A new Year!

Welcome back!  The children have transitioned back to school life beautifully.  They are a happy and engaged group.  On Monday, during our Writer's Workshop, they wrote about their Winter Break in their journals.  At this point in kindergarten we are hoping that all students can identify beginning and ending consonants.  Some children in kindergarten can spell many words correctly while others are figuring out how to correctly form letters.  This is normal for this age.  Some children at this age become exhausted after writing a few words, while others can write many.  We are encouraging the children to stretch the sounds out in the words they write.  Many still need help isolating individual sounds in the words.  We encourage phonetic spelling at this point.  "I PLAD W MI FRND"  (I played with my friend) is an example of good kindergarten phonetic spelling.  Many children need reminders at this point to leave spaces between their words.  We call them "finger spaces", because it helps them to put their finger down on the paper to mark the size of the space.  By the end of kindergarten we hope that the children will be able to write beginning, middle, and ending consonants, as well as beginning to correctly use short vowels.  

Giving your children practice with writing at home can be fun and helpful.  It should be a casual, no-stress event.  Ask them to help you write a few items on a grocery list, or a note to a friend or teacher :-)