Dear Parents,
The upcoming week is a review week in language arts. We will start to have many more of these, as we have now learned 19 of the 26 letter sounds. We will be reviewing Dd & Zz this week, as well as reviewing for and have. From our expanded word list (those that are also covered in first grade) we will introduce the words of and not.
We will begin the study of shapes this week in math. This week will mostly be a review of the plane shapes-- square, rectangle, circle, and triangle. Next week we will focus more on the solid shapes-- sphere, cone, cube, cylinder. Again, whatever reinforcement you can provide at home on this vocabulary will be helpful. Additionally, to reinforce the solid shape names, we will have "solid shape sharing" this week! Have your child bring in something shaped like a sphere, cone, cube, or cylinder. They need to tell which shape the item is. It will be fun to see the different way that solid shapes can look.
We will continue our science unit, "Wood & Paper," this week. The kids had fun last week going on a wood hunt, learning about 5 different types of wood, and checking how well those woods absorbed water, as well as trying to sink the wood! This week we will be sanding wood and looking at sawdust and also adding water to sawdust, along with several other experiments with wood.
This Wednesday, your child will bring home a special homework assignment. We will be building leprechaun traps! Get creative and have fun-- traps are due on your child's sharing day the week of the 12th except if your child shares on Friday. If your child shares on Friday, please send in your traps any other day that week, but by Thursday at the latest. There will be more specific directions in the Blue Bag this week, but we do ask two things-- that the traps not contain any unwrapped food items (we've had trouble with ants in the past!) and that the traps are not overly large-- shoebox sized is perfect. We have to store traps from both the a.m. class & the p.m. class, and it gets tricky if we have huge traps. Plus, we're only catching tiny leprechauns :) We will share the traps each day on your child's sharing day (or earlier for Friday kids), then on Thursday the 15th, we will set the traps in hopes of catching the little guys on Friday!
Parent-teacher conferences begin next Monday the 12th. If you have forgotten your date/time, please e-mail me. This trimester, we will be meeting in the media center conference room. Go into the media center (the building behind K2), go past the library desk, and we will be in the first room to the right. We will not have centers during conference time-- parent helpers can enjoy a couple of weeks off!
Parent Helpers: the helper schedule (see "Helper Schedule" link on my website) has now been updated through the end of the year. Please check it out and let me know if there are any conflicts. Thank you all of you for being so reliable & for always finding replacements when there is a conflict. I REALLY appreciate it! Centers have run so smoothly this year, thanks to all of you.
If you have not yet sent in February's Reading is Cool logs, please do so in tomorrow's Blue Bag.
Upcoming Events:
3/10: AV's Donate & Celebrate Auction
3/12-3/20: 2nd Trimester Parent-Teacher Conferences
3/28: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/6: Spring Fling
4/9-4/13: Spring Break
4/25: April's Wacky Wednesday
4/25: Field Trip to Emma Prusch Farm
5/4: Cinco de Mayo Hat Dance
