Kindergarten Here We Come!

Kindergarten Here We Come!

(ask your children the tune to our new song)

Kindergarten, here we come!

We know we'll have lots of fun.

Lots of things to make and do.

Reading, writing, counting too.

Kindergarten, here we come!

We know we'll have lots of fun!

Important September Dates and Information:

August 29: Spirit Day (Graland gear and blue jeans may be worn)

September 1: No School

September 10: Back To School Night For Kindergarten 6:00 - 7:15

September 18 and 19: Picture Days

September 19: Family Movie Night at Graland 6:30 - 9:00

September 26: Go Green With Graland

September 28: Graland Gallop

Next Week:

During Morning Meeting next week we will be talking about why we come to school. The boys and girls will also think about what they hope and dream they will learn or be able to do by the end of the year at school. You could begin brainstorming some ideas with your children over the holiday weekend! From their hopes and dreams we will create our West K Guidelines (rules). We will talk about the things we can do in our classroom, in order to help ourselves and our friends achieve these goals.

Next week we will also be launching our writing workshop! Our authors will learn how to choose a story topic that is real and true. The first unit in writing workshop is all about developing the concept of story - narrative writing and picture telling. Each child is at their own point in their development of writing and we celebrate each and every child as an author.

A strong focus during the first 6 weeks of Kindergarten will also be developing strong fine motor muscles. We will be cutting play dough, coloring with broken crayons (to promote grasping with a tripod grip) and working on cutting. All of these are great ideas for you to do at home with your child! Having a bin of paper, pencils, scissors and tape is a fantastic way to promote creativity and to develop fundamental skills for writing. We will incorporate fine motor activities throughout the day, including math. Boys and girls will do an activity with numbered cups. They will have to pick up buttons, or pom poms with tweezers, and put the correct number of items into each cup.

Please also note that on Tuesday we will begin encouraging students to give a hug to mom or dad at our classroom door. However, Meaghan and I never want to discourage a parent from feeling welcome in West K. We won't be blocking the door completely ;-) Please also remember to send your child with a full water bottle each day. Enjoy some more pictures from our first week. Have a fantastic and restful holiday weekend!

Kaden creating with play dough