Newsletter Updates for the Week of April 30th

DATES TO REMEMBER: -Wed., May 9—Mobile Dentist -Monday, May 14—Delayed Start -Friday, May 18—Summer Bridge Activities Order is Due -Tuesday, May 22—Fieldtrip to Kettunen Center -Monday, May 28—No School/Memorial Day -Tues., May 29—Kindergarten Program @ 1:30 -Friday, June 1—Fun to Be Fit Run -Tuesday, June 5—Track & Field Day -Wed., June 6—Last Day for Kindergartners STUDENT OF THE WEEK: Our student of the week is Clara Cook. Clara enjoys dressing up and being fancy. She likes to draw & color and she recently won the library’s bookmark contest, taking first place for the entire Kindergarten grade. Clara’s favorite place to go is the beach and she is still debating on whether she wants to be ‘a princess’ or a ‘fairy god mother’ when she grows up. Congratulations to Clara on being Student of the Week! READING: This week we will be working on the letter Vv and the sightwords said & was. We will also be reviewing the l blends and begin working on reading and writing words with the r blends: br, cr, dr, fr, gr, pr, tr. Our two focus books this week are Listen Buddy & The Wolf’s Chicken Stew which we will use to practice vocabulary, comprehension, drawing conclusions, and identifying character profiles. We will continue building our stamina for ‘partner reading’ and ‘read to self.’ This week I will begin reading a chapter book to the students which will allow us to practice and extend some of our reading comprehension strategies that we have learned. WRITING: This week we will finish writing and editing our April journals. We will spend a couple of days on Writer’s Workshop and a couple of days on Journals. We will be writing about what we like best about school. We have some exciting mini-lessons this week focused around conventions and expanding our vocabulary! The students will be introduced to the character Fancy Nancy who likes to use ‘fancy words.’ We will be looking for ‘fancy’ words in the stories that we read and begin compiling a list of these words so that we can use some of them in our own writing—this will be ongoing throughout the month of May. We will also be learning about “quotation marks” and look for them in the books that we are reading. MATH: This week we will be working on identifying left and right, reading and writing numbers 0-30, and building numbers 0-30 using base 10 blocks. We will also practice identifying & comparing numbers using a number line. We will begin learning Touchpoints for the numbers, which will help us with addition and subtraction. SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES: I am certain that you heard the news—The eggs arrived last week and we are counting down the days until the chicks emerge (probably early next week). This week we will continue our study of lifecycles, first reviewing the lifecycle of a butterfly and then spending some time learning about frogs and their unique lifecycles. Spring is such an exciting time; so many things are happening in nature that cause the scientist in all of us to awe and wonder. SPRING PROGRAM: The kindergarten classes would like to invite you to join us for our spring program as we sing a few songs we have learned. This musical event will be held in the High School gym on Tuesday, May 29th beginning at 1:30. We are asking each child to bring a baseball cap to use as a prop during our program. If you child doesn't have one of their own, they can use a dad's, mom's or anyone who would let them borrow one for the afternoon. They can start bringing in the caps anytime. We will collect them and put their names on the inside if they aren't already marked. We would like ALL of the children to have someone special here to watch them. If you are unable to attend, please feel free to invite grandparents or someone special to join us. We are looking forward to having you as our guests.