Kindergarten October in Review

It was so nice to see you all at our Open House in early October! What a great opportunity for you all to gather and see what your children have been working on. You are always welcome to join us for an afternoon observation, just send a note to schedule a time!

Parent teacher conferences are coming up on November 16th. Typically parents meet with their child's morning lead teacher for Fall conferences, but I am happy to meet with anyone who would like to! Regardless, Kate and I will contribute to every Kindergartener's conference report.

I would like to highlight the Language area of the classroom, and what our children are working on. In a Montessori classroom we teach phonetic sounds rather than the names of the letters. This allows the child to transition easily into reading and writing. We do not correct spelling at this point unless there is a lesson we were just working on. For instance, if we are working on the short "a" sound and a child writes cat, bat, bag, rag, teg (rather than tag), we will ask the child to review the work and see if they can find the error independently. If not, we will read the words with them, accenting the "e" sound and see if the child picks up the error. Often they do, and self correct.

We encourage you to play games at home such as "I spy" with initial word sounds or ending word sounds. For example, "I Spy something that starts with 'b'" and then people guess what you might be seeing that starts with that sound. Remember to use the sound and not the name of the letter. This is a great way to help your child recognize letter sounds in words. You could even write down the letter sound to "up the ante" a bit on the game!

Above all else - read to your child. This doesn't mean your child has to read words to you, or that you take turns (though you can if your child enjoys this). It is important that your child hears a variety of words, and learns to love literature.