Santa Letters

Last week, the Kiddoes sat down at the table to take care of some serious business.... writing letters to Santa!! This was the first time I formally asked them to try and use their new emerging literacy skills. We discussed the parts of a letter and brainstormed some of the items on their wishlists. Once finished, they settled at the table to get down to business. I asked the Kiddoes to copy the first sentence from the chart, and then to either 'sound out' what they would like, or copy a few of our brainstormed ideas. I was extremely happy with how hard each Kinder worked. Every single Kinder tried their very best to 'sound out' words. In Kindergarten, I encourage the Kiddoes to use 'invented spelling'. Invented spelling is their best 'guess' at how a word should look. For example, 'barbie' may look like 'brbee' as these are the sounds they hear. This is perfectly FINE!!! Right now, the Kinders need to feel confident in order to begin to try and use these emerging skills. 

Unbeknownst to the Kinders, the letter got 'delivered' to Ms. Coxford's Grade 8 class. Ms. Coxford's class very graciously spent some time this week responding to each letter the Kinders wrote. Today, during centre time, we had a surprise announcement from Mrs. Medwid. "Kindergarten, you won't believe it. An elf just ran into the office and dropped off a package with your name on it. You need to come down to the office quick!" The Kinders dropped everything and hightailed it to the office. They were so excited to see our 'package' and talked about who the mysterious elf was. After a minute of teasing them about throwing out the envelope, I opened it up and they were overcome with excitement when they saw letters with their names on them. I handed them out to each Kinder.

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As you can imagine, the Kiddoes were quite excited when we returned to the room. Their letters are in their bags to read tonight! Hope you enjoy their excitement as much as we did!