Hello Kinder Fam,

THIS WEEK:

Monday: PE

Tuesday: Music

Wednesday: PE and Fire Drill

Thursday: N/A

Friday: St. Francis Fun Day (School will be held at St. Francis High School). Students wear their Spirit Shirts. Check and watch for information from the school office with details for this amazing day!

I am happy to report that Friday was our best day so far in Kinder and we survived the heat wave! We now have our full class of students and our schedule up and running! It was day 19 for most of us (last minute summer vacations and a cold have already passed our way) and as many of you know it takes a few weeks to make new habits in life! Let’s get ready to work!

I hope that you have been hearing some of the songs that the kids have been learning! We listen to and sing most days (months, days, prayers, “VBS” praise and worship, counting by ones to 20 and 100, counting by 2, 5, 10 to 100).

ELA (English Language Arts) is now up and running with our new curriculum called Benchmark. In place of individual books or copy papers the students have a “magazine” for each unit of study that they read and work in. There are MANY other resources for myself and the kids to share in the classroom like my collection of “Big Books” and smaller books for group work that I will read from. Each unit of study is about three weeks. The “magazines” will eventually make their way home to you. They focus on a question from Science, Social Studies or Writing so we will rotate through those subjects. Our Unit 1 question is “What do living things need?” We are also working on nouns (living and non living), capital and lowercase recognition and matching, parts of a book and reading concepts like left to right, top to bottom, page turning, titles, letters to words to sentences to an idea (paragraph).

Math has us looking at same and different, colors and shapes, patterning (ABAB, AABB, ABCABC, AAAB) and learning to write and count with great consistency from 0 to 10. This is not as easy as it sounds. Please help children to count and recount carefully touching each object, coloring carefully, using fingers accurately and printing the correct directions.

Religion is currently at assembly, during mass, daily prayers and working our way through familiar Old Testimate stories. Some children are asleep right now in the afternoons when we will soon use our formal Religion book. If you would like to catch-up on these Old Testimate stories for your family then check out Saddleback Church’s videos on YouTube. They are short, sweet and most importantly clear.

Something that we talk about is “School Work” v. “Art Work”. There is time in class when we are coloring but we are doing so with directions and intentions. There are other times that we are doing art or free time. That is when work can be free to their own expression and I try to mark papers with “Free” or ask you to “Review a skill” when I feel that concept is blurred.

Back to School was well attended and I hope you left feeling like you knew me a little better! As much as I try it is hard to give two sessions the same information. Please check your child’s Green Go Home Folder for the very simplified version of the Kinder State Standards. I basically use that as a check list in my weekly/monthly planning. Some standards are covered constantly (like oral conversation, phonics and counting skills) and some we may touch on once in a unit. Our ELA (including Science, Social Studies) and Math curriculum already align with these standards. Right now we work through topics slowly but as this large class becomes more managed in their own work habits and abilities, you will see that we can pour so much into our days. I totally forgot to mention two both BTS Groups that if you are Catholic and planning on your child receiving Reconciliation and 1st Communion in 2nd grade, this is a great time for any Kinders that are not Baptized for any reason (timing, choice, Covid, moving, etc) to do so. I had the great, great, great pleasure of standing in as Godmother for one of my students this last June. I also mentioned in one session that we are working on our manners, apologies, true stories, using our words with our friends. Avoiding classmates is not going to work in a small school for 8 more years. We need to help our students make good friends with each other, not exclude others. We can work on choices, forgiveness and acceptance of others space, likes and dislikes.

I hope this finds you well and enjoying your weekend! Super star for you and extra five minutes of free time for reading all of this for your kiddos. I love them and I know you do too…to the moon and stars and around and back and….

Pax,

Mrs. Shannon Lenz