Tap and Blend!

Dear Families!

Guess what?! We are getting the hang of this reading thing! Now that we know letter names and sounds, we are learning to tap and blend short consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words like hat, man, tap, and ham. First, you tap each letter and say the sound for each letter. Then, you sweep your finger from left to right under the word to blend the sounds you just made together. In Mrs. Dupuis' day, this was called "sounding out words." We are cool, so we call it "tap and blend." Learning to tap sounds is also helping us to spell. We say the word and tap out the sounds we hear to help us write the word. You should all be super proud of us because we are practicing and working hard to develop the skills that will help us read and write. Every couple of weeks, Mrs. Dupuis will send us home with a little photocopied, pocket-sized book for us to read to you, siblings, stuffed animals, pets...anyone who wants to listen. Store these books in a safe place so we can create a library and practice! When we are reading these books, you will see us use pictures, beginning sounds, and tap and blend to figure out words. Please cheer us on!

Love,
Mrs. Dupuis' K Team

Chill City: How Can We Warm Up a Frozen Playground?

Dear Families,

Did you know that there is a town in Norway (Rjukan) that gets very little sunlight because it sits at the bottom of a mountain range? The mountains block the sun, so the town has very little warmth and light during the winter. Our class conducted a scientific experiment. We wanted to find out if it is possible to bring light and warmth to the frozen playground and town square. We used a lamp to represent the sun and had a model of the mountains and the town. Mrs. Dupuis asked us to use pieces of construction paper, tin foil, index cards, and clear plastic to see if we could come up with a solution for "Chill City." There was a lot of excellent kindergarten problem solving and many meaningful discussions surrounding a possible solution.  After some time, a few teams realized that if they positioned the tin foil correctly, the sun's light would bounce off of the reflective material back onto the town. Many of the teams found a solution to the problem and were quite proud of themselves. Teams shared their solutions with teammates! Just like inventors/scientists, we too came up with innovative solutions to warm up Chill City!

Love,
Mrs. Dupuis' K Team