サークルタイム：楽しく魅力的な学習の1年を過ごすために、すべての未就学児に呼びかけます

This ongoing class will run from September-May with scheduled breaks around special holidays. In this class, your child will meet three times weekly for 30 minutes each class to learn fundamental skills that will help excel during the primary years of elementary school. Each day we will learn and expand upon math and reading skills. The math skills will include but are not limited to days of the week, months of the year, shapes, number sense (counting), and graphing; the reading skills will include but are not limited to letters (by sight and sound), word families, CVC word reading, and pre-primer sight words. As a side note, I do not begin introducing sight words until after "Winter Break," I believe that children need to have a fundamental understanding of the alphabet before they ever begin to approach the sight word list. 

Class Time Structure: 
Our class time will be divided into two skills sets, Math and ELA/Phonics, with both lasting about 10 minutes each. Each day we will begin with reading a short book followed by a few engaging questions to get your child to think about what they just read. I try to break up the skill sets with a quick 2-minute "brain break," which is usually a funny dance video so they can "shake the sillies out" as we transition from Math to ELA/Phonics. There will be an accompanying "homework" activity that you can print to help reinforce the skill learned during our class time; this homework will build skills and self-confidence. 

Skills Taught: 
The math skills will be daily calendar skills, including the days of the week and months of the year taught through fun and engaging songs and chants. We will develop numeracy skills such as counting, representing numbers in various ways, putting together and taking apart, along with simple addition and subtraction problems. They will learn about shapes and how to describe them by their attributes. The ELA/Phonics skills are letters and their corresponding sounds, short vowel sounds, and word families. We will also work on simple sight word recognition. Finally, they will begin to build their reading comprehension skills by participating in a read-aloud at the beginning of each lesson by answering questions about the book that was read. 

Below is a tentative schedule through December: 
Week 1 (9/13):  Letter- Aa, Shape- Triangle, Counting 1-10
Week 2 (9/20): Letter- Uu, Shape- Circle, Counting 1-10
Week 3 (9/27): Letter- Ee, Shape- Square, Counting- 1-10
Week 4 (10/4): Letter- Ii, Shape- Rectangle, Counting- 1-10, 
Week 5 (10/11): Letter- Oo, Shape- Star, Counting- 1-10 
Week 6 (10/18): Letter- Tt, Shape- Heart, Counting- 1-20 
Week 7 (10/25): Letter- Ll, Counting- 1-20, Which is bigger, 3 or 4?
Week 8: (11/1): Letters- N/B, Counting- 1-20, Which is bigger, 5 or 6?
Week 9: (11/8): Letter- M, Counting- 1-20, Before and after
Week 10: (11/15): Letters- H/S, Counting- 1-20, Before and after
Week 11: (11/22): Letters- C/D, Counting- 1-30, Groups of 1s and 10s (Place Value)
Week 12: (11/29): Letter- G, Counting- 1-30, Groups of 1s and 10s (Place Value)
Week 13: (12/6): Letters- R/F, Counting- 1-30, Graphing
Week 14: (12/13): Letter- J, Counting- 1-30, Graphing
Week 15: (12/20) Monday session only: Review
Week 16: (12/29) Wednesday session only: Review