October is a month of change and fun in kindergarten!

In October, we will start our adventures with the Magic Tree house series.  The children get very excited about Jack and Annie and their journeys through space and time.  In class, the children will dramatize the stories.  This helps build comprehension and understanding of the main ideas.  In literacy centers we will continue our work on helping the children become more fluent in letter names and sounds.

In math, we will be working with math manipulatives to help children gain an understanding of numbers and quantity.  We play games like poison number and number line hopscotch to strengthen these skills.  You can work with your child at home by pointing out numbers in their environment and creating your own hopscotch board with chalk.  Also please count with your child.  Count spoons, count trees, count pennies, or just count anything you possibly can!  Play games with dice and get your child familiar with the dot patterns on the dice so they don't have to count the dots, but just know how many there are!  This is called subitizing and it is a very important skill for you child to have.

Cutting- We are doing some cutting here in school and it seems that many of the students are having a lot of difficulty in this area and they are needing a lot of one on one assistance to get it done.  You can help your child with this skill at home.  Give your child a pair of kid scissors, and strips of paper, and the waste basket.  You can create thin strips of paper that they can cut right through and let them snip away! It can make a mess, but trust us, they clean it all up in school, and they can clean it at home too.  This is an important skill as it strengthens the muscles in their hands which prepares them for writing. 
 
Reading-Please remember to work on reading the sight words listed at the bottom of the homework calendar.  We will begin teaching the students to read around February and knowing their sight words will help with reading stories!  Read to your child as well.  As them questions like "Who was your favorite character and why?"  "What would you do if you were....", and "Can you tell me what the story was about?"  These type of questions will get them thinking about what they're reading and help them comprehend text.