Newsletter Updates for the Week of April 16th

DATES TO REMEMBER:
-Monday, April 23—Earth Day
-Friday, April 27—Next visit to the Library
-Monday, May 14—Delayed Start
-Tuesday, May 22—Fieldtrip to Kettunen Center
-Monday, May 28—No School/Memorial Day
-Friday, June 1—Fun to Be Fit Run
-Tuesday, June 5—Track & Field Day
-Wed., June 6—Last Day for Kindergartners

BOX TOPS/LABELS:
According to the most recent tally, our class is currently in 3rd place for the labels/box tops collection. There will be another drawing for prizes before the end of the school year. Keep sending those labels in!

FALL SOCCER REGISTRATION INFO:
The Missuakee Area Soccer Association will be registering soccer players ages 6-11 (before August 1, 2012) at Northern Michigan Christian School on May 3rd, from 3-6pm and May 10th at Lake City Schools from 6-8 pm. Cost is $30.00 per player. No registration forms will be mailed in so please register during one of those evenings. Please call Dave Skinner at 231-920-1278 or Diane Eisenga at 231-779-3702 if you cannot make it to either of those dates. If you are interested in coaching or refereeing please contact Dave Skinner. All coaches and referees will receive training and referees will be paid.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES:
This week we will take our Motion assessment and shift our focus to learning about Weather and the Seasons. We will learn about the different types of weather and the cycle of the seasons. We will also discover how the sun and moon impact the seasons and weather.

READING:
This week we will be working on the letter Uu and the sightwords you & that. We will be reading the book Hush! A Thai Lullaby as we work on predicting, comprehension, vocabulary, sequencing story events, and opposites. Since u is a vowel, we will be using Chunky Monkey as we work on the word families: ug, un, ub, & uck, and practice reading and writing words with these ‘chunks.’ We will also review Flippy the Dolphin as we practice reading words with the long and short u sounds. Our focus Fluency Strategy for this week is Dot the GIraffe; who reminds us to look at the punctuation as we read, to help us read with expression and fluency. We need to shop for new books this week, so there might be a couple of days that you child doesn’t bring their Reading Folder home—it takes a couple of days to get everyone through the ‘shopping process.’ This week I will be meeting with reading groups to work on identifying the ending sounds in words.

WRITING:
This week we will complete a couple of Type 3’s related to weather and the seasons. Students will also complete a painting based on the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk, and write about what their painting reminds them of.

MATH:
This week we will practice adding using dice, work on graphing using a bar and circle graph, and practice making and reading ABBC patterns. We will also work on identifying Right and Left and practice following directions using Right and Left. On Friday, we will be play a subtraction game
together and practice writing subtraction number sentences. **This week I will be adding a counting chart to your child’s Take Home Reading Folder. It is double-sided and color coded so that you can practice counting by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s at home.