrow.  Return the worksheet in your child's GREEN Creekside folder on Wednesdays.
  3.  PLEASE take a look at the sample reading questions and choose a few each time your child reads to help increase comprehension.  If your child could answer at least 3 comprehension questions, and retell the story, sign the reading log in the back of the folder.  Fill out the reading log with the title of the book, the date, and your signature indicating that your child completed these tasks. You only need to do this ONCE per book.

       4.  Return R.E.D. folder by Friday!  If your child could not        do step 3, repeat step 3 Wednesday/Thursday night for          homework.  Send the RED folder (along with the reading        log) back to school by Friday.  The book is yours to keep,        so please take it out of the RED folder.  You may want to        create a basket or other safe place to keep all the                    decodable readers in at home.  They will make great              books for your child's library at home that they can                  reread all year!

There are only Superkids books every other week, so some weeks I will send home other decodable readers in the R.E.D. folders for students to practice reading--especially for sight word practice!  If it's not a Superkids book, it won't have a worksheet, but the rest of the R.E.D. folder tasks will still apply.

My Cookbook--Cass
Today during Superkids time, we made our own Cass Cookbooks with 3 recipes inside!  The boys and girls were very excited about trying out these recipes at home!  When you try one out, feel free to take your child's picture and email it to me!  I'd love to see it, and include it on the blog!  Have fun!

Superkids
Speaking of Superkids, today we finished our Cass workbooks!  Look for those to come home later this week with all the extra Cass pages we have finished as well as a letter that describes all the activities.  Please look through those, and then you can keep everything for Cass at home.  We will finish Unit 1 (Cass) on Thursday with a Super Smart.  Super Smarts are online, non-fiction texts and videos that we read and talk about as I project it onto the big screen.  We do one Super Smart at the end of each unit.  On Friday we will meet our second Superkid!  Stay tuned to find out who it is! 

Math

Here are the skills we have been working on in math so far:

• Comparing lengths to find the same, longer, and shorter
• Identifying the following shapes: square, triangle, rectangle, trapezoid, hexagon, and rhombus
• Practiced counting objects and realizing the last number said is the number of objects in a set
• Identifying numbers 0-10

• Begin recognizing numbers 0-9 by counting, drawing tally marks, drawing objects, and filling in tens frames.  We will focus on one number per day in addition to our normal math lesson.
• We will learn the game Count and Sit.
• We will make a class graph of our birthdays to be displayed in the room all year long and a class graph our ages that will also be displayed (and changed from 5 to 6) all year long.

Sight Words

This week I am teaching the sight words: I, am.  Please make sure to practice these and make sure your child can read them!

Library Books

Yesterday your child brought home their first library check out!  Please make sure to keep these books and the blue library bag in a safe place.  Both the bag and the book need to come back to school on Mondays in order to check out new books.  Students will eventually work their way up to checking out three books!

Have a great week!

Happy Friday!

We made it through the first full week of school!  Woo Hoo!

solar eclipse
Hopefully you have already read the information Franklin Community Schools sent home about the upcoming solar eclipse that will occur on Monday, August 21.  For students in grades K-1, it was left up to each grade level to decide what to do.  As you can imagine, there is concern that younger students will not fully understand the strict rules that must be followed in order to ensure student safety when viewing the eclipse.  As such, Kindergarten teachers have decided not to take our classes outside to view the eclipse in real life.  We will be doing many cool activities in class leading up to and after the event, and we will watch the eclipse via the NASA website in real time (which is the safest way to view it).  We will have centers, math activities, reading activities, crafts, and videos to do the day of.  We feel this is the best way to ensure the safety of your child.  If you would prefer for your child to go outside to view the eclipse, please let me know and arrangements can be made for him/her to join an older class that is going outside.  You will also need to fill out a special permission slip for him or her to be able to view it outside.  As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about the eclipse or student safety in general.  As a reminder--school times will be delayed by 1 hour on Monday.  Therefore, school will start at 8:30 and end at 3:20.  Recess, specials, and lunch times will be pushed back by 1 hour as well.  Update--the solar glasses that Creekside ordered could not be verified as authentic, so no classes will be going out.  Ms. Brown will be taking students outside if their parents send in their own solar glasses and a signed permission slip.  From Dr. Heiden--We don't know the timing of when we are going outside and so to keep things simple, we would like to have students only at school for this portion.   If parents really want to see the eclipse with their child, that is fine, but they can sign them out and go outside with them and sign them back in the office when they are done.  A sign out will not count against their attendance for this special event.

homework sheet tips
Just a few reminders/tips when completing homework that I noticed when grading homework today.
1.  Make sure to complete the handwriting portion on the BACK each night!  
2.  When doing the letter/sounds activities, don't forget to write the score or highlight/circle the letters/sounds that your child got correct.  You can also just put a check mark in the box so I know they completed this activity with you. 

Facebook

Our classroom Facebook page is important in sharing information and reminders with you, but as you may have already seen, it also gives you a sneak peek inside our day, including lots of pictures!  If you haven't yet LIKED our page to received up to date notifications, don't be left out!  LIKE our page today!  You can search: 

Mrs. Dunn's Kindergarten.

Superkids

You should have gotten an activation email from Superkids this week to set up your online account at home for your child to play the games and read the stories.  Please make sure to set this up!  There won't be many stories yet, but as we start new units, more stories and games will open up.  Superkids Online is a great way to spend "screen time"!  Note--you will not get this email if you already have an account set up for an older student.

Writer's Workshop

This week we introduced Writer's Workshop.  We will have this almost every day.  We will start with a story and mini lesson, and then we will practice writing and drawing stories.  This week we learned about all the different tools we can use during writing time.  Ask your child which they liked to use best: pencils, crayons, colored pencils, pens, or markers!

Have a great weekend!

Welcome!!

Welcome to my first blog post of the school year!  A goal of mine for this blog is that it is a "one-stop shop" for a resource at home.  Along the top of the blog, you can find links for Creekside's webpage, Creekside's Facebook page (be sure to "like" if you haven't already!), My First Toolbox, which has links inside to all of the websites that we use here at school, and the Classroom Calendar, where you will see upcoming events and dates at Creekside and/or in our classroom..  Along the right side you can find links to Superkids Online, Scholastic Book Orders, and our Kindergarten Standards (what we will be teaching this year in a nutshell).  

Box Tops
Did you know that Creekside collects Box Tops for Education?  They are the little proof of purchase labels on lots of products, including cereal, Kleenex, and more!  Each one that we turn in gives Creekside money that can be used for special projects!  So please save them up and when you have some, send them in!  We also collect Tyson A+ labels, and School Spirit labels, which are found on Sunbeam and Aunt Millie’s bread products.  

Superkids
Today, we started our Superkids and Everyday Math curriculum.  We also met our first new Superkid, Cass!  As you talk with your child about what they learned during Superkids, here are some questions to prompt discussion:

• What is the name of the new Superkid character?CASS

• What sound does the Superkids name begin with?  /C/

• What letter makes the sound /k/?  C

• At this point in the year, we are only talking about each letter making ONE sound so as not to confuse the children.  

Class Work

You will start seeing more papers in folders and bookbags at the end of each day.  Anything that can stay at home will go in book bags or in the "leave at home" side of their folder. Anything you need to see, sign, and/or send back in to school will still be in folders.  Please clean book bags/folders out regularly and keep those papers at home.

Snack Calendar

The August snack calendar is on the bottom of this post today.  If your child's name is not on the calendar, you are off duty this month!  When sending snacks in, you don't have to send it something everyday, just one time sometime that week will be fine.

Everyday Math

Today your child is bringing home their first Everyday Math home link book.  This  is for you to keep at home.  The activities are great games to play and ideas for practicing math at home.  All the activities are what we are working on in class as well.   On the homework sheet, you will see if there is a math link that corresponds to the lesson we did in class that day.  You do not need to tear out and return these pages.  The homelink book is just extra math practice/homework for at home.  Also, I have 3 small math at home books that were left behind at meet the teacher night.  If you are missing yours, please let me know, and I will send it home.

Specials Schedule:

Monday--Library
Tuesday--PE
Wednesday--Computers
Thursday--Art
Friday--Music

Homework

Today your child is bringing home his/her FIRST homework sheet.  Make sure that anytime it requires writing, you watch as your child writes his/her name, and please use the Superkids handwriting guide that is in folders today. You will want to keep this guide in a safe place that your child can access as we learn to write letters.  As a rule on homework, please DO NOT tell your child the answers.  For math, if you notice an incorrect answer, talk about it, and allow your child to correct the paper.  Homework should not take longer than 10-15 minutes, especially at the beginning of the year.  For the language sheet, practice the letters, sounds, and sight words once that night.  Please leave the homework sheet in the green folder so I can check it each morning.  The homework sheet should come back to school everyday on the right side of the folder.  On Friday, I will collect these papers and update the sheet with more difficult skills as the year progresses.  If you have any questions, please let me know. 

Activity Time

Last week and this week during activity time, the boys and girls learned which groups they will be in, and were able to play at 3 of the 5 areas in our classroom (blocks, Legos, easels, loft, and puppets).  This week, we are adding one more center in, so they will have 3 choices by the end of the week (2 centers and snack).  They also use this time to eat their snack....although some children learned fast that they may want to eat their snack first, as to not run out of time and miss it before the clean-up bell rings.  The groups will rotate each day of the week. Check Friday's Facebook post for pictures of activity time!

Facebook
If you haven't already done so, please like Mrs. Dunn's Kindergarten on Facebook, so you can keep up with fun pictures and important reminders of what is going on in our classroom!

August Snack Calendar

MONDAY	TUESDAY	WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY	FRIDAY
	1	2	3	4
7	8	9	10	11
14	15	16	17	18
21 Parker Braylen	22	23	24	25
28 Cadence Ollie

Don’t forget when sending in snacks, please send in something for the whole class.  Please don’t send in drinks, something that requires utensils or eat, or anything that needs refrigeration.  Items like cereal, crackers, fruit snacks, and granola bars are always popular snack choices.    If you could, please send in a package of small Dixie cups with the snack, if it is not individually wrapped. We have 24 students if you send in something individually wrapped.   You do not need to send in one thing per day, just one or two big boxes of something.  Thanks for your help!

Have a great week!