I hope you've all been enjoying a wonderful week off & took advantage of some time away from the screens! We have a few special things this week, including the launch of our Art Vistas program and a Cornerstone lesson. Because of these different activities, which we will do during our 11;00 meeting, we will not have sharing this week.
Grasshopper Spirit Day
Our last Grasshopper t-shirt Spirit Day was a success! It was great to see everyone on Zoom wearing their class t-shirts. Let's do another one this Wednesday the 2nd.
Curriculum This Week
Word Family: ap
Sight Words: big & in
Math: Continuing with addition
Science: Studying owls & squirrels
STEAM: Hour of Code: Introduction to coding using Kodable app
Word Families
This week's word family is ap. We will use this ending to build words such as: sap, cap, rap, gap and lap. **If your child has still not mastered all letter sounds, please provide additional reinforcement by using apps such as Starfall and Khan Kids, and additional minutes on Lexia outside of class time.
Sight Words
We have now learned 19 of our 40+ sight words. The words we have introduced are: I, see, my, like, at, to, the, a, go, is, me, look, he, no, it, up, can, big, in. If you feel your child needs additional sight word reinforcement, all the words we will be covering this year and more are in the big plastic bag from the original materials. They are on pink card stock. We will be learning all words through level D (the level is at the top of each card). You can also find all words we've introduced so far this year on my website, in the tab titled "High Frequency Word List."
ELA Small Group Materials
- Sight word sentence pack-- "up" is the last word in the first pack & we will start the 2nd pack after the break.
- Warm Up Pack (When I Come to a Tricky Word I Can...is on the front) Butterfly group needs the "Sound Up" chart
- Whiteboard, marker, eraser
- This week, we will continue to use the "Sound Boxes" page in the sleeve in your child's language arts folder.
Math Small Group Materials
- Monday & Tuesday: This page, for our monthly number writing assessment. Please remember to have your child upload the page after our lesson into their SeeSaw slides.
- Wednesday & Thursday: This page, called "Find Friends of 10," which should be in a stapled together pack of similar-looking pages. Please note that there are 2 pages like this & this one says "Reinforce" under the title and has numbers on one side of the boxes. Children will also need a pencil and paperclip for this. No plastic sleeve needed.
- All Days: Flat marbles, whiteboard, marker, eraser
Hour of Code
This week, we will begin using a coding app called Kodable to introduce students to the concept of coding in preparation for Hour of Code, a worldwide movement that officially launches next week. Many of the iPads already have been logged into Kodable with my classroom code, but many haven't. Our class code is: pmu3y9b. If your child's Kodable app is not connected with our classroom code, you can find a tutorial on how to do that (the same one your children will be viewing on Monday) here. Please get your child set up with Kodable in advance so that they can use this app on Monday.
Art Vista
As mentioned previously we will begin the Art Vista program this week on Friday! Children will view a recorded lesson in SeeSaw presented by our fabulous docents, who will be showing famous prints depicting trains. Students will be looking for a particular feature (primary colors, lines, foreground, background, etc.) in each painting. Then they apply what they've learned in the lesson to an art project we will do at our 11:00 Zoom on Friday, so please make sure they watch the video in the morning on SeeSaw. Our first lesson involves using a variety of shapes to create a train. A HUGE thank you again to Faye, who prepared shapes for everyone in the class to use for this project!! If you'd like to cut some additional shapes ahead of the lesson with your child, feel free to do so.
Materials Pick-Up
We will be doing another materials pick-up on Tuesday, December 8th from 12:00 to 12:30 in the Alta Vista kindergarten parking lot.
Upcoming Events
Wednesday, 12/2: Grasshopper t-shirt day
Tuesday, 12/8: Materials pick-up at noon
12/21-1/3: Winter Break
