Week of 11/3

Dear Parents,

I hope you all enjoyed a fun Halloween with your children.  What a great party we had in class!  A huge thanks to the room parents and parent helpers who organized such wonderful Halloween centers & treats.  The kids all enjoyed themselves very much.

Remember that Daylight Savings Time ends.  Hopefully, you got to enjoy an extra hour of sleep on Sunday!

Curriculum

Our letter this week is Bb, and our Alphafriend is Benny Bear. Our sight words this week will be like and can.  In math, we are reviewing and expanding the unit on Numbers: 0-10. Again we will be comparing numbers to identify which numbers are more than each other, less than each other, and equal. We will also be ordering numbers and deconstructing them to help children visualize addition problems.  For example, we will break down 8 into 1 & 7 or 2 & 6 or 3 & 5, etc.

Sharing this week will be Letter of the Week share for Bb.  Children should bring in an item that starts with Bb, hide it in a bag, and write three clues for that item.

We are also doing much more writing using phonetic spelling.  We went over this a bit at Back-to-School Night, but this is where children are encouraged to sound words out on their own and spell them phonetically.  For example, they may spell hope as hop or monster as monsr.  These spellings are totally acceptable at this time as a first tool to becoming an independent writer.  Please try your best not to constantly spell words for your child.  Encourage them to think for themselves and experiment with phonics so that they have a tool to fall back on when they need to spell on their own.  We will have a practice writing assessment this week that I will share with you at parent-teacher conferences.

Upcoming

We begin Parent-Teacher conferences next Thursday the 14th through Friday the 22nd. Although grades 1-5 have an altered schedule during conferences, the kindergarten schedule remains the same.  The p.m. class will still dismiss at 2:50 during the duration of conferences, with the exception of Wednesday the 20th, which is a Wacky Wednesday.

We will have no centers for the two weeks due to Parent-Teacher Conferences. However, I will still need help on Wednesdays with Computer Lab, and we will also continue with SPARK P.E., weather permitting. Centers will resume the week after Thanksgiving. There are a few projects that I may need some help on in class in the upcoming weeks. I will try to send out an e-mail for those projects to see if anyone may be available.

Please remember to send in your child's Wednesday envelope, if you have not done so already, by tomorrow. In this week's Wednesday envelope, you will find a sign-up form for the food and help at the Friendship Feast on the 22nd.   Please fill that out and turn it in as soon as you can. We need many helpers and plenty of food to make this a success. We are looking forward to a fun event!

Soon, I am going to start putting together the helper schedule on the website for 2014.  Please e-mail me if any changes need to be made/you need to switch days/etc. If anyone new would like to be added to the schedule, please let me know. Thanks so much to everyone for your generosity with your time-- centers  and all enrichment activities have run SO smoothly so far!

Upcoming Events: 

11/11: No School, Veteran's Day 
11/14-11/22: Parent-Teacher Conferences 
11/20: November's Wacky Wednesday
11/22: Kindergarten Friendship Feast @ 10:15 (a.m. class) and 1:30 (p.m. class)  

12/20: Kindergarten Nutcracker Performance @ 10:00 (a.m. class) & 1:30 (p.m. class)