January 2011 Newsletter

Happy New Year! I hope everyone has had an enjoyable Holiday season! The Kindergarten children and I are very excited to be back at school and to start off fresh in a new year!

Our main topics for the month of January will be The Ocean and Healthy Habits. We will be featuring books by Marcus Pfister and Leo Lionni. We will work on a number of crafts related to our Ocean theme which include making colourful jellyfish and crafty crabs. We will be learning to recognize a variety of ocean animals and recite interesting facts about them. Children will also be encouraged to try the variety of “fishy crafts” at our art center during our “invitations to learn” time! In addition to this, the children will learn about habits to keep them healthy; such as, washing hands frequently, getting enough sleep, and exercising regularly.

The following is a list of skills we will be working on during the month of January: reciting telephone number and birth date (please work with your child on these at home too), making predictions when listening to stories, recognizing and printing numerals 1-5, comparing two sets using one-to-one correspondence, counting and creating sets of numerals 1-5 to their respective quantities, printing last name, and learning the letters Hh, Jj, Ff, and Kk. We will continue drawing objects and learning to recognize their names in print. We have completed pup, pop, ox, ax, mom, top and pot. We will now add the words: stop, jar, star, and fox. Feel free to have your child print these words and draw their pictures for you (especially those words which we have already studied). You may be amazed at how well your child can “read”! I am also including a new “homework calendar” for you in this month’s newsletter to work on at home with your child if you so choose.


Notes and Reminders

* Library will continue to be each Day 1 of the school cycle.

*Early Dismissal this month is on Thursday, January 13th at 12:10, Day 1.
This is a Kindergarten day.

*Friday, January 28th is a Professional Development Day for teachers at our school. There will be no classes for students on this day. This is not a day on the school cycle and therefore Kindergarten children will not attend school again until Tuesday, February 1st, 2011. Watch your Kindergarten Calendar closely!

Be sure to check out the calendar at the bottom of the blog for upcoming dates! This may help with some of your future planning!!