Weekly News February 29-March 4

We'll see if March will come in like a lamb or a lion, but either way it will be another exciting month in kindergarten world.  Field trip permission slips for our K-4 trip to the Performing Arts Center are due this week Thursday.  Also, watch for conference confirmation forms to come home later this week.  Here is the homework calendar for March as well as the lunch menu!   

We will be wrapping up our Wood and Paper science unit next week. If you have any wood and/or paper scraps that you are able to donate, please send them to school with your child by this Thursday.  The only stipulation for these donations is that they are a size the students will be able to carry independently.  Paper scraps might include boxes, cardboard, paper towel/toilet paper rolls, etc.

Upcoming Dates:
February 29th: Music and Masterpieces Family Night--Doors open at 5:30
March 11th: Author's Breakfast--stay tuned for more details soon
March 14th: Culvers Night
March 17th: K-4 Field Trip to the Performing Arts Center
March 21st and 22nd: Conferences
March 23-28th: No School--Spring Break!
March 31: Jump Rope for Heart

Reading:  We are starting a new reading unit this week focusing on reading non-fiction texts.  In this unit we will find ways that books are like teachers, helping us learn all sorts of information about the world.  We will spend some time sorting our classroom library into fiction and nonfiction sections as well as some topic favorite topics to help students book shop for texts that will support this work. We will focus on looking closely at the entire page, pointing and talking about details, and asking who, what, when, where, why, and how questions.
 ***Students will not bring home books to read Monday night because of our extensive library sorting.  In this unit, students will be reading mostly nonfiction texts selected from at reading level and also a couple high interest topic books.  The topic books may not be right at your child's reading level so if you notice a drastic change in a text your child brings home some night, it is most likely their topic book selection.***  

Writing: We have been working hard to put our hearts and souls into our writing, making sure our letters are easy to read so that the people who get them can actually read them. When we write to try to change a problem we see, we tell our opinion with a little story, give LOTS of reasons, and suggest a fix-it-idea as a solution to these problems. You may even be the receiver of one of these persuasive letters, convincing you to help change the world from a kindergartner's point of view! 

Math: We are continuing to work on counting and comparing, matching and seeing the extras, adding and subtracting with grocery store items, and identifying the partners of 10. This week the concepts of "Math Mountains" and "Tiny Tumblers" will be introduced along with exploring the attributes of 3-dimensional shapes.
These are the centers for the week:

                                                         ·         Playdoh shapes

                                                         ·         PG 390 Challenge w/ partner

                                                         ·         Stamp pad math mountain

                                                         ·         Minus One Game

Science:  We will paint the paper mache bowls we made last week.  We will continue to explore paper and the many types of paper products by deconstructing paper boxes and trying our hand at weaving.

Word Work:  New sight words: on, are, an, up, this.  If you're looking for a fun website to practice a variety of skills, check out abcya.com  It's packed full of activities sorted by subject and grade level!

Thursday Fun!

We packed a lot of fun and learning into our half day on Thursday!  We wrapped up our reading unit by having a partnership celebration with Ms. Santkuyl's class.  We partnered up with a kindergartener from the other class and shared all we know!

We also made our own paper bowls out of paper mache in science...and it wasn't even that big of a mess! Miracles are happening every day in our classroom!  Here are a few pics of our paper mache adventure.

Finished products drying

Weekly News Feb. 22-26

This week is a short week with a 1/2 day for students on Thursday and no school on Friday.  Wednesday will be a "Wacky Wednesday" in our class, during which we will flop our morning and afternoon schedules and teachers (Mrs. Hurst will be in during the morning and Mrs. Mares in the afternoon).  If you have any schedule changes please let us know so we can make this week go smoothly.  

With March right around the corner, we are moving towards wrapping up our Wood and Paper science unit. If you have any wood and/or paper scraps that you are able to donate, please send them to school with your child.  The only stipulation for these donations is that they are a size the students will be able to carry independently.  Paper scraps might include boxes, cardboard, paper towel/toilet paper rolls, etc.

Upcoming Dates:
February 25th: 1/2 day 11:30 Dismissal
                       PSC Family Night at Funset Boulevard
February 26th: NO SCHOOL
February 29th: Music and Masterpieces Family Night--Doors open at 5:30
March 11th: Author's Breakfast--stay tuned for more details soon
March 14th: Culvers Night
March 17th: All School Field Trip to the Performing Arts Center
March 23-28th: No School--Spring Break!
March 31: Jump Rope for Heart

Reading:  We will wrap up our reading unit this week after spending a few days focusing in various purposes for rereading.  Last week we talked about how EVERYONE rereads for different reasons.  We will continue to transfer that to our own work this week by thinking more deeply about reasons kindergarteners reread: to figure out tricky words, to make your voice sound smooth, and to find parts to share with your reading partner.  

Writing:  This week we are concentrating on making our writing easier to read and using letter writing as a way to persuade others to join our cause to help make a change in the world.  We read, CLICK CLACK MOO COWS THAT TYPE by Doreen Cronin.  In this book, the cows persuaded Farmer Brown to give them what they wanted by writing letters to him until he met their demands.  We are using it as an inspiration to write our own letters to encourage others to join our cause.

Math: Students are continuing to work on finding partners of ten, showing teen numbers as a group of ten ones and extra ones, and 10+  a 1-digit number. This week we will also introduce the concept of greater than or less than as students use matching and counting as strategies for comparing the number of objects in groups.  Our centers for the week are:

• 10 frames and cards
• Showing partners of 10 dice game to find greater than/less than 
• More than, same as, less than using comparing mats 
• Unknown partners game

Science:  We will continue exploring paper this week.  We will investigate how paper reacts with water and look for similarities and differences between paper and wood.  We will also learn more about recycling paper, which will turn into making paper mache on Thursday. 

Word Work:  We will continue to practice the sight words: jump, funny, go, find, not.  One easy way to practice spelling sight words is to have your child write them small, medium, and large.  First they write the word as teeny as possible, then write it again normal, and then a third time jumbo!  This would also be great spelling practicing for any CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words using a variety of vowels.

Field Trip

We had an amazing time on our science-filled field trip to the Paper Discovery Center this morning!  If you have never been to the Paper Discovery Center before think about visiting with your family!  There were tons of activities we didn't have a chance to check out.  Here are some pics of our morning!

Fun on the bus

A bus ride with friends

Ready for a fun day!

Listening to directions

Planning the colors of our paper

Slurry made from paper and water

Squeezing water out of our paper

Making our own paper

Squeezing more water out with couch paper

Pressing out water

Pressing out water

Pressing out water

Building bridges and testing their strength

Counting rings on trees

Building bridges

Testing the strength of various types of wet paper

Testing the strength of wet paper

Identifying parts of trees

Identifying parts of a tree

Building trees

Weekly News February 15th-19th

Things will return mostly to normal this week after a fun-filled last week!  We have our field trip to the Paper Discovery Center on Wednesday.  Please remember to send a cold lunch with your child if you did not order a bag lunch from school when you returned the permission slip.  

Upcoming Dates:
February 17th: Field Trip Permissions slips due back Feb. 12th!
February 25th: 1/2 day 11:30 Dismissal
                       PSC Family Night at Funset Boulevard 4-10pm
February 26th: NO SCHOOL
February 29th: Music and Masterpieces Family Night

Reading:  This week we will continue to focus on calling on the many, many strategies we know to help us as we read.  As you may have noticed from the weekly updates, this really is the meat of this unit--putting together and using all we know.  We will warm up for reading by rereading all the charts in our classroom to remind ourselves of the things we know and also build our partner conversations to help coach each other when we are stuck.  A new strategy that we will learn is that sometimes even after your very best try, you are still stuck and need to just move on (seems like this could be good life advice too!).  We can mark these tricky places with a post-it to come back to later by ourselves or with our partner.

Writing:  We will continue exploring the power of persuasion to help change things we can think can be made better in our world. We 1.) See a problem in our classroom, school, neighborhood, or world, 2.) Think!, 3.) Write a lot!  We are doing that through writing and making signs, letters, books, songs, posters, lists, and even petitions.  We have used the words of Dr. Seuss's Lorax, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's not," to inspire us to show we care a whole awful lot. 

Math: We finished and took our assessment of Unit 3.  We have now begun Unit 4 which focuses on

• seeing the ten in teen numbers (10+3=13)
• knowing all the partners of 10 (1+9=10, 2+8=10, etc...)
• knowing all the partners of the numbers below 10.

Our math centers this week will be:

• 10 frames and cards/showing partners of 10
• equations with grocery store items
• teen number board and paint with q-tips
• unknown partners game

Science:  We LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this science unit!  Every day is packed full of hands-on expieriments, the products of which have now made their way into your home: sandpaper and wood, "sandwhich" or plywood, and sawdust or particle board.  We transferred our how-to writing skills to write a short "how-to make particle board" for the rest of our school.  Our focus will shift from wood to paper this week!  We will wrap up this unit at the beginning of March by making our own wood and paper sculptures.  If you have any wood and/or paper scraps that you would like to donate for this project, please send them to school with your child.  Of course, paper scraps could include boxes, cardboard, paper towel/toliet paper rolls, etc.  

Word Work:  Our new sight words for the next two weeks are: jump, funny, go, find, not.  We have also been working on word families in our classroom.  One way to practice this work at home is to play simple rhyming games.  Have your child pick a word and then take turns coming up with as many rhymes you can think of--and determine if they are real words or made up words.  

Pictures from the week

Whew!  It sure was an exciting week in kindergarten with the 100th day on Monday, a Valentine's Celebration on Friday, and a science experiment every day in between!  Here are a few pics from our week!

Stacking 100 Cups (on the 101st day of school)

The best part is the CRASH!

Sanding wood

Sanding wood

Making our own plywood

Testing how sawdust reacts in water

Making our own particle board

Making our own particle board

Making our own particle board

Passing out Valentines

100th Day Fun!

We had a blast celebrating the 100th Day of School today!  We shared our posters, wrote a class poem, enjoyed our delicious 100 Day snack mix, made crowns, and tackled all sorts of tasks in 100 seconds. Here are a few pics from our fun-filled day!

We started our day with sharing our 100 posters at Morning Meeting

100 Day Snack Mix

Our 100 snack mix was delicious!

How many sit-ups can you do in 100 seconds?

How many blocks can you stack in 100 seconds?

How many times can you write your name in 100 seconds?

How many times can you Hula Hoop in 100 seconds?  A LOT!

How many beads can you string in 100 seconds? 

Making 100 Fruit Loop Necklaces

Weekly News Feb.8-Feb.12

Although February is a short month, it sure is packed full of excitement!  We will begin and end this week with celebrations!  Today we are celebrating our 100th day of school with a variety of activities, including making 100 Day hats, a special 100 day snack mix, stacking 100 cups, and racing against the clock to complete a multitude of tasks in 100 seconds.  On Friday we will have our class Valentine's celebration.  Feel free to send in completed Valentine's at anytime throughout the week.  If you would like to make a special "mailbox" at home you are welcome to; we will also make Valentine's bags on Friday.

Upcoming Dates:
February 8th: 100 Day of School Celebration
February 9th: 1/2 Day 11:30 Dismissal
February 12th: Valentine's Day Celebration
February 17th: Field Trip Permissions slips due back Feb. 12th!
February 25th: 1/2 day 11:30 Dismissal
                       PSC Family Night at Funset Boulevard
February 26th: NO SCHOOL
February 29th: Family Night

Reading:  We will continue to focus on monitoring our reading to check if the words we are reading Look Right, Sound Right, and Make Sense.  We will spend a few days really practicing how to know if a word sounds right by using the way we talk to think of words that sound right and finding words that would complete the sentence.  We then then revisit our persistence power from a few units ago to remember that when we get stuck we can use LOTS of strategies to notice and solve tricky parts: letter sounds, picture cues, meaning of the text, what sounds right, looking for chunks you know, and many more!

Writing:  We will be kicking off a whole new genre of writing this week!  We will begin to explore the power of persuasion as we learn that the words we write can influence others to pitch in and help when needed.  To begin this work we will be looking for problems around our classroom and school and finding a way to write about them to make others aware that they need to be solved!  Some of the ways we will write to persuade will be through books, signs and petitions.  This is a powerful unit for Kindergartners and certainly amps up their motivation to write!

Math: In math we will complete some fun 100 day activities and will take some time to review for and take our Unit 3 test.  We will also be introduced to some important concepts we will focus on in Unit 4, one being finding and recording the partners of 10.  Stay tuned next week for additional skills that will be covered in Unit 4.

Science:  Our Wood and Paper unit is off and rolling!  Last week we learned that different types of wood come from different types of trees and plywood and pressboard are made with pieces of wood and glue.  We also conducted three experiments focusing on if/how wood absorbs water, if wood sinks or floats, and how we could make wood since.  Who knew wood could be so exciting!  This week we will be experimenting with sanding wood and making our own plywood and pressboard.

Word Work:  We will continue to practice the sight words: with, new away, down, do.  One way to practice fluency in reading or writing sight words is to have your child "race against the clock."  Challenge your child to see how many sight words he or she can write, how many times he or she can write just one sight word, or how many sight words he or she can read in a certain amount of time.  Your child might even challenge other family members to a sight word duel!