Hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving break with fun-filled family times! Our kids have worked very hard over the last few weeks, and we hope that they are well-rested and ready for the coming weeks of school.
IMPORTANT DATES:
NO SCHOOL: DEC. 22-JAN. 9 - Winter Holidays
First day back: Jan. 10th, 2012
We want your best GET INVOLVED moment - The Georgia Department of Education needs your help in capturing your best GET INVOLVED stories and we want Sedalia Park parents to share their stories. Look for a form coming home with your student. Make sure that your story provides details including what happened and who was involved, as well as an explanation why it was your best get involved moment. Return the form to Frances Jaramillo, Parent Liaison by Monday, December 12th.
Congratulations to our Character Key Kids for the month of November! Good job showing "Thankfulness!"
The Character word for the month of December is Generosity. :)
The following are the concepts that we have been focusing for the current 9 weeks of school.
Your child will be assessed on these skills for the upcoming Report Card before the Winter Holidays.
LANGUAGE ARTS:
In terms of reading readiness, the main emphasis is on identifying some basic things like the front cover, back cover of book, and top and bottom of the page. Most of our kids have mastered this skill as the teachers review the same while reading to them in large groups, and in guided reading groups every day.
In addition, our students should also be able to identify all the upper case and lower case letters of the alphabet.
Please continue to work with rhyming words at home as this is a fairly difficult skill.
We have also been learning about syllables and even though your child may not be able to describe it, they should be able to clap out the syllables in their names. This is a fun activity that all our kindergarten classes are exposed to!
Your child is expected to know all 20 caterpillar words for this upcoming report card. Please review all the sight words your child's teacher has sent home. Even once the words are learned, practice is still necessary!
WRITING:
As we continue to write in our journals every day, our kids have made tremendous progress with it. The emphasis here is on sounding out the words to the best of the ability, and not to spell the right way. As your kids start reading more, spelling will automatically improve. We will continue to work on name writing through the course of the year.
MATHEMATICS:
- The main standard for this current nine week report card is to label sets through 10. If this is too easy for your child, challenge him/her to strive harder. It would be fantastic if your child can label through 20 and beyond!
- We have introduced the dime and its value. Please play simple games with them at home to help them trade ten pennies for a dime. By now, your child should be comfortable trading five pennies for a nickel.
- Another fun addition to our math curriculum is to recognize and name 2- and 3-D figures, including the sphere and the cube.
- As always, patterns are a skill that we will work through the course of the year.
SOCIAL STUDIES:
- For our national holidays, we talked about Veterans Day and, of course, Thanksgiving. Thank you to all the parents who could make it to our Thanksgiving luncheon. Our kids looked adorable in their Pilgrim/Indian costumes! As you already know, we love parental involvement at Sedalia.
- The national symbols that we will be learning are the bald eagle and the Statue of Liberty.
Please read to your child for 20 minutes every day…it is the best gift that we can give our kids. For our ESOL students, books in their primary languages are fantastic! Research shows that it is easy to transfer knowledge into English, if the concepts are already formed in the native language.
HAPPY NEW YEAR AND HAVE A WONDERFUL HOLIDAY!
