Hello Dearest Kinder Families,

I sit here at my desk after just taking down the October decorations and think, "WOW! We have been here 53 school days now!" I am actually preparing report cards soon and conferences with you all.

I wanted to write an update on what we have been formally studying this month besides counting down to Halloween!

In our Religion time I am very proud to say that we made it this month through ALL 20 Mysteries of the Rosary in addition to working in our new textbook. October is the month that we celebrate Our Lady of The Rosary (with a mass) and we did exactly that. Ask your child what they may remember about the Joyful Mysteries (birth/childhood), Luminous Mysteries (adult years), Sorrowful (Last Days/His Death), and Glorious Mysteries (Easter/After). If you stop by the room you will see we have them all on display. They may even act some out for you! We have also been working on the Sign of The Cross, Glory Be, Our Father and Hail Mary.

In November we will be focusing especially All Souls and All Saints with a fantastic A-Z Saints Book and Peg Doll set that I own.

In our Math class we have been working again on patterns but this time with more than one element (color, shape, size, texture, placement). We also completed our 0-9 number order and printing/reversals. Most of the Kinders can count orally through 20 but a few still stumble through the teens. We are heading to counting to 100 orally! Each day we count "ordinal" numbers on our calendar and practice our ones, tens, hundreds daily as we count up to "100 Days of School." I also had time this month to listen to each child orally sing or state the "Months" and "Days" in order. Lastly we spent time working with 2D and 3D shapes. All of these concepts have been covered in our text and play.

In November we will be working mostly on measure, as we wrap up patterns. We will continue to use YouTube with our white boards to work on printing those numbers and ordering them, as well as 2D shapes.

In Science and Social Studies we have been focusing on the four season, change in trees/community/California. There has been lots of talk about weather and appropriate clothes for the weather. The real rain was very exciting and I showed the kids many pictures of my family enjoying recreation in the snow. One day we looked up the weather online and saw how on the same day there is very different weather around the US (here, my Bear Valley cabin, Alaska, Hawaii, New York, Florida). We also spent time over several days talking about Earthquake Safety and practicing our drill. The school also took time to celebrate Red Ribbon Week with a focus on healthy living. Our class as you know was full of veggies this week! We led the school in a veggie cheer and made posters for our eating area that we share with TK and 1st. The kids LOVED having raw veggies to share! Who knew that a snack party would be so effective?

In ELA (English Language Arts) we have continued to push on with matching/forming/placing both upper and lowercase letters. Again, we use YouTube with white boards to work through this process. I have tightened down on how they print their names and have added their last initial into the mix. I would love by the end of the year for them to have their full names ready for 1st Grade! In our shared writing you will see that we have been working our way daily through books about fall and Halloween. The kids have been expanding their writing length and word complexity. Everyone is working on spacing their words, using uppercase only where needed, copying from board to paper and expressing themselves with an accurate drawing. Remember all those drawing details will equal words in future writings. Our text/homework continues to lead us through our Phonics and with two vowels (a, i) you can see we are working on our spelling using single letter substitutions (a, am, bam, ham, Sam....).

I am hopeful that we can starts some reading groups in November with our current sight words and new sound substitution skills! Again, if you are interested in this method you can check out, "Teach Your Child to read in 100 Easy Lessons." We will move into November themes of friendship, sharing, crops and Thanksgiving. The kids also have daily access to our class library for free read and even reading with 8th Grade Buddies!

Art! I hope you heard about the amazing owls that the kids made that we have here in our room. Their wings and bodies are covered in leaves we collected here at our beautiful school. The children had a chance both in Sept. and Oct. to go with Mrs. Garcia to the Art Room. I hear that our work may be on display at Deluxe Foods in Aptos soon! We also made the jogging suits for our pumpkin heads that were on display for the Pumpkin run. Most importantly you may see that we have had MANY Halloween themed "Directed Draw". This is a step by step process from video or myself where the kids are all drawing the same image following directions. This is a HUGE exercise in following directions, board to paper, small motor skills, etc. SSSSHHHHH....don't tell them it is really work! I hope you have noticed how detailed their work is becoming even in their free draw time.

If you made it this far....you are amazing! I am now off to plan November!

Best,

Mrs. Shannon Lenz