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 continue the study of shapes this week in math. Last week was a review of the plane shapes-- square, rectangle, circle, and triangle. This 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. Items such as blocks, different types of balls/marbles, canned food, etc. have been brought in the past for these shapes. They need to tell which shape the item is. It will be fun to see the different way that solid shapes can look.
The kids enjoyed the lessons from our science unit, "Wood & Paper," last week. They had fun 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! We will get back to science after parent-teacher conferences, when we will be sanding wood and looking at sawdust and also adding water to sawdust, along with several other experiments with wood.
For the "Donate & Celebrate" auction, both the a.m. & p.m. classes will be auctioning off large versions of the beautiful blossom scrolls that the children did (which are still hanging in our classroom) for Chinese New Year. This should be a beautiful contribution to the auction and you will definitely want to bid on them! Even if you are unable to attend the auction, you can still bid on items online. Information about the online auction has been sent out and will continue to be updated. This may be an item you'd be interested in bidding on, along with the "after school playdate" that we will be hosting in K2. Information about this item is posted next to the classroom door-- check it out when you pick your child up!
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 10th, along with the Blue Bag journal (there will be no other homework this week). Children who normally share on Friday will need to bring their traps Mon-Thurs, as we are setting up the traps at the end of the day on Thursday. 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 if your child shares on Friday), then on the 14th, we will set the traps in hopes of catching the little guys! We will come in on Friday the 15th and check the results of our traps, then send the traps home with the children for the weekend!!
Parent-teacher conferences begin Monday the 4th. If you have forgotten your date/time, please e-mail me. I will again be meeting with you up in the office conference room, which is the 2nd door on the right after you go past Miss Vicki's desk. We will not have centers during conference time.
Upcoming Events:
3/4-3/15: 2nd Trimester Parent-Teacher Conferences
3/15: Donate & Celebrate Auction
3/27: March's Wacky Wednesday
4/5: Spring Fling
4/8-4/12: Spring Break
4/24: April's Wacky Wednesday & Field trip to Farm
5/3: Cinco de Mayo Dance
5/10: Mother's Day Celebration
