Newsletter Updates for the Week of January 8th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Mon, Jan. 15th—Delayed Start—Theme—Integrity

-Thurs., January 18th—1/2 Day—Dismissal @ 11:35

-Fri., Jan. 19th—1/2 Day—Kindergarten Sledding Party—Dismissal @ 11:35

-Mon., January 22nd—Dibels Testing

-Fri., January 26th—Report Cards Home

STUDENT OF THE WEEK: 

Our student of the week is Dayana Ugarte Gonzalez.  Dayana’s favorite movie is Frozen and at school she loves to imagine and play in the dramatic play area. Her goals for Kindergarten include learning how to spell words and make friends—which she is doing each and every day! Congratulations to Dayana on being our Student of the Week!

SLEDDING PARTY:

We are tentatively planning our annual sledding party for Friday, January 19th,  but I am NOT telling the students until it gets closer in case the weather doesn’t cooperate.  We will go outside around 10:30, sled for a half hour with the other Kindergarten classes, and then come back inside for hot chocolate before going home at 11:35. I am looking for a couple of parents, or grandparents, who would be willing to come in around 10:15 and help. I could use a couple people willing to go outside and push kids down the hill AND at least 1 person to stay inside and prepare our hot chocolate. Please let me know if you are willing and available to help out!

READING:

This week our class will be focusing on plants and what they need in order to grow, such as water, food, and air; we will read several stories about gardens. Here are some activities that you can do with your child to help reinforce the skills we will be practicing:

· Vocabulary—require & plant—Talk about things that living things need/require in order to live and grow.

· Sightwords—my & at—Encourage your child to say sentences using the words my and at. Record the sentences on paper and leave a blank where the words should be. Then have your child write the words in each space.

· Category Words—size words—Take turns describing things according to size and/or practice sorting household items according to size.

· Phonics—Letter Hh—Play a rhyming game; for example, what word starts with h and rhymes with pen? (hen). Provide clues as needed.

· Comprehension—Character, Setting, & Events—Have your child think of a favorite story. Then ask questions about the main characters, where the story takes place, and what events happen at the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

· Beanie Baby Strategies—This week we will introduce a new comprehension strategy—Repair Bear—who reminds us to stop while we are reading and check to see if we are understanding what we are reading. If not, we need to go back and reread.

  

WRITING:

We will create a snowman using punctuation marks and also work together in teams to cooperate to build snowmen using rhyming words.  We will begin writing a new pattern book that has a see-saw structure.

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES:

This week we will be reading several narrative stories about snowmen. We will also begin our Science Unit on Forces & Motion and conduct some hands-on experiments involving gravity, pushes, & pulls.

MATH:

This week we will be reviewing 2D shapes and begin learning about 3D/solid shapes (cube, sphere, cone, rectangular prism, etc.) We will also continue to work on writing and building teen numbers using ten frames and base 10 blocks.