Jen's Notebook

I love getting email from parents. It is a quick, easy way for us to stay in contact. I know a lot of parents would rather call me, and that is great too. But if you get a chance also think about emailing your childs teacher every once in a while. I hope you will find that it becomes a quick check to find out what is going on at school.

A couple of things I would like you to remember if you decide to use email with the school. First, teachers only have a limited time during each day without students in their care. During my day, I only have 30 minutes before and after school and a short plan time 4 days a week. So, if you email and don’t hear back immediately, its usually going to be because I am either absent that day or teaching, and I will get back to you as quickly as I can. My goal is always to try to get back to you on the day I get your e-mail. Unless you email me in the evening and then you will hear back from me the next morning.

This brings me to my second point, if you don’t hear back from your teacher within a reasonable time please call them. I always tell my parents if you don’t hear back from me in a day, please call the school and get me on the phone. That is because my school (and most schools) have very tight spam filters on the internet. Often the first time a parent is emailing me their email goes into my spam file because the system does not know who they are. Once I ok their email I never have a problem again. So, please know that we would never just ignore you, chances are if you didn’t hear from us we didn’t get your email.

Remember we are here to help your child succeed in school. Communication between your teacher and yourself is a very important part of that success. Email is an easy access tool to communicating with your child’s teacher.

Hard to believe but yes there is usually a dress code even in kindergarten. The main reason is school districts will often adopt a dress code for the entire district. They then enforce the dress code throughout all grade levels in the hope of having parents and students learn it from the beginning of their school experience. Because each districts dress code will vary, make sure you know your district expectations from the beginning.

Mine does not allow dress or blouse straps that are less than an inch wide, no leggings worn as pants, offensive t-shirt logos, dresses and skirts that are more than 3 inches above the knee and/or baggy pants!

Besides the school district dress code, you may run into dress requirements or suggestions for different classes. The P.E. teacher in my building asks parents to please make sure your child wears running shoes (not sandals) on P.E. day. Also, the school frowns on wearing flip-flops on the playground.

Remember every school will have different policies but those policies are meant to keep your child safe and comfortable at school. It is never fun for a student to have to wear their coat all day to cover a shirt, or to have to turn their t-shirt inside out to wear it because of the logo on it. Broken flip-flops and sandals are a hazard and hard to walk in. If you know the requirements from the beginning, it will make school life easier. And a lot more enjoyable for your child.

Most school districts have conferences for their students and their parents at least once or twice during the school year. Conferences are a great time to see how your child is doing in class and what they need to work on. I always love visiting with parents during this time. The kids get to show off their work and parents get to ask lots of questions.

Conferences may be a great time to visit, but please don’t make it the first time you come to school or visit with your childs teacher. We love having you involved in your child’s education. Come and meet me and visit with me whenever you want to and often.

If you have questions about how the year or your child’s education is going please ask. When you come to conferences please feel free to bring a list of questions you want to know more about. And please feel free to ask questions or contact your child’s teacher after conferences as well. Conferences are often quick and packed with lots of issues and talking. After you get home and look through your child’s report card again, you may have more questions or need more information about something. Please feel free to contact your child’s teacher to get more information or better understanding about an issue.

I know, I know! Really a post about backpacks? And yes, I am going there. Backpacks are a fun way to get your child excited about starting school but here are a few things for you to ponder before you make that all important purchase for the fall.

Make sure your school district does not have a policy on what type of backpack your child is allowed to bring each day. Several districts in my area will only accept clear or mesh see through backpacks being brought to school. You don’t want your child to be disappointed when they can’t use the backpack they have chosen.

Please don’t let your child talk you into buying one of those really small (yet cute) backpacks. My students who bring those are always struggling to get their items home (often in a Walmart bag I have given to them) because all their daily treasures won’t fit.

Another reason I really love the normal to large size backpacks is they give the students a place to store their coat when they are not wearing it. The last several classrooms my students and I have occupied have not had hooks for coats, so my students have to keep their coats in their backpacks during class. This is also a great idea when it comes to combating lice (I know it’s that terrible word every parent cringes at). But it is a fact of elementary school life. Coats touching coats on hooks are a great way to spread the lovely little critters. Having your child learn to put their coat in their backpack automatically when they take it off can help cut down on the transfer of our little friends.

My last little tip about backpacks is please check them both in the morning and at night. Night of course is so you can enjoy all those treasures we have made, notes from the school and fun events we are planning. In the morning don’t forget to check for toys. Kindergarteners love bringing their toys to school to show everyone. It always breaks my heart because they often get broken or stolen. It is always better to leave those special fun toys at home.

Attendance really does make a difference in how well your child will does in school. The more they are present the better. Two things you should know about your child being absent from school.

First, check with your school office on how they like to handle knowing when and why your child will be absent. Some schools like for you to send a note the next day with the excuse or reason for the absence. Other school districts have policies which include calling a parent on the day of the absence before a certain time in the day to check on your child. The state I teach in does this. The policy was put in place so the school and parents could touch base and make sure your child wasn’t harmed on the way to school. As a parent I really appreciated this policy. A lot of children walk to school each morning while their parents are off to work. These phone calls made sure everyone knew where my children were supposed to be. If your school district has a policy similar to this, you will need to find out if they want you to call them on the days your child is absent or wait for them to call you.

Secondly, most school district now have policies on what type of absence is excused or unexcused. Of course being sick is always an excusable absence, but many other reasons for being gone, such as family vacations, are no longer excused. The main reason you will want to check into this policy, is most school districts now only allow so many unexcused absences before they will be contacting you to come meet with them. If you have a reason your child will be missing a lot of school days, please go in and talk to your school office. They are there to help you.

Remember, these policies were put in place to help you and they will more than likely not be an issue for you. But it is always wise to have the knowledge of what is expected when dealing with absences beforehand rather than after the fact.

Navigating through the school system with your first school age child can be so overwhelming. Your not only are leaving the fate of your most precious little one in our hands, but your trying to work your way through all the paperwork, rules, and policies of a school that you probably know little to nothing about. Believe me; school districts have policies and procedures for everything! Most are meant to make your life easier and your child’s time at school safer. That said, I have noticed that in our overwhelming world of things to do, and places to be school policies and classroom procedures can often make you and your child’s first school year experience a little stressful.

Teachers absolutely do not want you to be stressed about sending your child to spend each school day with us. We want you and your child to enjoy being at school, the wonderful people that work there and the many new friends you and your child are going to make while on this new journey.

This next set of blogs, The ABC’s of Kindergarten, is meant to give you a short, quick glimpse into some of the daily routines of both the kindergarten classroom and the school. I hope they will help you to feel more at ease and gain a little knowledge into our daily practices.

Patterns are great fun! And an easy concept to play with! Some of the easiest things to practice are color patterns. Can they lay ten beads out by the color pattern of red, blue, red, blue, red, etc. There are so many different pattern combinations you and your child can make up and copy. We tend to use alphabet patterns both with the kids and when we are writing down information or assessments. Here are a few examples: A B A B A B, ABBA ABBA ABBA, AABB AABB AABB, ABC ABC ABC, etc. Beginning patterns can be done with anything and everything as long as you have more than one of the items. Here are a few ideas of things to use: Food items (carrots, broccoli, etc. are fun), clapping and stomping, beads, any toys that you have a lot of such as Legos, cars, that kind of thing, silverware, shoes, socks, clothing, and so on.

After children know the basic patterns I listed above we will go on to harder concepts. Two patterns that we teach and use in kindergarten include skip counting and the growing pattern. If you are working on skip counting, please note that end of the year kindergarteners are expected to skip count by 10’s to one hundred. (so that is the perfect place for you to practice). After that I would go on to skip counting by 5’s and then 2’s.

Growth patterns are a much harder skill but can still be fun to work on. A growth pattern has one or more of the items you are patterning growing in quantity. Let’s use silverware for an example:

Growth pattern #1

Fork

Fork, fork,

Fork, fork, fork

Fork, fork, fork, fork

Growth pattern #2

Spoon, fork

Spoon, fork, fork,

Spoon, fork, fork, fork

Growth pattern #3

Spoon, fork,

Spoon, spoon, fork, fork,

Spoon, spoon, spoon, fork, fork, fork

Growth patterns can be done in any combination you want as long as one or more of your groups of items is growing.

All of this patterning is leading up to one concept in Kindergarten. We want kids to look for patterns in everything we do in math. That will eventually lead them to see patterns in numbers, and hopefully make it easier for them to figure out number problems later on in school. Enjoy!!!

Counting comes fairly easy to most of us as we practice saying those wonderful numbers over and over, but understanding what each number means can be hard to some children and often takes some extra time to learn. There are several ways your child’s teacher will check to make sure your child really understands what the value of a number means. Their ideas may be very different than mine but if you try these ideas out your child will understand the basic concept. I thought I would give you a few quick ideas I use to check students understanding or qualifying in numbers and how to work on these skills. Here are three ideas I will be looking for when school starts from each child in my classroom:

• Does your child understand the concepts of more, less and equal
• Can your child count on or count all of a group
• Can your child solve basic problems using 10 or less objects

Here are some quick ideas to try at home to ensure these three concepts:

More, less or equal to

• We all know this one just takes practice. The more you show your child groups of objects and ask which one has more? Which has less? The better. Try to ask the fewer questions more often, it seems to be the harder of the two ideas for children to understand. Equal seems to be the easiest, since children like things to be fair, so don’t for get to throw in a couple of equal amounts every once in a while.

Counting on and counting all of a group

• I covered a few ideas on ways to work on this concept in my last post. Please remember, counting on is a developmental skill and may not come to your child easily. Please don’t get frustrated or worried if your child does not seem to understand this concept. We will work on it throughout the school year. So go out there and count everything you can find, as often as you can.
• Remember to try to get your child to pull the items away from the group as they count. This gives them a finished group at the end and helps them keep track of what they have already given a number to.
• Teach your child to count backwards from ten to zero. You can also show them this concept by beginning with a group of ten objects and counting backwards as you take them away until your child is left with zero.

Solving basic problems

This sounds like teaching your child to add and subtract, and the truth is it is the beginning of teaching that skill. But I by no means want you to sit down and teach them addition and subtraction problems. I want them to begin to see groups or amounts of objects in a different way. The altogether part of these activities is very important. Here are a few quick ways to work on this skill:

• Count their fingers! When you count fingers show them a different amount on each hand and then ask them how many fingers there are altogether?
• Show them objects of two colors and classify them into groups and a whole. One idea I use in my classroom is with plastic beads. I may give them five beads. 3 will be green and 2 will be yellow. I want them to tell me you have 3 green, 2 yellow and 5 altogether.
• Make number combinations. If you have a bowl of two different colors of plastic beads lay them out on the table in a pattern going up or down showing the number combinations. Ex: 0 green and 10 yellow, 1 green and 9 yellow, 2 green and 8 yellow, etc. And then talk about what they notice.
• Make up subtraction type story problems. “You have three stuffed animals. I left two at grandma’s house. How many are here at home?”

Most importantly, make sure this seems like a game to your child. We want them to enjoy math and numbers. The concepts seem hard sometimes but it is important that they jump right in and try as hard as they can. Enjoy your Saturday!!!

Counting seems to be such an easy skill to teach as well as an easy skill to assess. As your child’s teacher, I am going to be thrilled if your child can count out loud to at least 20 when they start Kindergarten. My grandson learned to count by counting the steps up to my house and then back down again on his way out the door. But being able to count out loud does not always mean a child understands what that count or number means. So the second thing I look for is can your child count out objects accurately between 10 to 20 items. The third thing we are going to check for at the beginning of the year is, can your child tell me what number comes next from any given number under 10 without having to start at one (counting on). With these three goals in mind here are some ideas to help you practice counting with your child:

Counting to 20

• This is just practice, practice, practice. Count everything you can think to count. My daughter even practiced counting out loud with my grandson while he was in his car seat and they were going to the store. Remember counting out loud is just a rote skill. You learn it though memorization.

Counting out objects

• When I talk to parents about counting objects, I tell them to count out everything they can find in the house: pennies, beans, toy cars, Barbie’s, shoes, etc.. The most important thing to remember when counting out objects is to teach your child to pull the item they are counting away from the group as they count it. This will help them to keep track of what they have already counted. They can pull the items into another group, a line, a cup, or anyway they want as long as it is away from the group they still need to count.
• After they have counted out an amount ask them again how many do you have? At first they may need to recount them to make sure,. But over time they will begin to understand that the number objects is the same whether they just state what they know, or if they recount the items again.

Counting on from any given number

• This is a hard skill for some children. And until they really understand that a number is what it is whether you are counting beans, fingers or cars, they will struggle with this. What we like to see is a child beginning to count on without repeating the number you have given to them. Here’s an example: Teacher: “Can you count on from 5 for me?” Student “6, 7, 8”. We most often get the answer of “5, 6, 7, 8.” We really try to get them not to repeat the number we want them to start from.

Enjoy counting everything you can find!!! I know your kids will love the time spent with you working on their numbers!

Learning to write as a small child is a complicated thing to do. Learning to read is much easier for most kids. The main reason why is learning to read includes a child decoding (or sounding out the words as well as reading the words they know already) and comprehending what they just read. Writing includes making up your story you are going to write, thinking about all those sounds you already know, putting the sounds together to get them on the paper and then being able to write the letters just as a start. And did I mention they have to be able to remember that story they thought of in sequence to make sure they are getting the whole thing down on paper. Writing is a harder and more complicated skill to learn. For that reason alone I hope you will let writing with your child be an experience  and not worry about it until they start Kindergarten.  I will include the six beginning stages of writing at the end of this post so you know which stage your child is in and what to look for next. But only to give you information for the future school year. My suggestions for you in writing before the new school year starts include only a few things to do, while hopefully  making writing an enjoyable, fun experience.
•  Make sure your child can recognize (or read) and write their first name. If they can write their last name too, great. If not, we will work on it mid-kinder year.
• Give your child opportunities at home to write on paper and pretend they are writing stories. Lots of paper, markers, crayons, pencils, etc. are always fun.
• Give your child an opportunity to read their writing to you.
• Continue to point out writing features in books you and your child read together.
Make sure they are pretending and enjoying writing and that it is a big deal in your home. So, as promised here are the six basic stages of writing that children go through during their first years of school.
• First stage – writing as scribbles and marks on the paper
• Second Stage- scribbles on the paper begin to look like lines , rows, and circles.
• Third stage-your child will begin to make mock letters or letter-like forms on their paper.
• Fourth stage-your child will make strings of letters in a row. Or even all over the page of paper.
• Fifth Stage- Your child will write using inventive spelling. This inventive spelling will usually include a lot of beginning sound of words as they go through their story.
• Sixth Stage- Your child will use inventive spelling which will include beginning, middle and end sounds as well as some small sight words.