Kindergarten | Keith Country Day SchoolKeith Country Day School

Weekly Update

This past week we introduced five new sight words. They were about, other, out, up , and will. There will be no new sight words introduced this week due to the Thanksgiving Day holiday weekend. We studied the story of the First Thanksgiving, learning about the lives and traditions of Pilgrims and Indians. In class, we talked about how the Indians taught the Pilgrims how to harvest a plentiful crop. In turn, the Indians were invited to share in a wonderful feast that lasted three days! We discussed some expanded vocabulary words, such as harvest, crop, treaty, voyage, and Wetu. We read a variety of fiction, realistic fiction, and nonfiction stories to increase our knowledge of the Pilgrim and Indian heritage. We also had a class discussion about what we are thankful for and stressed the importance of being thankful for non-materialistic items (toys, games, TV) and more on what we need to survive (food, clothes, shelter). They all did a great job with this, especially after watching the video of the Mayflower and how many of the European travelers fell ill on their voyage because they did not have adequate food, water and living quarters.

In math, we worked on teen numbers and partners of 5, adding some extras. We also introduced estimation! This is a very challenging concept to our young counters. It is so hard to not count each item and to make a guess by looking at the size of the object, the capacity of the container, and activating our schema (what we already know) about the items. We feel they did very well! We took our chapter 3 test and were very impressed with the scores! I will be making an “At a Glance” sheet for Chapter 4 and sending it home next Monday. This way, you have a guideline for what your child is learning in math ahead of time! Our goal is to have Chapter 4 completed prior to the winter break!

In writing, we began our personal narrative pieces. We talked about those small moments we have that really stay in our memory. Each child was asked to bring in a ziploc bag with one or two special items to encourage the writing process. Our mini lessons focused on stretching our sentences and ideas. We started this by filling in blanks ( I like __________, I see______________, I remember _________, I went _______) and so on. This helps us focus our writing and add detail to our stories. We are navigating away from one or two sentence stories and this is a process for us! We have met with many students and will continue to do so over the next week to assist with the editing and revision process. This class is full of authors and they are learning that the first piece of writing will not be the published piece! Our illustrations are getting more detailed and really match our stories. We will be writing personal narratives until the week after Thanksgiving. At this time, we will transition into expository writing (informational writing) for the month of December.

Many of us are also learning how to “use our environment” to help spell those words that aren’t word wall words. We continue to brave spell and chop with a friend, but many of us are beginning to use books in the room, word family charts, and signs in the room to help us accurately spell. This is a great skill to have at this age and stage of their writing process!

During reading workshop, we worked on comprehension skills such as visualizing and retelling a story. We read the story The Littlest Pilgrim and did a character study. We were able to describe the main character, Mini, with several descriptive words we heard throughout the story. We came up with small, friendly, girl, Pilgrim, hard worker, sad, littlest, sister, daughter, caring, helpful, and child. The class created their own Mini drawings and wrote three describing sentences about Mini. These can be found in the hallway right outside our classroom. Many students made text to self connections while listening to the story. We heard that many of us, although young, like to help and sometimes we aren’t able to do things older kids can. We understood the frustration Mini felt and connected with her in that way. We figured out the main idea of the story was we are never too small to help, there is always a “just right size” job for us. We are also never too small to make a friend.

Important Dates

Thanksgiving Program is Wednesday, November 21st at 11:00. Boys should be dressed in black pants and white shirts. Girls should have any color party dress on or black skirt/pants and a white shirt. PLEASE DO NOT BRING BACKPACKS! See our class email for more details about Wednesday!

No school Thursday or Friday- enjoy your long holiday weekend!

I hope you continue to visit the class page and navigate through the school website weekly!

Feel free to contact me at anytime via email at stephanie.johnson@keithschool.net. Have a great week and thank you for all you do to support your child’s learning!

Schedule Breakdown:
Mondays

2:45 | daily wrap up/ pack up to go home

Stephanie Johnson

Kindergarten
B.S. in Family and Child Studies from Northern Illinois University
M.A.T. in Elementary Education from National Louis University — Wheeling

Stephanie Johnson is entering her second year. Stephanie grew up in Illinois and started her educational career at Jefferson Elementary before joining the Learning Tree in Huntley, IL as a preschool teacher. She is an expert in developing thematic units for young students and believes in a hands-on learning style through the use of manipulative and sensory exploration. She has a B.S. in Family and Child Studies from Northern Illinois University and a M.A.T. in Elementary Education from National Louis University.

Email: stephanie.johnson@keithschool.net

Stephanie Johnson

Share this: