Posts tagged with letters
by Christine Plett on March 9, 2019 at 1:29 am · Filed under Challenges, Class Updates, Inquiry, Literacy, Math, Peek at the Week and tagged: Community, letters, Number Sense
Things have been busy in kindergarten the last couple weeks!
We have continued to learn more letters, so now we have learned how to print the upper & lowercase and also how the letter sounds for the following: F E D P B R N M H K L U V W X and Y. Continuing to practice these letters at home is a great way to reinforce concepts learned at school!
Subitizing is a fancy word for recognizing an amount without counting it individually (for example, using dice). The kids enjoy playing dice war with their friends! We are also going to start learning more about numbers 1-10 and how they can be represented in different ways (tally marks, 10 frames, etc.)
This last week, we started learning about our community with our student teacher, Ms. Smiley. We started with brainstorming what we already know or think about communities, what kinds of things we see and jobs around our community, and why they are important to our community. Ms. Smiley gave the kids a challenge to learn what their parents do for their jobs and how it can help our community. With your child, leave a comment below explaining what they learned about your (parents/grandparents) job and we can share it with the class next week!
Coming Up
– A few parents were having trouble receiving confirmation emails for subscription to the blog. I contacted the IT people and hopefully has been fixed. If you still haven’t received an email confirming your subscription, please let me know and I’ll fix it for you.
– TIME CHANGE THIS WEEKEND! Don’t forget to SPRING AHEAD an hour on Saturday night!
– Home Reading will be sent home hopefully this next week!
– Community Day Form – a form was sent home this week looking for parents who would be willing to participate in our Community Day and share about their job. Please return the bottom half of the form (keep the top half so you have the information!) by Wednesday, March 13th!
– Tuesday: library and music
by Christine Plett on May 23, 2017 at 3:44 pm · Filed under Literacy and tagged: activities, letters, literacy, words
At parent conferences and the Celebration of Learning, a few parents were wondering about activities for additional practice with letter recognition and letter sounds. We are also working on the progression of writing, beginning with pretend writing (or inventive writing, which looks like scribbles or random letters put together to form “words”), and now are exploring sounding out each letter to try and spell words on their own (which has also turned into lessons and learning about perseverance and trying things to completion on their own…. :)). Please look at the following activities to try at home with your child! Remember that these are homework or expected to be completed at home…. it’s just if you are looking for some fun activities to practice with your child at home. These might be great ideas to do during the summer to help avoid the “summer slip” too and keep them ready for Grade 1!
~ no matter what activity you do, keep it fun! If it’s in the form of a game or activity, if it is fun it will be more engaging and therefore more effective 🙂
~ Letter Hunt: when you’re in the car or going somewhere, do an alphabet hunt looking for words that have a specific letter (ex. S in a STOP sign). You can also do the same thing by choosing a letter and finding things that start with that letter (ex. h sound “huh” – house). If you’re child is struggling with letter recognition and sounds, begin with only the letters in their name.
~ Memory – it’s a classic game, but a good one! You can easily make a set of uppercase and lowercase (mixed or individual) cards to use. There are also TONS of resources online that you could just print out and use as well.
~ Letter Matching Game – just like the good ‘ol fashioned game of matching, just with upper and/or lower case letters. You can also do this with matching pictures to beginning letter sounds too. Using clothespins, have your say the letter at the top of the card and attach the clothespin to the matching lowercase letter. 
~ Playdough: choose a letter (you can use the letter cards for the matching game) and have your child make the letter out of playdough (make sure they MAKE the letter, and not draw it in the playdough…. the fine motor skills practice is an added bonus!). You can also make it more challenging by showing them a picture card, they have to say the starting sounds, determine the letter, and then make the letter out of playdough.
~ Playdough and Lego: Using lego, have the kids form different letters in the playdough using the bumpy side of the lego. You can even use this to try spelling basic words (ex. it, in, mom, the, etc.). You can use the Alphabet cards as visual prompts, and then have your child say the letter and make it with playdough. 
~ Slap It! – Have alphabet cards and divide them in half (kind of like Slap Jack). When a letter that’s in his name comes up, he can slap it and say the letter before he can move on.
~ Letter Hunt in a magazine – Starting with the letters in his name, hunt through magazines to find the various letters (they will be in various fonts and styles), then cut out and glue onto a page or in a book. After a certain point, he can just find random letters and add to the book without focusing on a specific letter. 
~ Slides and Ladders – includes a board for both Upper and Lower case letters. When playing the game, it will be important for your child to identify and say the letters that they are landing on, climbing up to, or sliding down to.
At RMS, our Early Literacy teacher, Miss Imorde, has a wonderful blog with ideas as well as other blogs she follows (see links below). If you type in your email address to follow the blogs that you’re interested in, then they will send you updates with new blog posts that they do so you don’t have to keep going back to check!
This Reading Mama blog: http://thisreadingmama.com/category/alphabet-activities/
This Measured Mom blog: http://www.themeasuredmom.com/learning/
Miss Imorde’s blog: https://readingtipsforhome.wordpress.com/
by Christine Plett on January 23, 2017 at 11:02 pm · Filed under Class Updates, Field Trips, Literacy and tagged: alphabet, Daily 5, Field Trip, letters, snowpants, weather
Please carefully read the following updates and reminders specific to kindergarten. The general school newsletter should be coming out soon as well.
~ As the weather seems to be getting warmer (hopefully it lasts!!), we will be going to play outside more as long as it isn’t too cold. Even though it’s warm, please make sure to still send snowpants and gloves with your child as they often want to play on the massive snow piles and make snowman, making their hands cold and their pants wet.
~ The field trip forms were due last Friday, so if you have not yet sent in the form and paid online, please do so asap.
~ Field Trip: Our field trip next Tuesday is an in-class program put on by Teachers Pet organization (which means it will be at Ralph McCall, so we won’t be off-site). We still are in need of a couple more volunteers for both the morning and afternoon class, so if you are able to come (and have your police check handed in to the office) please let me know!!
~ We have started the Listening to Reading centre as a part of our Daily 5 literacy program and need headphones for each student. If you have not already sent in labelled headphones in a ziploc bag, please do so asap.
~ Our kindergarten OT (Occupational Therapist) is starting to talk with all the kindergarten classes about recognizing and understanding different feelings (ex. sad, happy, excited, mad) and tools to use for each. Please see attached for further information about the Zones of Regulation program. This is also a program that is taught throughout each grade at Ralph McCall.
scanned letter and zones info
~ New book orders were sent home today and are due back by next Friday, January 27th. Please remember that these book orders make great gifts and also any orders submitted give the teacher/class bonus bucks to use towards more materials for the kids in class! So it’s a win/win 🙂
~ In our class, we are working on learning the different letters of the alphabet: upper and lower case, the sounds they make, and recognizing words that start with that letter. So far we have learned about M, S, T, B, F, C, R and A. We will also be learning about the letters L, P, O and D over the next few weeks.
CHALLENGE: try and find words that start with these letters at home! Show your parents how to write each of the letters, and don’t forget to always start your letters at the top!