Week of 11/29

Dear Parents,

I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving break. I'd like to thank all of you for making the Feast such a success! I heard from Mrs. Arrasmith that we had a wonderful spread of food, and the children all looked darling! Thanks to the MANY parents who helped with that event.

Now...onto a very busy but exciting time in kindergarten as we prepare for our Nutcracker performance on the 18th, as well as continue with all the academics & seasonal artwork!

Academics
We will have a new letter this week, Vv, and the Alphafriend is Vinnie Volcano. We will also have a new high frequency word, to. We will begin a math topic on addition this week. We will do a lot of manipulative-based activities to build a visual understanding of math facts. Any reinforcement you can provide at home on this would be great, as this is obviously a core concept.

At the side of this webpage, there is a link for kindergarten websites.  There is one website, http://www.spellingcity.com/k2grist that I'd like you all to check out with your children. This is a fun way to reinforce both the sight words and short-vowel words that they will be expected to recognize and spell in kindergarten. I have pre-loaded the list of sight words onto Spelling City, but if you want to make your own list of short-vowel words, you can do that, too. In addition to Spelling City, you may also want to check out: www.kidsa-z.com  This website has a large collection of books that your children can read (or listen to) online. For every book they read, the children receive stars that can be used to build a robot on the site. This is another great reading reinforcement website.

We will return to centers for the next two weeks, then we take a break from centers again the week of December 13th. Please check the helper schedule.

This week's sharing is Book Share. Please have your child bring in a favorite book and be prepared to tell: 1) The Title  2) A bit about what the book is about  3) Show a favorite page (please bookmark).

We have an Art Vista lesson this Friday the 4th. Thanks to Amorette, Kim, and Johanna for this presentation.

Upcoming
Thank you for returning your blue bags last week. If you still have a white envelope, please send it in on Monday.  Blue Bags will go home for the next two weeks. They will not go home on December 16th.

On December 16th, we will be having our annual "Nutcracker Hat Party."  We need parents to come in straight after the p.m. class's Wacky Wednesday (1:20) to help make all the paper parts of the Nutcracker costumes.  Children are invited to play in the classroom while parents create from provided patterns.  If all goes well, this will last about an hour: 1:20 to 2:20 or so.  Please let us know if you can join!

Looking forward to seeing everyone Monday!

This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Centers (Camille & Johanna), Sharing
Tuesday: Centers (Jerri & Gwenny), Sharing
Wednesday: Computers (Lawrence), Sharing, Blue Bags go Home

Thursday: Centers (Jill & Pantea), Sharing
Friday: Story time with Grandma Gail, Art Vistas, SPARK P.E. (Jill)

Upcoming Events:

12/4: Art Vista Set B

12/16: Nutcracker "Hat Party" at 1:20 (we need parents to come & help with costume-making)
12/18: Nutcracker Performance @ 10:00
12/19-1/3: Winter Break
1/18: No School: MLK Day
2/2: 100 Day

Week of 11/15

Dear Parents,

It was great meeting with all of you the past two weeks to discuss your children's progress. Thank you so much for providing support to your children in areas that we went over, for having them continue to practice using Lexia and IXL, and for helping them with homework and preparing their sharing. Kindergarten is such a year of fantastic growth, and you are a huge part of that. Thank you!

Report cards will go home Friday with you or your child in a manilla envelope that needs to be returned with a signature when we resume school on November 30th. Please put those in a safe spot so that they don't get forgotten.

I hope you had fun with the "Turkey Trouble" homework project, and I look forward to seeing those tomorrow. We will be writing about the turkey this week in class, so please try and have your homework bags ready tomorrow. There will be no homework this week due to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, but there will be white envelopes. Please return those Thursday so that you have one less thing to remember on November 30th!

Curriculum
Our letter this week will be Hh. The Alphafriend is Hattie Horse. We will also be introducing our first vowel, Aa, Andy Apple! This means that we will be doing much more blending and spelling short-vowel words now. Our new sight words are a and an. It's a little confusing having "a" as both a letter and a word this week, so make sure your children are clear on the difference. We continue reviewing numbers to 10 and shapes in math. After Thanksgiving, we will begin addition.

This week's sharing is Letter of the Week: Hh. Please have your children bring three clues about something that starts with Hh. The clues are important in case they forget what they are going to say, so please take the time to prepare them and go over the clues with your child.

This week, we will also continue taking a closer look at the Pilgrims & Native Americans as we talk about the first Thanksgiving & prepare for our reenactment of this event, our Friendship Feast on the 20th. We have a great simple book that we will be putting together about the first Thanksgiving, and we have some interesting books that we will be reading to the children. It would be wonderful if you can all join us for the Feast on Friday, even if you can only come briefly. The children look so cute in their costumes & love sharing the meal with family members. They will sing a couple of songs for you and then we will get started with the meal. Younger siblings are welcome if there is a child care issue. Thank you to everyone for sending in food for the event! The sign-ups are looking very good, but if you still haven't had a chance to check it out, you can do so here: https://goo.gl/xgjxJg 

Upcoming Events
We are glazing our clay projects this Wednesday. Please don't send your children in any special outfits that day, as the clay glaze does stain. Please contact Jill Brehmer if you can help with this. We will be glazing first thing in the morning at the picnic table outside our classroom due to the Wacky Wednesday that day
.
Looking ahead on your calendars at this busy time of year, I wanted to make sure that you are all marking your calendars for Friday, December 18th at 10:00-- our annual performance of The Nutcracker. This is something that you will not want to miss. To help you clear your calendar, the kindergarten teachers have decided that we will do our class holiday party and the Nutcracker performance all on the same day. We will have a big "cast party" after the performance so that we can send the kids off on a great holiday break!

Have a great Thanksgiving!

This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Return Blue Bags (Jillian), Centers (Camille & Hiromi), Sharing
Tuesday: Centers (Tanya & Lizl), PE with Coach Jose, Sharing
Wednesday: Clay (Jill, Johanna, Lizl, ????), Computers (Conrad), Sharing

Thursday: Centers (Jill & Lisa), Sharing
Friday: Sharing, FRIENDSHIP FEAST @ 10:15

Upcoming Events:

11/18: Clay Glazing
11/20: Friendship Feast @ 10:15
11/23-11/27: No School: Thanksgiving Break

12/4: Art Vista Set B
12/16: Nutcracker "Hat Party" at 1:20 (we need parents to come & help with costume-making)
12/18: Nutcracker Performance @ 10:00

Week of 11/8

Dear Parents,

We have an abbreviated week this week due to the Veteran's Day holiday on Wednesday. Our center schedule will not be interrupted, however. Blue Bags will come home on Tuesday so that you have an extra day to work on a special homework project (described below). Please be sure to return your child's complete blue bag tomorrow so that I can get them turned around in one day. Thank you!

Curriculum
Our letter this week is Nn, and our Alphafriend is Nyle Noodle. Our sight words this week will be with and be.  In math, we continue our review weeks.  We will still be looking at 3D & 2D shapes, while also looping back to decomposing numbers to 10.

Sharing this week will be Homemade Item. Your child can bring in any craft or project s/he made at home or at preschool, summer camp, etc. No clues are necessary. Your child should just be prepared to explain how the item was made, materials used, and information like that. Wednesday sharing kids can share any other day this week.

This week in class, we will be doing some non-fiction writing about owls. We have a few books we will be reading to learn more about owls and we will use that information to write a sentence or two.

We will also have some fun with turkeys! We will put together a cute book about a Pilgrim on a search for a turkey. We will also read the book Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano, which is a funny story about a turkey who wants to avoid becoming Thanksgiving dinner, so he disguises himself as different animals on the farm. We will do several activities that go along with this story. Finally, our homework this week includes a fun project where your child will have the opportunity to disguise a turkey, just as the turkey in Turkey Trouble disguises himself. Feel free to get creative with these disguises! Add some dimension to the pictures with construction paper, stickers, etc. Here is a picture of a sample project I found on Pinterest:

Upcoming Events:
The link to sign up for our Friendship Feast food and parent help can be found here. Please check it out and sign up for an item to bring, and if you can help, please sign up for that as well. We need everyone's contributions to make this event a success! Thank you also to the parents who cut out the costumes for this event: Lizl Pienaar, Jillian Brandt, Hiromi Kumayama, and Nancy Cardenas. I truly appreciate your help!

We also will be glazing our clay projects that we created a few weeks ago on Wednesday 11/18. We need many parent helpers to set up, work with the children, and clean up. If you can help with this, please email either me or Jill Brehmer. Thank you!

Remember that report cards will be sent home on Friday, November 20th. They will be in an envelope in your child's backpack, unless I hand it to you at the Feast. Please hang onto the envelope over the Thanksgiving break and return it signed to me on Monday, November 30th.

This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Return Blue Bags (Jillian), Centers (Camille & Johanna), Sharing
Tuesday: Centers (Tanya & Lynda), Sharing
Wednesday: NO SCHOOL

Thursday: Centers (Jill & Lawrence), Sharing
Friday: Story Time with Grandma Gail, Cornerstone (Matt & Meg), Sharing, SPARK P.E. (Jill)

Upcoming Events:
11/11: No School: Veteran's Day

11/18: Clay Glazing
11/20: Friendship Feast @ 10:15
11/23-11/27: No School: Thanksgiving Break

12/4: Art Vista Set B
12/16: Nutcracker "Hat Party" at 1:20
12/18: Nutcracker Performance @ 10:00