As you know, we got some snow over break! Students will continue to go outside at recess during the winter as long as the temperatures are above 0. Please send full winter gear to school with your child (snow pants, boots, coat, hat, gloves/mittens) daily.
Important Dates:
January 15: 1/2 day 11:30 dismissal
January 18-22: Celebrate New Directions Week (more info to come)
January 19: Spaghetti and Art family Night
January 20: NO SCHOOL for students
January 21: Family Gym Night
Please take a peek at the January lunch menu and January school and specialist news!
Reading: January is always such an exciting time for kindergarten learning. All of a sudden the students just....take off! Our new reading unit is entitled Bigger Books, Bigger Reading Muscles. In this unit students will continue to use the super power we learned last unit, but also learn more about the next levels of books they are moving into and what makes them so tricky. This week we will study patterns in our books, identify words that change in the patterns, and also what to do when the pattern breaks. We will be reassessing student reading levels as we move towards the end of the 2nd quarter (yes..next week!) and you may notice some new 'dot' colors or more challenging texts within the same dot color coming home with your child in the near future.
Writing: We said farewell to true story writing before we left for break and will welcome procedural or how-to writing this week. We will explore this type of writing by first reading and discussing many different how-to books and then we'll work together to write a class piece that teaches others, step by step, how to do something we do each day in our class (like making a lunch choice). Then the children will be off to brainstorm teachable topics and write their own teaching books. I know they will just love this type of writing! You can encourage idea generating at home by discussing things they do each day and then listing the steps involved in those tasks. Talking these things through will help them to easily transition to this type of writing.
Math: In math our main focus still remains teen numbers and fluency with addition and subtraction equations. A big part of this unit is also being able to see and name the partners of a number when using math tools or looking at math drawings. This week we will review finding a group of ten in a teen number, practice counting on from 5 to find larger sums and naming partners of numbers 2-6. The math centers we will work in this week are:
- creating a teen number book
- building teen numbers using 10 strip, 5 strips and single chips
- showing partners of a number using dots and break apart sticks
- using dominoes to practice adding and equation writing
Social Studies: We will spend this week reviewing the "cool tools" we learned at the beginning of the year for expectations in the various areas of the school. After two weeks off, students will likely need to shake some rust off of these behaviors as we get back into the groove!
Word Work: New sight words for the next two weeks are: play, have, get, will, for
Invite your child to try to spell these words in lots of ways: write them using a variety of tools, spell orally in the car, magnetic letters, or on a drawing app.
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