DATES TO REMEMBER:
-Monday, Feb. 11—Theme Basket Drawing
-Wednesday, Feb. 13th—Student Count Day
-Thursday, Feb. 14th—100th Day of School & Valentine’s Party (pm)
-Friday, Feb. 15th—No School—Professional Development
-Monday, Feb. 18th—No School—President’s Day
-Thursday, Feb. 28th—Parent Teacher Conferences
STUDENT OF THE WEEK:
Our student of the week is Daniel McElhinney. Daniel enjoys going to the beach, climbing trees, and being outside with his family. He would like to be a professional baseball player when he grows up! Congratulations to Daniel on being Student of the Week!
PARENT TEACHER CONFERENCES:
Parent teacher conferences are scheduled for Thursday, February 28th from 4:00-7:00. The administration has reserved this short amount of time for us to meet with just a few of our families, those that we feel we need to meet with. However, the Kindergarten team feels strongly that we would like to set aside time to meet with all of our families. I am going to try to fit in as many as possible on the 28th. I am also hoping to do Anna’s, Lauren’s, & Lydia’s conferences when their moms are in to volunteer that week. :) You should be receiving your conference notices soon. I would encourage you to try to work it into your schedule to come in and meet. If you decide that you cannot make your conference during your scheduled time, please let me know if you’d like to arrange a phone conference, a face-to-face conference at another time, or if you would prefer not to meet at all.
March is Reading Month and it is right around the corner! Our theme this year is Go Wild For Reading—a jungle theme. I am looking for jungle-related decorations that I could borrow for decorating our hallway, if you have anything around your house, please send it in. Also, we will be making binoculars, so please start sending in toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, or wrapping paper rolls. Each student will also need a small shoe box. :)
READING:
Our focus text for this week is The Wolf’s Chicken Stew and our focus letter is Uu. Since U is a vowel, we will be using Chunky Monkey to help us read and write words with the following word families: ug, un, uck, & ub. We will also use Flippy the Dolphin to help us practice reading words with both the short and long U sounds. We will introduce the sight words one, two, & three, as well as a new Beanie Baby for Accuracy—Skippy the Frog. He reminds us that if we get stuck on a word while reading, we can skip the word, read on, then hop back, and re-read the sentence to try to figure it out. The students are doing a fabulous job of using their accuracy strategies and building their stamina for reading during Read-to-Self time!
WRITING:
Last week we wrote pattern books with a see-saw pattern; we went through the entire writing process of thinking of our ideas, thinking of a pattern, and then transferring our ideas to paper. On Thursday, we worked on adding a Title and a ‘WOW’ cover. This week they will conference with a friend and with me in preparation for ‘Author’s Chair.’ This week we will also complete a class 100’s Day Book and begin writing a new pattern book—with a question and answer structure.
SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES:
We will continue reading books related to friendship & kindness, in preparation for Valentine’s Day. We have just begun our Unit on American Symbols and Democratic Values—last week we learned about the American Flag, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Star Spangled Banner, Equality, & Patriotism. This week we will learn about Presidents (past & present) & the White House. We will also learn about the important role that our heart plays and listen to our heartbeats.
MATH: Our math activities this week will focus around 100’s Day! We will practice counting to 100 by 1’s, 5’s, & 10’s, as well as counting 100 objects in various different ways. It will be a very busy and exciting week!
Our Friend Smokey the Bear
