Newsletter Updates

DATES TO REMEMBER:
-Thursday, Oct. 6th—Elementary Title 1 Night
-Monday, Oct 10th—Delayed Start

STUDENT OF THE WEEK:
Our student of the week is Xavier Ramon. Xavier enjoys riding his bike, writing, drawing, watching movies, and playing his D.S. Xavier’s favorite place is his bedroom and when he grows up he’d like to drive a race car!Congratulations to Xavier, on being our first Student of the Week!
**Please remember to send in your child’s student of the week poster; I have extra copies!!

ELEMENTARY TITLE 1 NIGHT:
This year we are combining all of our grade level Title 1 Nights into one Elementary-wide Title 1 Night. This event is scheduled for Thursday, October 6th. Last Friday, invitations were sent home (1 invitation per family, sent home with the oldest elementary child). We are asking families to RSVP, so that we can plan for food—Pizza! I encourage you to attend! In addition to dinner being served, each teacher will have specific learning activities set up in their classrooms, as well as handouts and materials for you to take with you to practice important skills at home. There will also be opportunities to enter into a drawing for some great prizes! Please get your RSVPs in ASAP. Hope to see you there!!

READING:
This week we will be reading From Head to Toe as we work on comprehension skills, rhyming, comparing and contrasting. Our focus letters this week are E, P, V, & C. We will also spend one day (Thursday) reviewing the letters that we’ve already introduced, and we will be introducing the listening center this week.

WRITING:
This week we will learn about the importance of ‘details’ in our writing/drawing as we practice writing & drawing a detailed picture of Mrs. Brinks. In our journals, we will be writing about our friends at school, things we like to do at home, as well as things we can do now that we are kindergartners. We will also complete a Type 3 about what happens to the trees in the Fall. The students are getting anxious to bring their September journals home to share with you next week!

MATH:
This week we will practice recognizing and writing the numbers 0-10. We will also practice matching numbers to their corresponding number of objects. We will build and interpret a Teddy Bear Graph and work on identifying and creating AB patterns. We will also be working on listening skills and following directions as we practice using positional words (over, under, on top, between, beside, etc.)

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES:
This week we will begin our Science Unit on living and non-living things. This week we will be learning the characteristics of living things; living things change and grow. In Social Studies, we will begin learning about relative time: past, present, & future as we reference our classroom timeline and talk about things that we’ve done in the past, things we can do now in the present, and things we are looking forward to in the future.

Newsletter Updates

We had a busy first week, getting to know each other and beginning to establish our classroom routines.  It will take us a few weeks to get the routines down.  Friday was an especially busy day, as we chased the Gingerbread Man all around the school.  We visited many places and met several important people who work at our school, including the cooks, Mrs. Kelley (gym), Mrs. Eisenga (librarian), the custodians, Mr. Smith (principal), Mrs. Hill (secretary), & Mrs. Huttenga (school success worker).  We finally found the Gingerbread Man back in our own classroom and we quickly gobbled him up  before he could run away again.  The students were very excited; I hope you had a chance to hear all about it!

PICTURES:
Our picture day is tomorrow—Tuesday, September 13th.  All students will be photographed for the year book and library cards.  If you’d like to       purchase pictures, please be sure to send in your payment and completed envelope by tomorrow morning.  Don’t forget your SMILE!

SPECIALS: 
This week we will begin our normal schedule for specials.
Tuesday—Music
Wednesday—Gym
Thursday—Gym
Every other Friday—Library

I’m working on putting together a parent volunteer calendar.  If you indicated that you were interested in volunteering in the classroom, I will be contacting you soon!  Thanks for your willingness to help out!

Upcoming Events

I was so excited to meet many of you during our Open House, and I look forward to seeing all of you on our first day of school.

Upcoming Events:

• Tuesday, September 6th - Kindergarten Orientation from 10:00-1:30 for students and parents.
• Friday, September 9th - Gingerbread Day - Please wear your Kindergarten t-shirt from Kindergarten Round-up (or green and gold), as we search for the Gingerbread Man . . .  Rambler-style!
• Monday, September 12th - Delayed Start - school begins @ 10:00.
• Thursday, October 6th - Elementary Title 1 Family Night - look for more information to come.