Week of 2/27

I hope your children are having a fabulous week off & that you are able to enjoy some family time. The upcoming month will be very busy as we celebrate "Read Across America Day" in honor of Dr. Seuss, and prepare for conferences. I am looking forward to discussing your child's progress with you soon.

I wanted to congratulate everyone on the fantastic job that they did with the President's Reports before break! We had a great variety of sentences, and I think we learned a lot about Lincoln & Washington because of this.

Language Arts
Our word families this week will be ug/ut/un. We have a new high frequency word, and. Continue reviewing those high frequency words posted on our website with your children. Remember that you can also use http://spellingcity.com/k2grist as a fun way to review the words, as I have posted our list on the website. You can encourage your children to play games on the website to become more familiar with the words. Check it out! There is also a Spelling City app for the iPad, if you are interested. Additionally, for those who prefer iPads, Lexia Core 5 is also available as an iPad app.  Use the same login information as previously provided to you. There is also a RazKids app for the iPad. Please continue taking advantage of all these online sites, as well as ixl.com-- they are being provided for you by the Home & School Club and the District for grade level concept reinforcement.

Our stories this week will be books by Dr. Seuss in anticipation of Read Across America Day on March 2nd (Dr. Seuss's birthday). We have some fun activities around these stories, where children will have an opportunity to design and create their own Dr. Seuss creatures and write some adventures about them.

We will have a writing assessment coming up this week. I will share the results of this assessment with you at your parent-teacher conference. Children will be expected to write one or more complete sentence without assistance that covers the given topic. Your children have been doing well with their journals, so I anticipate some good results!

Math
We are continuing with Eureka Math Module 4. We are now focusing on word problems and number sentences. One concept in Eureka Math is getting children to understand that number sentences can be arranged in different orders and still be correct. For example, both 9=5 + 4 and 5 + 4=9 are correct.
Parent tips for helping your child with this unit can be found here. Please continue reinforcing the concept at home.

Read Across America/Sharing
On Thursday, we will be celebrating Read Across America with a reading of a Mo Willems book. Read Across America is a national event that started 20 years ago, and takes place on or around Dr. Seuss's birthday. In honor of the event, our sharing this week will be book share, and I would love it if children would bring in a favorite Dr. Seuss book. As always, children should be prepared to tell the title of their book, a bit about what it's about, and have a favorite page bookmarked. If your child does not have a Dr. Seuss book, any book is fine. We will try to read as many of those books this week as possible, so if your child doesn't bring it home right away, it might be at school waiting to be read!

Upcoming Events
Parent-teacher conferences begin Thursday, March 9th.  If you have forgotten your date/time, please check this link. I have now made this document viewable only (cannot be edited). If you need to change your time, please email me. Just a reminder that we will not have centers during conference time.

On March 8th, we will be sending home a leprechaun trap project for homework.  We will send more specific directions later, but I'm just giving you a heads-up because sometimes the March seasonal items go quickly at stores such as Dollar Tree and Target, so you may want to snap up your trap supplies while they are available.

Finally, on Friday, March 31st, we will have a special event called Spring Fling. Fun spring-themed centers will be a part of the day to celebrate the kick-off to our Spring Break. Spring Fling will run from about 9:00 to 10:15. Sign-ups and more information will come later, but we need many helpers to make this event a success.

This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Centers (Minna & Annie), Sharing
Tuesday: Centers (Claire K. & Anne-Marie), Sharing
Wednesday: Writing Assessment, Recess 101, Sharing

Thursday: Read Across America Day, Sharing
Friday: STEAM Centers (Anna R.), Story Time with Grandma Gail, Sharing

Upcoming Events:
2/20-2/24: President's Week Vacation
Thursday 3/2: Read Across America Day
Wednesday 3/8: Leprechaun Trap Project goes home
Wednesday 3/15: Leprechaun Traps returned to school
3/9-3/17: Spring Conferences
Saturday 3/18: Alta Vista Hawaiian Luau/Auction
Friday 3/31: Spring Fling
4/3-4/7: Spring Break