Newsletter Updates for the Week of January 15th

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Wed. Jan. 16th—Jump Rope for Heart Kick Off

-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

SLEDDING PARTY:

We are tentatively planning our annual sledding party for this Friday, January 19th. We’ve lot most of our snow on the playground, but we’ll see what this week brings; I will post on my blog later this week to let you know if it is a go or not. As of right now, Mrs. Johnson & Mrs. Klunder are coming to help out, as well as Grandma Linda.  We will go outside around 10:30, sled for a half hour, and then come inside for some hot chocolate before heading home at 11:35.

VALENTINES PREP:

I know Valentine’s Day is a month away, but for Kindergartners it can take some time to get all of their valentines filled out:) Filling out valentines is a great opportunity to practice handwriting and also a good ‘snow day’ activity:) I’m attaching a class list for you to use. Also, please send in an empty cereal box, which we will be decorating to collect our valentines.

READING:

Do to our snow days, I’m a couple days behind, so we will finish up our Reading lessons from last week and then begin the new lessons on Thursday. We will be reading stories about how living things, such as trees, change as they grow. Your child will learn to name the parts of a tree, such as a trunk, bark, branches, leaves, and roots. Here are some activities that you can do with your child to help reinforce the skills we will be practicing:

· Vocabulary—develop & amazing—draw a picture of a tree and encourage your child to tell facts about trees.

· Sightwords—are & had—Have your child practice writing these words and using them in a sentence.

· Category Words—tree parts—Have your child draw a tree and label the parts—roots, trunk, branches, leaves, etc.

· Phonics—Letter Ee—Have your child think of words that have the short e and long e sound and make a list of each.

· Beanie Baby Strategies—This week we will use Chunky Monkey to read and write words with the en, et, ed, & ell word families & use Flippy the Dolphin to read and write words with the short & long e sounds. We will introduce Helpful Kangaroo who reminds us that if we are trying to figure out a tricky word it’s okay to ask for help after we’ve tried all of our strategies.

· Raz-Kids—The students have been reading ‘good-fit’ books on their ipads in the classroom. I’ll be sending a letter home with information about how you can access it at home—it is a great resource for young readers!

WRITING:

We will finish up our see-saw pattern book and then begin a new pattern book that has a question and answer sentence structure. We will also be writing our own “I have a dream . . . .” page in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES:

This week we will continue our Science Unit on Forces & Motion and conduct some hands-on experiments involving bowling pins and learn about the force of air.  We will read several informational texts related to freedom and equality in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

MATH:

This week we will work on writing and building teen numbers using ten frames and base 10 blocks and play some fun games involving 2D & 3D shapes.