Newsletter Updates for the Week of April 9th

DATES TO REMEMBER:
-Friday, April 13th—Next visit to the Library
-Monday, April 23rd—Earth Day

WELCOME BACK:
I hope you had a restful Spring Break with you family. It was a much needed break after a very busy March! I am looking forward to settling back into our normal routines for April. I cannot believe we only have 2 months of school left! Overall, I am very pleased with the progress we have been making in writing, reading, and math. We still have much to learn and do together these next couple of months. As you probably noticed from looking at our report card, the expectations for 4th Quarter continue to grow. We will continue to polish our skills and challenge ourselves, as we build a solid ‘Kindergarten foundation’ and look ahead to first grade!

MILEAGE CLUB:
The Mileage Club will be starting Monday, April 16th. Mrs. Kelley is looking for parent volunteers to help run this program again. If you can help, you would be needed one day a week for six weeks. You would be helping outside from 1:35-2:05 and then again from 2:25-2:50. Please contact Mrs. Kelley if you can help out. She can be reached at 825-2021 or ckelly@mcbain.org.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES:
This week we will wrap up our Science Unit on Motion as we discuss the different ways that things can move and the impact that speed plays on the motion of objects. I will be sending a note home on Wednesday, inviting students to bring in a toy from home that moves for our lesson on Thursday. Next week we will take our unit assessment on motion.

READING:
This week we will be working on the letter Jj and the sightword where. We will play several games to review ALL of the sightwords we have learned thus far. Our focus book for this week is Jump Into the Jungle. We will also read several other Jungle books, as we work on predicting, comprehension, vocabulary, and classifying animals. Our focus Comprehension Strategy for this week is Repair Bear; he reminds us to stop periodically while reading and ‘check for understanding’ and if we cannot remember ‘who’ and ‘what,’ we look-back through the pictures or go back and reread for meaning. Right before break students ‘shopped’ for new ‘good-fit’ books, so they are ready to bring books home to read again this week. They will bring home their reading folders 3-4 times each week, with a couple days break when we have to ‘shop’ for new books. I have increased the level of difficulty for many of the students, since I know they are receiving support at home while reading. Thank you for taking the time to read together!

WRITING:
This week we will jump right back into Writer’s Workshop. We will also complete a couple of journals: what we did over Spring Break & where we would hide an Easter egg. Students will also be writing about Silly Mrs. Wishy Washy at the Writing Station to compile into a class book.

MATH:
This week we will practice ordering numbers 1-30 and writing our numbers 1-20 (several students are still working on mastering these skills). We will also be playing the card game War to practice determining the larger and smaller numbers. Students will also sort, count, & graph jelly beans and practice sharing/dividing quantities evenly later in the week. Please continue to practice counting by 1s, 2s, 5s, & 10s at home—those 2s are really tricky!!

Please be sure to return your March Book-it Calendar!