Newsletter Updates for the Week of September 26th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Friday, Sept. 30th—Progress Reports Home

-Tuesday, Oct. 11th—Title 1 Family Night

-Monday, Oct. 17th—Delayed Start

STUDENT OF THE WEEK: 

Our student of the week is Grace Wilson. Grace loves her three cats and she’s really good at jumping on the bed.  She likes to eat tacos, ice cream, cookies, & corn dogs and her favorite movie is Avengers.  She has traveled to 19 states and this year she aspires to pass the deep water swim test at the YMCA and learn to read! Congratulations to Grace on being our Student of the Week!

COINS FOR KIDS:  

We are partnering with Pizza Hut and collecting coins for the ‘Coins for Kids’ project.  You can participate by sending in spare change to add to our classroom bucket:)

ASSESSMENTS:  

We are currently in the process of doing our beginning of the year benchmarking assessments. Last week the students were given the Aimsweb for Math and this week they will be doing DIBELS for Reading. This week and next week we will also be going to the computer lab to complete our NWEA testing for Reading & Math. It seems like a lot for these little ones, I know, but we will ‘learn’ the process together and the only way to measure growth is to have a starting point:)  I will share all of this assessment data with you in  November @ parent teacher conferences.

READING:

We’ve quickly made it through introducing ALL of the letters of the alphabet and now we will slow our pace a bit and focus on one letter each week. This week our reading lessons will focus on the letter Mm and we will introduce a new sightword—the. Our focus story for the week is What About Bear? which we will use to practice building our listening and comprehension skills. This week we will introduce 2 new beanie baby strategies: Questioning Owl who reminds us to stop and ask ourselves questions about the story while we are reading and Spinner Spider who helps us remember to ‘make connections’ as we read. At the end of this week, students will receive new materials in their book boxes that they can read during Read to Self time, which means that they will be bringing home their books that you provided at the beginning of the year. This is our first, of many, reading milestones that we will reach this year!

WRITING: 

We will begin learning about ‘small moment’ stories this week. The students will wrap up their September journals and they will be bringing them home to share with you next week. We will also work together to make a class book about living and non-living things.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES:  

This week we will wrap up our Science Unit on Living and Non-Living things. Last week we learned that living things grow and change. This week we will learn about what living things ‘need’ in order to live & grow.  We will also continue reading and talking about all of the changes that occur in Fall.  On Friday, we will have a special visit from Scrappy the Squirrel who will tell us what he’s up to this time of year AND we will conduct a fun experiment with  acorns.

MATH:

We will practice describing and comparing shapes, as we focus on triangles. We will also play several games with dot cards as we practice identifying and matching different quantities of dots, as well as comparing which card has more and which card has less dots.

Items Needed—Please Send In—Gallon Milk Jugs

(empty and rinsed out) for us to use for an art project next week:)

Newsletter Updates for the Week of September 19th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Friday, Sept. 23rd—Mobile Dentist

-Friday, Sept. 23rd—Book Orders Due

-Friday, Sept. 23rd—Alumni Parade & Game

-Friday, Sept. 30th—Progress Reports Home

WALKING FIELDTRIP: 

Our walking fieldtrip to the Butterfly Garden on Friday was a success!  It was a great way to wrap up our first 5 day week! Special thanks to Laura Quist & Kelly Taylor for doing such a nice job of presenting and also to Micah Beckman for helping us get there and back safe and sound. :)

VOLUNTEERING: 

I’ve tried to make contact with all of the parents who indicated on their survey that they would like to volunteer in the classroom.  The volunteer schedule is coming together nicely for September and October.  I know schedules change throughout the year, so if you’d like to volunteer at any point, please let me know. I rely on parent volunteers to complete special projects, help with assessments, and to help provide extra academic support to students.   I’m looking forward to getting some of these projects going this week! 

READING:

This week our reading lessons will focus on the letters S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, & Z.  We will also review the sightwords—I & can and practice identifying rhyming words in songs and rhymes. Our focus story for this week is Kindergarteners Can which we will use to practice building our listening and comprehension skills. This week we will introduce two new beanie baby strategies: Lips the Fish who reminds us to look at the first letter of the word and get our lips ready with that sound to help us figure out the words while we are reading, and Jabber the Reteller who reminds us that good readers can build comprehension skills by recalling and retelling key elements from the story.

WRITING: 

We will continue our unit on Speaking & Listening as we talk about ‘things we know and can do.’  We will be talking about the importance of including colors and details and we’ll practice this by drawing a detailed picture of Mrs. Brinks and by adding colors and details to our sketches that we drew at the Butterfly Garden on Friday.  The students are really enjoying the Letter School app for learning how to write letters and numbers; this week we will learn a new app called Write My Name.

MATH:

We will focus on identifying and writing the numbers 6-9. We will practice describing and sorting shapes, as well as identifying & extending patterns.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES: 

This week we will begin reading and talking about Fall, and all of the changes that occur in Fall. We will also begin our Science unit on ‘living and non-living things.’

Walking Fieldtrip on Friday

What a great week we have had!  Our butterfly emerged and we tagged it and released it off to Mexico. The kids were excited but also a little sad.  One student said on our way back into the classroom, "I miss him already."  Tomorrow, Friday, we will be taking a walking fieldtrip to the butterfly garden in McBain.  Laura Quist and Kelly Taylor from the Missaukee Conservation District will be meeting us there to help us explore some of the plants that attract butterflies and see what other insects we can find.  Please be sure to dress your child in comfortable shoes for walking:)

REMINDER - Picture Day

Just a reminder that tomorrow - Tuesday, September 13th is our picture day.  Everyone will be photographed, but if you'd like to purchase pictures, please be sure to send in their completed picture form AND please remind them to give it to me first thing tomorrow morning:)

Have a great night!

Newsletter Updates for the Week of September 12th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Tuesday, September 13th—K-2 Picture Day

-Monday, September 19th—Delayed Start (10:00)

-Friday, September 23rd—Mobile Dentist

STUDENT OF THE WEEK: 

Our student of the week is Riley. Riley enjoys riding her bike and playing outside. Her favorite food is pizza and she enjoys reading Nursery Rhymes.   Some of Riley’s goals include playing soccer this Fall and becoming an athlete when she gets older—she loves to run!  Congratulations to Riley on being our Student of the Week!

PICTURE DAY:

Our picture day is tomorrow—Tuesday, September 13th.  ALL students will be photographed for the yearbook 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!

THANK YOU: 

I just wanted to say a big ‘thank you’ to all of you for being so generous in providing supplies for our classroom. It is great to have the cupboards stocked and ready for a great year of learning and fun!  Thank you!!

PERMISSION TO PHOTOGRAPH:

The office has asked us to check with parents regarding photographing students.  We like to document learning and fun throughout the year and photos of students will often be on the school’s website and/or Facebook page. If you do NOT want your child photographed please let me know and I’ll make sure the office is notified.

READING:

This week our reading lessons will focus on the letters I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, & R. We will also introduce the sightword—can. We will continue to work on recognizing, naming, and writing our letters during literacy stations. The students have learned a couple of fun learning apps on their ipads and are enjoying starfall.com on the computer each day. They are also doing a wonderful job of reading from their book boxes during ‘read-to-self' time after lunch. This week we will introduce Eagle Eye who reminds us to look at the pictures for clues to figure out the words while we are reading.

WRITING: 

We will continue our unit on Speaking & Listening as we talk about ‘things we know and can do.’  We will also learn about question words and practice using them—who, what, when, where, why, & how, as well as prepositional phrases (positional words) - on, under, between, over, etc.  We will complete a journal page about butterflies as we practice adding colors and details.

MATH:

We will be learning how to identify and write the numbers 3, 4, & 5.  We will also practice counting items using one-to-one correspondence and work on building numbers using different manipulatives. We will create and interpret data with graphs this week; we will graph our birthdays and our ages.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES: 

This week we will continue to discuss the difference between past, present, and future events. We are patiently waiting for our butterfly to emerge so that we can release it to migrate to Mexico—the students have been so excited to watch this process! This week we will also begin our study of apples; we will be reading several books related to apples and incorporate apples into our Math & Science lessons throughout the week.

Butterfly Event this weekend

Parents - Here is a neat opportunity at the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids this weekend, if you are looking for some family fun.

Here is the link to the John Ball Zoo Website
http://www.jbzoo.org/

Thanks for the information Lorenz Family:)
We are hoping our Butterfly emerges next week and then we will let it go - "Gotta Go, Gotta Go, Gotta Go to Mexico"

Newsletter Updates for the Week of September 6th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Tuesday, September 13th—K-2 Picture Day

-Monday, September 19th—Delayed Start (10:00)

We had a busy first week getting to know each other and beginning to establish our classroom routines.  It will take a few weeks to get the routines down. Thursday 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.  We finally found our Gingerbread Man back in our 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 about it.

SPECIALS:  

This week we will begin our normal schedule for specials:

Gym—Wednesday & Thursday with Mrs. Sluiter

Music—Tuesday with Mrs. Wheeler

Library—Friday—Every other week

THE FLU BUG: 

Just a heads-up that last Thursday we had several elementary students out with the stomach flu (the meanest, dirtiest, down-right disgustingest, most invisibliest germ of all) and the majority of those were Kindergartners:( Please watch your child for signs/symptoms and be sure to make sure they get plenty of rest.  I will keep sanitizing the classroom as best I can and encouraging good hand-washing.  Also, please be sure to keep your child home if they have thrown up within the last 24 hours.

READING:

The next 3 weeks we will be focusing on learning our letters by studying the letters in our names. We will introduce 2 letters each day and do several activities with the focus letters. Once we’ve made it through the entire alphabet, we will then start an in-depth study of each letter, spending a week on each letter. This week our reading lessons will focus on the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, & H. We will also introduce our first sightword—I.  We will spend time learning the parts of a book and practice tracking print from left to right, as we read and recite familiar nursery rhymes.

BOOK BOXES: 

I still have a couple of students who need to bring in their 5-8 books from home. We will begin reading from our own book boxes by the end of this week. We will learn 3 ways to read a book—reading by looking at the pictures, retelling a familiar story from memory, & reading the words. Our goal is that students will begin seeing themselves as ‘readers.’

WRITING: 

This week we will complete a couple of journals about ourselves—a self portrait and what we like to do at school. Students will be practicing writing their names, handwriting the letters A-H, and writing simple sentences using the sightword I. When practicing writing your child’s name with them at home, please be sure to begin with an uppercase letter and use lowercase for the rest of their name. Also, when forming our letters, we always stress starting our letters at the top:)

MATH:  

This week we will go on a Number Hunt, looking for numbers in our environment. We will be learning how to write and represent the numbers 0 & 1. We will also practice counting items using one-to-one correspondence.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES:  

This week we will continue to read many books about starting school and what it means to be a ‘good friend.’ We will continue to learn about the lifecycle of a butterfly as our caterpillar is now safe inside his chrysalis.  We will also learn about the American Flag and learn the Pledge of Allegiance.