Week of 2/25

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, St. Patrick's Day, and prepare for conferences. I am looking forward to discussing your child's progress with you soon.

For St. Patrick's Day, we will be doing a special leprechaun trap project in class on March 15th. Please send in small boxes (cracker, tissue, cereal, etc.) and toilet paper/paper towel rolls and any other materials you think could be useful for trap building during the next few weeks!

Also, if your child did not send back the white envelope before vacation, please remember to send it in upon our return. Thank you!

Language Arts
This week, we will be working with the word families ug and ut. We will be reading and spelling words such as bug, mug, rug, but, cut, and nut.  We have two new high frequency words, little and it. Continue reviewing those high frequency words posted on the 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. Please continue taking advantage of all these online sites-- they are being provided for you by 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 and writing projects around these stories, as well as special STEAM centers on Friday.

We will have a writing assessment coming up next 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 continue to focus on decomposing numbers into the various addends. Parent tips for helping your child with this unit can be found here. Please continue reinforcing the concept at home.

STEAM
This Wednesday, we will make a trip to the Makerspace to work with Hexbugs. We will be building mazes out of Legos and sending the Hexbugs through the mazes to see if they can get through. Also, on Friday, we will have a Dr. Seuss-themed STEAM center

Read Across America
On Friday the 1st, we will be celebrating Read Across America with a reading by Grandma Gail, our weekly guest reader. Read Across America is a national event in celebration of reading that started over 20 years ago, and takes place on or around Dr. Seuss's birthday.

Upcoming Events

Conferences:
Parent-teacher conferences begin Thursday, March 7th.  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.  

Spring Fling:
On Friday, April 5th, 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. 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: Daily 5, Centers (Barbara & Jenny)
Tuesday: Daily 5, Centers (Belinda & Hiromi)
Wednesday:Trip to the Makerspace, Recess 101
Thursday: Daily 5, Centers (Erika/Pablo & Ellen)
Friday: Daily 5, STEAM Centers (Claire & Chris H.)

Upcoming Events
2/18-2/22: President's Week Vacation
3/7-3/13: Spring Conferences
3/29: Mulitcultural Faire 
4/05: Spring Fling
4/8-4/12: Spring Break
4/26: Cambrian Relay for Life

Week of 2/4

Now that we've celebrated the 100th day of school (and another one after that), we have 79 days left to go to reach all of our end-of-year kindergarten standards. Please continue supporting your children's educations by reading daily with them, working with them on their writing, and reinforcing math concepts. The year goes by quickly and we still have a lot of work to do! Spring conferences are rapidly approaching (March) and I sent out those sign-ups in a separate e-mail last week. Thank you to so many of you for already signing up-- if you haven't done so already, please select a time. Let me know if you are having any trouble accessing the sign-up.

Great Kindness Challenge
Last week was the "Great Kindness Challenge" in Union School District, and I was so impressed by how fully our kindergartners embraced the challenge. In K2, we encouraged the children to report the kind acts they had done during the week and then take a "kindness loop." We built a chain in our classroom as children continued adding loops through the week. Our goal was to get the chain all the way across the whiteboard, and I am pleased to say we went way beyond that! One child in our class even made a poster with different ideas of kind acts we could do around our community. The week was very inspirational  and I hope you saw (and will continue to see) many kind acts being completed at home.

Language Arts

This week, we will focus on the word families "et" and "en."Children will read and spell words like met, get, and set as well as den, hen, and men. We will be learning two new sight word this week, love and be. We are now up to 32 sight words.  Please check the sight word link on the 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 struggling with these words, a good website to go to is: http://www.spellingcity.com/k2grist and check the "50 Word List" of all the sight words we're covering this year.

Our story this week will be The Mitten by Jan Brett. We will study some of the animals in these stories, especially the hedgehog, to do some non-fiction reading and writing in preparation for our writing assessment later this month. We will also read stories about Chinese New Year, which begins on Tuesday. We will have a few art projects to go along with this event as well.


Math
We will continue working on number bonds and ten frames to familiarize ourselves with fact families to 10.  Parent tips for helping your child with this unit can be found here. Please continue reinforcing addition concepts at home. Dominoes are a great tool for teaching addition-- have the children add up the dots on the two sides of the domino and make a math problem out of it.

Art Vistas/Global Play Day
We have an Art Vista lesson this Wednesday, and it's an exciting one-- fish prints! Children will use an actual fish to paint and create fish prints. I believe we need 1-2 additional helpers for the fish prints. Please contact Kassie or Karla if you are able to help with this activity. Also on Wednesday is Global School Play Day. Due to Art Vistas, p.e. with Coach Justin, and a trip to the MakerSpace, we will be a little tight on time that day, but between those activities, we will play some non-electronic games in the classroom.

Upcoming Events
On Thursday, February 14th, we will be celebrating Valentine's Day in class.  This is not a party, but we will be passing out valentines.  Just a reminder (since I know your children will be eagerly shopping for 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.  Please send in 21 valentines so that there are enough for each child in the class. I know that many store-bought valentines come with candy attached. However, please consider candy-free valentines due to allergies in the class as well as candy overload. Valentines with stickers or tattoos, etc., are greatly preferred and homemade cards and messages are wonderful. Thanks!

See you all Monday, Blue Bags in hand!

This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Blue Bags returned (Yvonne), Daily 5, Centers (Jenny & Nisha)
Tuesday: Daily 5, Centers (Kassie & Hiromi)
Wednesday: Art Vistas (Kassie, Elena, Karla, and ???), Global School Play Day, Recess 101, MakerSpace, Blue Bags go home
Thursday: Daily 5, Centers (Erika/Pablo & Belinda)
Friday: Daily 5, STEAM Centers (Barbara & Claire)

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