Reading Workshop:This month, we will continue to practice using the decoding skills that we have learned thus far to figure out tricky words. We will also be focusing on using comprehension strategies that will help us understand the books we are reading better. We will read and then stop to think about what we have just read. We will engage in conversations talking about questions we may have, events in the books that remind us of other things and when they are finished reading a book, they will use the retelling hand to give a recap of the book.

Helping out at home:

  • Read together every day. Take turns reading with your child at bedtime. Model good reading behaviors for your child when reading to them. Be your child’s reading buddy and help them work on being a good listening and sharing partner.
  • Encourage them to talk about and retell the story across their fingers.
  • Encourage your child to point under the words they read and to find sight words in the poems and books they read.
  • After reading several pages, encourage your child to stop and think about what was just read. Ask them if it makes sense and have them retell the story in their own words. Remind them to include the characters in the story, when and where the story takes place and the important events that occurred throughout the book.

Writing Workshop: We will return to writing stories about ourselves. We will again focus on small moments and we will talk about different types of details that we can add to make our writing richer. Mini-lessons include:

  • Understanding a small moment story and finding some to write about from our lives.
  • Making a movie in our minds of an event and zooming in to tell more about one part.
  • Asking ourselves questions (who, what, when, where, why) to add more to our writing and our picture.
  • Using our 5 senses to add more to our writing and our pictures.

Helping out at home:

  • Continue to encourage your child to use good writing skills when writing at home (write neatly, spell sight words correctly, stretch out words to hear many sounds, put spaces between words, and use correct capitalization and punctuation).
  • Have your child to tell stories about the every day things they do. Encourage them to ask questions and use their senses to enhance their story.

Word Study: We will continue to practice identifying and writing all upper and lowercase letters and associating sounds with letters. We will continue to make and sound out three letter words, play games where we substitute letters to create new words, and discuss rhyming. We will be taking on the role of “punctuation detectives” in search of sentences that are missing end marks. We will decide if the sentence needs a . ? or !

Helping out at home:

  • When driving, reading, or looking through magazines, have your child find pictures of objects and tell you what letter that object starts with (ie: in a book have your child find a picture of something that starts with the letter b, or the /b/ sound). Encourage them to write words with that beginning sound.
  • Sing/say nursery rhymes, rhyming songs, and poems. Encourage your child to identify the rhyming words in the rhyme, song, or poem. Create new words that rhyme with those words.
  • Be “punctuation detectives” at home! Look for end marks all around. Orally state a sentence and have your child decide what end mark should be used in that sentence.

Math: We are going to work on counting to 100, identifying numbers 0-30, and writing numbers 0-20. We will also explore basic 2D shapes, 3D objects, time and money. We will continue to practice graphing and telling and writing addition and subtraction stories.

Helping out at home:

  • Practice counting objects using one to one correspondence (focus on #’s 11-30).
  • From any given number have your child count up to 100.
  • Help them practice writing their “teen” numbers
  • Identify 3D objects in your environment such as a cube, cone, cylinder and sphere. Distinguish them from flat 2D shapes in your environment.
  • Have your child tell and draw addition and subtraction stories.

Science & Social Studies:

  • In Science we will continue to study living and non living things. We will learn to identify how to classify objects as living or non living. We will learn about animal and plant life cycles, and we will grow butterflies and hatch ducks. Stay Tuned!
  • In Social Studies we will discuss Memorial Day and why it is celebrated.