The Harrison/Henriksen Herald

1st week of school

We had a wonderful first week of school! On Monday, we read The Kissing Hand and did several "hand" activities to celebrate our first day of kindergarten. We read many other great books including Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. On Friday, we read The Gingerbread Boy and ended up searching the whole school for the gingerbread boy!  We also met our Reading Buddies from Ms. Bower and Mr. Carmichael's 5th grade class.  We hope your child enjoyed his or her first week of Kindergarten!

This week we will continue to focus on letter sounds and recognition (especially Aa and Tt), shapes, colors, positional words, classroom rituals and routines. We will begin the writing process in Writers Workshop, as well as begin our literacy and math center rotations.  Also, sightwords will be assigned this week.  Each month your child will be assessed on the 40 Pre-Primer Dolch words.  Please help you child learn these words.  If you ever have any questions about what skills we are working on, feel free to email us Nicole.Harrison@cobbk12.org or Joy.Henriksen@cobbk12.org

Just a few reminders…If you would like for your child to have snack, please provide nutritious food such as pretzels, goldfish, graham crackers, etc. We will eat snack in the morning around 9:45. Please make sure your child has lunch and/or breakfast money each day. There are no charges. Each student needs a regular size bath towel for rest time. Please no blankets!

We always provide an opportunity for our students to buy books through Scholastic book club. Our class gets bonus points for every dollar spent. These bonus points allow us to purchase items for the classroom. We will send home book orders each month. If you would like to order books, please make your checks payable to Scholastic. Please have money turned in by Friday 29th. 

February and Valentine's Day

It is hard to believe the month of February is already here!  We have lots of exciting new activities planned this month.  In math, we are learning about money, time of day, and numbers 21-30.  In literacy, we are practicing a range of skills including literary elements (character, setting, problem, solution), decoding words, (turtle talking), sight words, and building fluency when reading.  WHEW!  We have begun an excellent unit about living and non-living things.  Over the next month, we will expand our investigation to plants and animals.  Here are some questions you can ask your child at home:

How do you know if something is alive?

What is something that is non-living?

How much is this coin? (show a penny, nickel, dime, or quarter)

What time of day is it? (morning, afternoon, or evening)

How can you "turtle talk" when you are reading words?

Valentine's day is coming up!  Please be sure to bring in your box and valentines if you are participating! 

We ran out of time to assess the children on their birthdays, phone numbers, and addresses.  We will assess them by the end of the week.  SO, you have an extra week to practice!!!

Check out our December pictures!

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Happy New Year!!!

We hope you all had a well rested (and deserved) holiday break!  We were excited to come back to work and jump into a new year.  Over the next few weeks, we will be focusing on the following:

Main Idea: What is the story all about?

Phonics: What sounds do I hear in words?

Measurement: How do I use measurement to compare different weights, lengths, capacities, and heights?

Numbers 11-30:  What do numbers show us?

Community: Who are the helpers in our Community?

Writing: How do I write a story?

Conference forms will be coming home soon.  These forms will tell you the date and time for your conference.  If you cannot attend your scheduled conference let us know.  We will reschedule for a later date.  It may be in February though.  You will receive your child's report card at your conference. 

Congratulations to Roger who showed Compassion during the month December.  Roger will go to the Breakfast of Champions this Friday!

Thanksgiving Activities

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After Thanksgiving Break

First, let us say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who donated the wonderful food for our Thanksgiving feast.  We have never had a feast as large as that one!!!  The children really enjoyed themselves.  They told us how thankful they were for family, friends, teachers, and food. 

Over the next few weeks, we will be discovering different forms of measurement: length, capacity, and length.  In math, we will also learn how to estimate using numbers 5 and 10 as a benchmark.  Literacy skills will include discriminating between syllables and rhyming words.  We will continue blending sounds to make new words...this carries over into reading and writing.  We will examine different kinds of rocks in science, and OF COURSE we will include fun holiday activities!!!

Speaking of holidays...now is the time of year that children get a bit excited for the upcoming holidays.  Between Thanksgiving and the December break, students will not have the opportunity to turn their behavior cards back to green.  We are trying to encourage the students to make good choices the FIRST time they are asked to correct an undesired behavior.  It is very important that we have your support during this festive (but instructional) time of year.  If you see "not following directions" or "talking" written in your child's folder...please remind them that they need to follow the class rules in order to learn. 

We will be sending home more information about the special events we have planned for our class in the next week or so.  We will need your help for our themed days and the holiday party!!!  Go ahead and mark your calendar for December 20th at 8:30.  That will be the class Holiday Party.  We are planning a "holiday breakfast" and we would love to have you attend!

Congratulations to Roger for being our Star Student this week!!!!

Fire Safety

Exciting News!!!

It has been a while since our last post....so sorry for that.  Time sure seems to get away from us!!!  Now for the exciting news.....we have introduced all of our letters and sounds!!!!  The letters Uu and Ww are the letters this week and they conclude the "introduction" portion of the alphabet.  After this week, we will focus on how all the letter sounds go together to make words.  PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE keep practicing all letter names and sounds with your child so they do not forget all this information!!!!

Over the next few weeks, we will be learning about the Thanksgiving holiday.  This is a special time of year and we will be celebrating with our own feast on November 20th.  If you can help provide food for our feast, please contact Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Maldonado.  Their phone numbers and email addresses were sent home last week.  Let us know if you need their contact information again. 

For the rest of the month, we will focus on 2D and 3D shapes, combining and decomposing shapes to make new shapes, counting pennies to 10, trading pennies for a dime, ordinals 1st-10th, and number words zero to ten.  We will continue descriptive writing and using "juicy" words to describe what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch .  We have been reviewing main idea, literary elements, and sequence of a story for the last few weeks.  We will continue to review until January at which point we will dive deeper into these comprehension concepts. 

Please ask your child these questions throughout the month to connect school and home life:

1.  What shapes do I see in my world?

2.  Where am I in line?

3.  How many pennies do I need to get a dime?

4.  Why do I need to be able to read number words?

5.  How can I use numbers everyday?

6.  How can I use juicy words in a story?

7.  What is the story all about?

8.  What happened at the beginning, middle, and end of the story?

9.  Who is the character in the story? 

10.  Where did the story take place?

Congratulations to Myles who was the star student last week.  Myles was also chosen to go to the Breakfast of Champions on Friday.  He showed RESPONSIBILITY during the month of October.

Dates to remember:

11/13- Thanksgiving in the lunchroom at 10:50

11/20-Thanksgiving Feast

11/21-11/23 NO SCHOOL!!!  Enjoy your family over Thanksgiving!!!

Red Ribbon Week

Fun Fall Activities and The Pumpkin Patch

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Mrs. Parrish helped us make Pumpkin Waffles.  They were so YUMMY!!!!! We put ice cream on top of them and everything!BubbleShare: Share photos - Here comes Halloween!">

We had our first field trip to the pumpkin patch!  We had so much fun!!  We sang songs, went on a hay ride, picked pumpkins, pet animals at the petting zoo and decorated our very own pumpkins.  We were so tired by the end of the day that most of us fell asleep on the way back to school! (check out the pictures)