Week of 1/22

I hope you are enjoying some fun family time on this long weekend. We have Monday off school in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. On Tuesday, it will be very important to return the Blue Bags on time since we only have a day to turn them back around. So please put them by the door or wherever you will remember them Tuesday morning.

We have Snow Day this week. It will be on Friday, at the beginning of school, for both K1 & K2. This is a day when the children come to school all dressed in their snow gear-- whatever items you have. Mittens, knit hats, jackets, snow boots, scarves, goggles, etc. are all welcome! Please do not buy anything special for this day, just use what you have or borrow from a friend. They wear their gear, and then we will be having a "snowball fight" using wadded up recycled paper & later we'll have some hot cocoa at snack!  Our STEAM centers that day will all be snow-themed. It is always lots of fun. If you want to stick around to collect snow gear back up or just to watch the fun, feel free.

Language Arts:
This week, we will return to word families. The two word families we will work on are ot and op. Children will be reading and spelling words like hot, rot, got and mop, hop, top. We will also have two new sight words: not and said. A good way to practice reading and spelling the sight words is by logging onto http://www.spellingcity.com/k2grist, where I have uploaded our complete sight word list, as well as broken it in half to study a list with the first 25 words.  "Missing Letter" and "Audio Word Match" are great games for younger players.

Our story this week is Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner. We will write our own "Snowmen at Night" adventures after reading this story.

Math:
We are currently working on Module 4: Number Pairs, Addition & Subtraction to 10. This is an extremely important part of our kindergarten math program, and we dedicate a large amount of time to this module. In fact, we will be on this module for the remainder of this trimester. Parent tips for this module can be found here. I do recommend that you look these over, because there will be some new vocabulary for those of you who do not have older students who have done the Eureka math program. Of particular importance are the words "compose" (finding numbers that add up to a given number-- like 3 & 2 compose 5) "decompose" (take apart a number-- like 5 can be 4 & 1) and number bonds (a model to show mathematical thinking).

Blue Bag Book Reports
The book reports  in the blue bags looked great last week! I just want to reiterate that your children should be writing as independently as possible on the journal page. If they become over-dependent on an adult spelling words for them, they will have great difficulty when we write in class. We do have a writing assessment coming up in February. I want all the children to be comfortable and able to put a sentence together on their own so that this assessment is not stressful for them.

This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: No School
Tuesday: Return Blue Bags, Daily 5, Centers (Chris H. & Barbara)
Wednesday: Recess 101, Blue Bags go home

Thursday: Daily 5, Centers (Erika/Pablo & Ellen)
Friday: Snow Day Fun, Daily 5, STEAM Centers (Virginia & Claire)

Upcoming Events
Monday 1/21: Martin Luther King Day, No School
Wednesday 1/23 @ 5:30: Kindergarten Registration Info Night
Friday 1/25: Snow Day
Thursday 1/31: 100 Day
Friday, 2/8: AV Family Valentiine's Dance
2/18-2/22: President's Week Vacation