A Peek Inside Our Book Bags!

​As most of you know by now! Every Kindergartener has a book bag that follows them to school and home each day! With the amount of tools and things that are in the book bags, I thought that it might be a good idea to let you know all the wonderful things that your Kindergartener has in their bag! When the Kindergarteners bring home their book bag each night, it is a chance for them to read to their families, practice reading strategies, and continue to master sight words!

​The first thing is our books!

​Our Reading Strategies!

     Since I mentioned using our reading strategies, it's important that I also introduce them! In each book bag, there is a bookmark with all of the different reading strategies that we use in Kindergarten. Try asking your Kindergartener about which ones they know and how the help them! It can be helpful to have the bookmark out when they're reading since it is a quick reference and reminder for them.

Our Sight Words!

Inside our book bag there is our sight word and fluency book! This is organized into 12 lists, with 10 sight words on each list. These are the sight words that we are going to learn over the course of the year. You'll be amazed at how much practicing sight words can strengthen reading skills! Please practice the current list (or 2 if they want!) that you Kinder is on. Once they have mastered a list, I assess them on it and then they get to put a sticker over the list number on the cover and "level up". It is a fun way to motivate them to practice their sight words and fluency. Please do not feel that you have to just use the booklet. Feel free to practice the words in other ways, like building them with play-doh, making sentences with them, finding them in books etc. There are so many different ways you can practice them! 

​Each Kindergartener gets a different book in their book bag each week. This is the book that we are reading at school, in our reading groups. Some of the words, phrases, or books may be slightly challenging for the Kindergarteners, but that it good! If they are coming across a word that they are struggling with, the best thing to do is to remind them to use their reading strategies. If they continue to struggle, sometimes you need to help them with a word or so. It may be a sight word that we haven't learned yet or a name that just doesn't make sense! They'll have one book in their book bag a week but they are also free to read any other book that they want to as well!

Our Word Work Notebooks!

These are our word work notebooks. In them, is the work that we do in reading groups. We work on everything from rhyming, to word families, to learning new blends. If they want to work on different things in their notebook, that is great! Feel free to use it for sight word practice, writing sentences or anything else they would like to practice. 

Over the course of the year, we will be adding additional things into our book bags, but this is what we are starting with! There are also "witch's fingers" to help with tracking and next week there will be some small "stretchy snakes" added to the book bags to help with stretching out words. In about a month, students will be able to start bringing home another "just right" book to read in addition to their guided reading book. We are first practicing taking care of this one and will go from there! Thank you so much for also making sure that you Kinder brings their book bag back to school! I've been so impressed that everyone is remembering them! I hope that you are enjoying the book bags as much as the Kinders!