Jan. 30-Feb. 3

It was great to see everyone at Open House!  Thank you for sharing that special time with your child.  We had a busy week in kindergarten and there is a lot of news to share!

First, our week:

Monday was spent getting ready for Open House by decorating our brochures and invitations and writing what we LOVE about kindergarten.  The letter of the week was L and the sight words were "come" and "have."  We read This is the Jacket I Wear in the Snow and used describing words, adjectives, to describe our snow gear.  We visited a website about lions to learn facts and watch video clips about lions.  We made long lions by writing sentences about facts that we learned.

We talked about the subtraction symbol...how it is also called minus and means take away.  We created take away problems using a minus sign stick and blocks.  We practiced the vocabulary including stating that the remaining number is what we have "left over."  We practiced addition and subtraction problems using the calculator and recording our number sentences on our white boards.  We measured things with our feet and will continue measuring next week.

Our cool tool this week was...be and upstander, not a bystander. If you observe a friend being disrespected, stand up for the victim. We learned about different ways we can help make the situation better.

Our science unit is magnets!  We began with exploring magnets in the classroom.  We concluded that magnets stick to certain kinds of metal and not wood, plastic and paper.  We predicted, experimented and recorded the data we collected to find out what objects stick to magnets.  We will continue our magnet unit next week.

Now, the news:
100 Day-  At the beginning of the week, I sent a 100 paper to be filled with items.  Please send these back tomorrow or Monday.  The students will share their papers on Monday.

Valentine's Day - Attached to the email reminder, you will find a letter informing you about the school's policies.  (For example, no food can be attached to the valentines.)In addition, the kindergarten teachers are asking you or your child to address the envelopes "My Friend."  I realize that this is less personal than a name, but it helps the passing out process go more smoothly.  Thank you for your understanding.  We will have 23 students participating at the Valentine' Day party.

CBM Benchmark - On Friday, the winter cbm's will be in your child's folder.  The tests this month included: quantity discrimination (which number is greater 0-10), letter sound fluency (say the letter's sound), nonsense word fluency (decoding, or sounding out made up words such as nop), and highly decodable text (reading a passage with decodable words and sight words in it.)

Conferences - The day designated for conferences will be Tuesday, February 21st.  Letters will be sent home shortly.  While November conferences are scheduled for every student, the February conferences are for students new to the school and students with academic or behavioral concerns.

Have a great weekend!