Newsletter Updates for the Week of February 13th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Tuesday, Feb. 14th—Valentine's Party—pm

-Friday Feb. 17th—NO School—PD for Teachers

-Mon., Feb. 20th—NO School—President’s Day

-Wednesday, Feb 22nd—Progress Reports Home

-Thursday, Feb 23rd—1/2 Day—Conferences 4-7

              -Sledding Party at 10:30

SLEDDING PARTY:

We’ve rescheduled our sledding party for Thurs.  February 23rd.  It is a 1/2 day of school, so we’ll plan to go outside around 10:45, sled for a half hour, and then come back inside for hot chocolate before dismissal at 11:55. We’d love some parent volunteers to join us outside, and at least one parent or grandparent to stay inside and prepare our hot chocolate.  Please let me know if you are willing to help out; we would need you from 10:30-11:55.

VALENTINES: 

Please be sure to send in your valentines on or before Tuesday morning.  The students will be delivering their valentines throughout the morning and then we’ll celebrate together in the afternoon.

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES: 

This week we will read several books related to friendship and kindness, in observance of Valentine’s Day. We will also learn about the important role that our heart plays and have an opportunity to listen to our heartbeats.  In addition we will try to take a walk to the butterfly garden to observe and take photos related to what happens to plants and insects in the winter months and add our observations to our seasons timeline.

READING:

This week our class will be reading stories about different kinds of weather. Your child will be predicting the weather and learning how to describe it. Here are some activities that you can do with your child to help reinforce the skills we will be practicing:

· Vocabulary—predict & weather—look outside with your child and try to predict what the weather will be like later in the day. Try to predict the temperature for tomorrow.

· Sightwords—she & was—hopefully you still have your 51 sightword cards that I gave out at our first conference—these are a great way to practice reading and writing sightwords from memory.

· Category Words—weather words—Print off a blank calendar and each day have your child draw a picture and/or write a word to describe the weather.

· Phonics—initial K, final ck—Help your child find objects that begin with the letter k and end in ck. Make a list of the words.

· Comprehension—key details in a sequence—Have your child listen to a story, then put the story’s pictures in order, numbering them 1, 2, and 3. Invite your child to point to each picture and retell the story.

WRITING: 

This week we will finish up our 1st small moment story about Stone Soup and then begin writing our own individual small moment stories following the same process.

MATH: 

This week we will engage in several FUN math activities and games related to Valentine’s Day—going on a number hunt, measuring using hearts, determining the bigger number on hearts and adding with hearts. We will also be using string to measure how tall we are and compare lengths. We will be creating a graph of our pets as well.