We’re going to start our Kindergarten Home Program next week.  This will involve your child independently selecting a book from our Home Reading book collection to read at home with you.  We will be doing the book exchange on Monday’s, Wednesday’s and Friday’s.

We will start by selecting a book for your child which we think is in their reading range.  Your child can let us know at the next book exchange if it was too hard, too easy or just right.  We’ll do our best to adjust the books.  A letter will be included with your child’s first book, with more details and our expectations of the program.

Every child reads at his or own own level, and develops reading skills with practise and as they are developmentally ready.  At school, we have directly taught phonological awareness.  We’ve taught the alphabet letter names, alphabet sounds, identifying beginning and ending sounds and blending and segmenting skills.  These are skills which can all be reinforced at home.  Some of the children are continuing to learn their sounds, some know the basic sight words, and some are already reading.  We have found that this is the nature of the Kindergarten child:  as a class, their reading ability is pretty much all over the map.

We do know that daily reading aloud at home, where you are reading to your child, does make a difference.  They are learning literacy awareness, but more importantly, you are fostering a love of literature and reading that will stay with your children their entire lives.  When we consider what gifts we can give to our children, we’d say that one ranks near, or at the top of, the list.

This Week in Our Room:  May 15-19, 2016

Our beans have sprouted, and like any good gardener, we take so much joy in the small things.  Naturally, this generated a lot of excitement so we pulled out the magnifying glasses so we could get a closer look at exactly what’s going on with these tiny seedlings.

We read “Little Red Riding Hood” this week for our Fairy Tale study.  We enjoyed reading several versions and looking for the common elements across the stories.  One of our favourites was the from the fairy tale collection, Yummy by Lucy Cousins.

We’re continuing our work in Geometry, focusing on circles and spheres, squares and cubes.  Next week we explore rectangles.  

As part of our unit, we read Shapes That Roll (Karen Sagel and Steve Wilson), Perfect Square (Michael Hall) and Mouse Shapes (Ellen Stoll).  

We really try to take advantage of the excellent children’s literature available to us as a way to enhance our lessons.  It provides us with another opportunity to model a love of reading and reading behaviour (what does a good listener do?), oral expression (a chance for us to use a variety of voices when reading aloud, pacing, statements versus questions) and a shared understanding of vocabulary and concepts.

Reminders and Upcoming Events

We are collecting donations of $2 or more between May 16-27 to support Cops for Cancer. West Vancouver Schools are partnering with the West Vancouver Police Department to support Cops for Cancer’s Tour de Coast ride, taking place in September 2016. Donations made to the Canadian Cancer Society through Cops for Cancer are used to fund life-saving research and support programs for children suffering from cancer.

There is Professional Day tomorrow, Friday, May 20th.  School is not in session.  Monday, May 23rd is Victoria Day.  We wish all of you a wonderful long weekend and look forward to seeing the children back at school on Tuesday!

On Friday, May 27th we will be starting our home reading program. Each Kindergarten child will be bringing home a home reading book in a Ziploc bag and a letter outlining how the program will work.

Friday, June 3 is Sports Day! We will be dismissing the Kindergarten at 12pm that day. You’ll be receiving your information letter on Thursday. Division 15 will be on the RED TEAM and Division 16 will be on the BLUE TEAM.