Week of 1/28

I wanted to thank parents and students for having such a great first month of book reports with the Blue Bags! Everyone is working on letting their children do all their own spelling, and are encouraging them so well in their efforts! I already see improvement in the writing just in this short time. Remember that the focus in kindergarten is giving kids the ability to use their phonics skills to write on their own and get their thoughts down on paper. As they move through the grade levels, spelling will become more of a focus. Right now the focus is the process and applying phonetic sounds so that they have that framework to fall back on whenever they need to write on their own.

We had a wonderful "Snow Day" on Friday-- thank you!  The kids all looked so cute in their snow gear and I think they enjoyed all the snow-themed activities. I have sent a snowy portrait of each child through SeeSaw, and other pictures from the day will come soon!

Language Arts:
We will work on the word families it and in this week, reading and spelling words like sit, fit, pin, and fin. We are now up to 30 sight words.  Please check the "High Frequency Word" link on this website and make sure that your child knows the words we've introduced, as this is a heavy emphasis at this time. If your child is needing more practice with these words, a good website to go to is: http://www.spellingcity.com/k2grist There are several good games on this site for reinforcing the sight words. Another site to continue taking advantage of is lexia.com. There are a lot of great reading skill-building activities in Lexia. Please email me if you are having trouble getting your child logged onto this site. 
 
We will continue reading and writing with a snow theme. We will read Elmer in the Snow by David McKee this week and do a fun art project. We will also read many 100 Day-themed books. Finally, we will sneak in a few Groundhog-themed books, in honor of Groundhog's Day on Friday.

Math:
We will continue working in Module 4, Number Pairs, Addition, and Subtraction to 10. Parent tips for this unit can be found here.

UPCOMING

100 Day:
100 Day will be on Thursday, and the students are very excited about it! Because another main focus of kindergarten math is number sense, number recognition, and counting, we count out the number of days we've been in school as part of our calendar activities each day. During this time, we study place value and number recognition to 100. We study patterns on the 1-100 number chart and do mental math using the chart. On the 100th day, we have a fun celebration and look at the value of 100 in different ways. We have been looking forward to filling our 1-100 chart for quite a while now, so Thursday will be a special day!

Valentine's Day:
On Thursday, February 14th, we will be celebrating Valentine's Day in class. We do not have a party, we just pass out valentine cards. Just to give you some advanced notice (since I know your children will be eagerly shopping for/making Valentines soon!) in kindergarten, we have the kids sign their valentines, but we do not have them write who the valentine is "to." This makes distribution MUCH easier. So please sign the cards, but leave the "to" box blank. Please send in 21 valentines so that there are enough for each child in the class. Thanks!

Conferences:
I will be sending out a sign-up for Spring conferences this week. Conferences run from March 7th to March 13th. I will not be conferencing on March 14th or 15th (even though those dates are in the Spring conference window) due to my attendance at the CUE Conference. Conferences will be scheduled just like in the Fall-- take a look at the schedule and type in your child's name in a slot that works for you.

 This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Return Blue Bags (Hiromi), Daily 5, Centers (Sarah & Jenny)
Tuesday: Daily 5, Centers (Hiromi & Barbara)
Wednesday: Recess 101, Blue Bags go home

Thursday: 100 Day!, Daily 5, Centers (Erika/Pablo & Brandie)
Friday: Daily 5, STEAM Centers (Mary & Claire)

Upcoming Events
Thursday 1/31: 100 Day
Wednesday, 2/6: Global Play Day
Friday, 2/8: AV Family Valentiine's Dance
2/18-2/22: President's Week Vacation
3/7-3/13: Spring Conferences