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
