Kindergarten is a wonderful year filled with learning all the time.  Your child will grow in many ways. It is a time when children learn to make choices, share their ideas and feelings, cooperate on a group job, and learn to problem solve.  Remember that the best way to prepare a child for kindergarten is to read to him/her.

Once a child is enrolled in a class, I always tell parents to keep reading all the time!  Reading teaches so many skills to a child. 

Have fun with your child!  Find learning in every day activities!  Another wonderful tip is to talk with your child.  Have lots of opportunities to “chat with each other.”  This is a wonderful time for language development to occur.

Music is a wonderful way to learn together!  Sing songs together and talk about all the sounds and rhymes that you hear in a song.

For additional information, visit the Minnesota Department of Education Web site at:  www.education.state.mn.us

In ending, here is another wonderful quote about children:

“Children are our most valuable natural resource.”

               Herbert Hoover

Reminders:

We are learning new sight words each week or bi-weekly in our reading series.  I have been sending home the new words as we have learned them. The new words learned in the last 2 weeks are: “here, to, up” and the new words introduced this week were:

“get, where, and.”  Looking ahead for next week, th new words will be:  “you, that, go.” 

We just completed the unit 5 reading test and we are now into the last unit 6 of the series.

I will give you the complete list of sight words that will be on the next unit test.  I have sent it home, but I am also printing it here for you to keep at home.

Here it is:

“like  am  red  but  at  it  do  big  see  look,  one  my  little  we 

yellow  iss  can  blue  I  the  have  not  in  a  two  what  three.”

The children also need to know all 11 color words by the end of the year, too.

“red  blue  yellow  green  orange  purple  pink  white  gray  brown  black” 

Thanks for helping your child know his/her words.  This will be very important for first grade in the fall.  I encourage you to keep this list handy and review it over the summer.