Welcome to Kindergarten!
Our class has been working towards becoming a caring community.
Our first fieldtrip is coming up on Thursday, Setember 25 to Bebe Theatre.

Happy Fall, Kindergarten families!
We have been busy observing signs of Fall and learning about the change in seasons. We are also working on learning new letter names, sounds, and keywords each week. Thanks for supporting that learning at home. Practicing correct letter formation will actually make writing more enjoyable for your child! During writing workshop each child gets an opportunity to be a storyteller while the rest of us practice being good audience members. We ask questions to fill in the details of the story. For example, "Who was there?" "Where were you?" "When were you there?" "What was happening?" "How were you feeling?" You can practice telling stories and asking questions at home.
We have loved having many of you in the classroom helping with our costumes, and we can't wait to "Be a Character for a Day"!
Coming up:
We'll be studying ourselves and our families. Be on the look out for more information!

We are flying through Fall and staying busy learning about measurement, shapes, our five senses, good reading habits, and storytelling. We have even started writing words! Encourage your kids to write at home!
Reading Stone Soup stories, going to the Farmers Market, and preparing our own stone soup in class was a great experience for all of us!
Thanks for your participation in the "What's in a Name?" portion of our study of families. We're working on something really neat to share with you before Winter Break. :)
Many thanks for all of your support! Happy Thanksgiving!

The months following Winter break provide the time and space needed for great academic and social growth to occur in the classroom. Despite the disruptions caused by snow, ice, and cold weather, this has been true for our Kindergarten class. ALL kids are making strides in literacy and math, and we've been able to explore the topics of Chinese New Year, Arctic Animals, and St. Patrick's Day. We're excited to begin our individual animal research projects. Be sure to ask your child which native to WNC animal they chose to study! In addition to research, reading and writing, we'll also be inspired by the artwork of Eric Carle to add a creative touch to our projects. We can't wait to share this work with you! Happy Spring!

I am very happy to say that our end-of-year benchmark assessments are complete for Literacy. We’re still working on Math assessments, but we’re almost complete with those as well. ALL kids have made progress. I’m so proud of each child and am so grateful for your support! You’ll get more details with your child’s final report card. While I want to honor each child’s year’s worth of hard-work during this assessment period, I also want to keep the whole class happy and engaged during the final couple of weeks. Here’s some of what we’re up to:

We had such a great experience at Warren Wilson College’s fiber arts studio! Hopefully you heard about the spinning wheel, bracelet-making, the indigo dye, the garden, bookmark-making, the looms, and weaving. I’m not sure if all the kids realized it, but they each got to weave a section of a rug, which I just received in the mail! On Fridays we will be doing some more weaving with Ms. Paige.

I’d like for the kids to make “Sweet Dreams” pillows. I’m thinking it would be best if three sides of each pillow could be pre-sewn by machine, then the kids could add stuffing and hand sew the final side. For this to happen we’ll need lots of materials and help! I’m happy to get the materials if there are enough people to do the pre-sewing (at home, or in class) and enough people to come in to help the kids add stuffing and do the hand-sewing to finish their pillows. Fridays work well for us for a “Sewing Bee,” but we can also be flexible! Please let me know if you’re interested!

Also, the class is interested in making a quilt. Anyone interested in helping with this? Let me know, and we can plan together!

We’ve also been busy working on opinion writing pieces and persuasive letters. We’re trying to convince Ms. May’s class to let us use their sand/rice table! Ask your children their opinion on various things – it’s fun to keep it light-hearted – and remind them to give you reasons for their opinions.

Each child will have the opportunity to think like an engineer during centers as we work together to plan, draw, build, and re-build rollercoasters with foam “half pipes,” toothpicks, and marbles.

As you can tell, we're super busy! Join us the classroom if you can! 

Dear Families,

Welcome to the world of report cards. It is a world bound to spark any anxiety you might have as a parent of a school-aged child. So, first, I would ask you not to be anxious about these “grades”.  It is very difficult to assign grades to children in elementary school. It is extremely difficult to assign a grade to a Kindergartener because so much of what we have done this first 9 weeks is to figure out how to be together as a community of learners. That work is not reflected on these report cards. That kind of growth is not reflected here. Your child’s performance on state-mandated academic tasks is reflected here.  

The team of Kindergarten teachers talked a lot about what to use to assign grades. For example, this is what we came up with for a portion of the math grade, with slightly modified expectations from our team for the first 9 weeks:

• counting to 30 (state says 100)

• counting over decades (like from 28-32)

• counting by 10s

• counting 5 objects

• writing the digits 0-5

Really the “grades” are a reflection of me as their teacher because it’s my job to get everyone where they’re supposed to be according to the state. So, I will strive to get our whole classroom family to at least a 3 by the end of the year.  

As always, feel free to contact me with questions, and as always, appreciate your children! They work so hard every day and have shown great growth in many areas that are not evident on these pieces of paper.

*Family/Cultural Traditions 

I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to get to know and work closely with you and your child. Check here for monthly updates about happenings in our classroom. Thank you for your trust and support!