Week of 12/2

I hope you are all enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving break. I'd like to thank all of you for making the Feast such a success! 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 19th, as well as continue with all the academics & exciting literature!

Language Arts
We will continue working with word families this week, using the ending an. Children will read and write words such as: can, ran, fan, and man. Our sight words this week are big and in. In our literature this week, we will be comparing various versions of The Gingerbread Man and doing crafts and activities around the gingerbread theme.

Parent helpers, we will continue centers for the next two weeks, then we take a break from centers again the week of December 16th. I have sent out the link for dates through February 2020 for centers-- please check the Sign-Up Genius if you can volunteer some time!

Writer's Workshop
As I shared with you at conferences, we have been working on personal narratives in Writer's Workshop. We will be wrapping these stories up in the upcoming week, and then the children will have an opportunity to share their stories with the class. Each child will get to sit on the teacher's chair and read their story to the class on Friday the 6th. While some upper grade classes have invited parents in for these celebrations, we feel that is too intimidating for our budding kindergarten writers, so this will just be a reading with classmates only. I am so excited with the progress children have made so far in their writing!

Math
We will continue with Module 4, Number Pairs, Addition & Subtraction to 10. This is an extremely important part of our kindergarten math program, and we dedicate a large amount of time to this module. In fact, we will be on this module until the end of January. Parent tips for this module can be found here. I do recommend that you look these over, because there will be some new vocabulary for those of you who do not have older students who have done the Eureka math program. Of particular importance are the words "compose" (finding numbers that add up to a given number-- like 3 & 2 compose 5) "decompose" (take apart a number-- like 5 can be 4 & 1) and number bonds (a model to show mathematical thinking).

STEAM
STEAM centers are back this Friday, and we are looking forward to Hour of Code the week of 12/9. In preparation, we will be using a new coding program in the Makerspace this week called CodeSpark.

Upcoming
You will be receiving a note regarding your child's Nutcracker part, and what s/he should wear for the performance in this week's Wednesday envelope. Please let me know if there are any problems with gathering up the various clothes needed-- most girls will be wearing leotards, and most boys will be wearing dark pants and either a light or dark shirt. Hopefully, if there is a clothing item you do not have, you can borrow it, as I do not intend for you to have to buy anything.  Girls-- I have several leotards that used to be my daughter's that can be borrowed.  Again, the performance of the Nutcracker will be at 10:00 on the 19th. Please plan on joining us for this memorable event!

On another Nutcracker note, I am in need of a few people who can help with make-up and costuming on the day of the show. You will come into the classroom at about 8:45 and call children back one-by-one to get them ready for the stage. Please email me if you can help with this!

This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Daily 5, Centers (Doreen & Agnieszka)
Tuesday: Daily 5, Centers (Claire & John)
Wednesday: Rhythm & Moves P.E., CodeSpark in the Makerspace, Music, Blue Bags go home w/ Nutcracker parts
Thursday: Daily 5, Centers (Tiffany G. & Hema)
Friday: Daily 5, STEAM Centers (Suman & Carlene)

Upcoming Events:
11/25-11/29: Thanksgiving Break
12/9-12/15: Hour of Code/Computer Science Week 

Thursday 12/19: Nutcracker Performance at 10:00
12/21-01/05: Winter Break

Friday 01/17: No School: Professional Development Day
Monday 01/20: No School: MLK Day
Tuesday 01/28: 100 Day
02/17-02/21: President's Week Vacation

Week of 11/18

We are excited for our Friendship Feast this Friday! It would be wonderful if you could all join us at 10:00 in the cafeteria 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 few 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 those of you who have signed up to help with the event. We do have some "holes" in our sign-ups. You can check out the sign-ups here.

Please send in your child's Blue Bag on Monday, but they will not go home this Wednesday due to the upcoming Thanksgiving break. White envelopes will go home, so please make every effort to return those on Thursday so that they don't get misplaced over the break.

We will be taking a look at Fall leaves this week. Please have your child go on a "leaf walk" and bring in a small baggie of 5-10 leaves by Tuesday. We will be looking at them and doing some leaf rubbings.

Centers and our regular schedule will resume this week. Please see below for our center helpers this week. Additionally, I have added dates to the helper calendar for early 2020. Please check the Sign-Up Genius.

Language Arts
We have now completed the introduction of all isolated letters & letter sounds. At this point in the school year, your children should recognize all letters and know all of the sounds. If you think your child needs more reinforcement, please use websites such as starfall.com, or review at home using the letters & sounds songs we used in class, which can be found here. Although we will continue reviewing letter sounds, this is no longer our main focus at this time.

We are now moving onto word families-- encouraging children to read by "chunking" these sounds. For example, using the endings "an" and "at," children will manipulate the beginning sounds of words and create words such as fan, man, ran, can, pan or mat, bat, cat, rat, etc.

Our sight words this week are no and my. At the side of this webpage, there is a tab for "High Frequency Words." Each week, I add an asterisk to the words we've introduced. It would be good to check in on this list with your child to see if s/he recognizes all the starred words.

Our stories this week will be about Fall and Thanksgiving. We began a non-fiction book last week about life in Plymouth for the Pilgrims who sailed on the Mayflower. The children have been very interested in this! We will continue reading from that book this week.

Math
We will begin Module 4, Number Pairs, Addition & Subtraction to 10. This is an extremely important part of our kindergarten math program, and we dedicate a large amount of time to this module. In fact, we will be on this module until the end of January. Parent tips for this module can be found here. I do recommend that you look these over, because there will be some new vocabulary for those of you who do not have older students who have done the Eureka math program. Of particular importance are the words "compose" (finding numbers that add up to a given number-- like 3 & 2 compose 5) "decompose" (take apart a number-- like 5 can be 4 & 1) and number bonds (a model to show mathematical thinking).

Upcoming
Please be setting aside time out of your busy holiday schedules to join us for our presentation of The Nutcracker on December 19th at 10:00 a.m.!

This Week's Helpers & Activities:
Monday: Return Blue Bags, Daily 5, Centers (Hema & Claire)
Tuesday: Daily 5, Centers (Claire & John)
Wednesday: Rhythm & Moves P.E., Music, No Blue Bags
Thursday: Return Weds. Envelopes, Daily 5, Centers (Naomi & Carole)
Friday:Tabletop Turkey Project (Tiffany H., Claire, Zoe), Feast @ 10:00

Upcoming Events:
Friday 11/22: Friendship Feast at 10:0011/25-11/29: Thanksgiving Break
12/9-12/15: Hour of Code/Computer Science Week 

Thursday 12/19: Nutcracker Performance at 10:00
12/21-01/05: Winter Break

Friday 01/17: No School: Professional Development Day
Monday 01/20: No School: MLK Day
Tuesday 01/28: 100 Day
02/17-02/21: President's Week Vacation

Week of 11/12

I hope you are all enjoying a long weekend. In the upcoming week, we will continue parent-teacher conferences through Thursday. I have enjoyed meeting with many of you so far, and have gained some great insights about your children from you. Thank you for meeting with me and being such active participants in your child's education. I look forward to meeting with the rest of you this week. For this week, early dismissal at 1:15 continues through Thursday. Friday the 15th, the children will attend school until 1:40.

There will be no classroom centers this week, due to the early dismissal. Centers will resume on Monday the 18th.

Please remember to return your Blue Bags on Tuesday, with your child's special turkey project in the bag. We are going to make a book out of the turkey project to circulate around so everyone can see the fun ways that the turkeys were disguised!

Language Arts
Our final letters will be introduced this week-- Yy and Zz. This means that we will be doing much more blending and spelling short-vowel words now. We will focus on word endings, such as "at," "an," etc. to read and spell words like cat, bat, rat, fan, man, pan, etc. Our sight word his week is up.

Math
We will continue comparing numbers to look at which has more, less, and which groups are equal. This topic is a part of Module 3: Comparison of Weigh, Length, Capacity, and Numbers to 10. Parent tips for this module can be found here.

Friendship Feast
We are getting excited for our Friendship Feast on the 22nd. 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 those of you who have signed up to help with the event. We still need many more sign-ups to make this event a success! Please check out the sign-up form here to see how you can help. Thank you!

Upcoming Events 
Cornerstone:
We have our November Cornerstone lesson on Tuesday. Thank you to Jessica for presenting. She is still looking for another volunteer for this great program! Please contact her if you are interested in helping.

Clay:
We are glazing our clay projects this Friday. Please don't send your children in any special outfits that day, as the clay glaze does stain. Please contact Gomathi if you can help with this. We will be glazing at about 10:25 at the picnic table outside our classroom.

Nutcracker:
Looking ahead on your calendars at this busy time of year, I wanted to make sure that you are all marking your calendars for Thursday, December 19th at 10:00 a.m.-- our annual performance of The Nutcracker. This is something that you will not want to miss. Hopefully, those of you who are heading out of town have let me know by now so that I can plan parts accordingly. If you haven't, please let me know!

This Week's Helpers & Activities
Monday: No School: Veteran's Day
Tuesday: Return Blue Bags, Daily 5, Cornerstone, Dismissal @ 1:15
Wednesday: Rhythm & Moves P.E., Music with Mrs. Threet, Dismissal @ 1:15
Thursday: Daily 5, Writer's Workshop, Dismissal @ 1:15
Friday: Daily 5, Clay Glazing, Dismissal @ 1:40

Upcoming Events:
Nov. 4th-14th: Parent-Teacher Conferences & Early Dismissal
Monday, 11/11: No School: Veteran's Day
Friday 11/22: Friendship Feast at 10:00
11/25-11/29: Thanksgiving Break
Thursday 12/19: Nutcracker Performance at 10:00
12/21-01/05: Winter Break

Friday 01/17: No School: Professional Development Day
Monday 01/20: No School: MLK Day

Week of 11/4

I am looking forward to meeting with each of you beginning Monday for your child's conference. Remember that for the next two weeks (except Friday, 11/15), the whole school dismisses daily at 1:15 to accommodate conferences. It will be harder to park at dismissal time and it is important to be on time since I begin meeting with parents almost immediately after school. To confirm your conference time, please click here. Please note that you can no longer edit this form. If you need to change your conference time, please email me.

Due to conferences, we will not be having center time for the next two weeks. Centers will resume on November 18th. If you'd like to come in and help, we do need a few helpers for Art Vistas on Monday the 4th at 10:25 and for Clay Glazing on Friday 11/15 at 10:25. Please contact Tiffany Heintz if you can help with Art and Gomathi if you can help with Clay.

Language Arts
Our letters this week are Ww and Xx. Our new sight word is look. We are now reading sentences with the words: I, see, me, like, a, can, to, go, the, am, at, he, is, it. and now look. I have been sending home a list of sentences each week in your child's Wednesday envelope that they are reading in class. Please be sure to have your child read these sentences to you so that you can see how they are doing with sight word recognition and reading fluency. Sight word recognition is one thing we will be discussing at your child's conference.

We will be focusing on the season of Fall this week as well as reading the book, Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano. We have a few projects around this book, including a special homework assignment (more on this below).

Math
In math this week, we will begin comparing numbers to look at which has more, less, and which groups are equal. This topic is a part of Module 3: Comparison of Weigh, Length, Capacity, and Numbers to 10. Parent tips for this module can be found here.

Special Homework
This week, we will have some special homework, which will be inside your child's Blue Bag this Wednesday and will be due back on Tuesday the 12th (no school Monday). The project is based on the book Turkey Trouble, 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. 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, craft items, etc. Finished turkeys will need to be cut out and glued down on a 9X12 piece of construction paper, which will be provided. Here is a picture of a sample project I found on Pinterest:

Upcoming Events
As you know, our next big event is the Friendship Feast at 10:00 on November 22nd. Children will dress as turkeys and come together with their friends in K1 and 2 to sing a few songs and share some food. A sign-up form for the food and helping at that event can be found here. Ideally, we would like each family to contribute something from this list, and if possible, more than one item. We need many helpers and plenty of food to make this a success. We are looking forward to a fun event!

This Week's Helpers & Activities
Monday: Daily 5, Art Vistas, Dismissal @ 1:15
Tuesday: Daily 5, Writer's Workshop, Dismissal @ 1:15
Wednesday: Rhythm & Moves P.E., Music with Mrs. Threet, Dismissal @ 1:15
Thursday: Daily 5, Writer's Workshop, Dismissal @ 1:15
Friday: Daily 5, Writer's Workshop, Dismissal @ 1:15

Upcoming Events:
Nov. 4th-14th: Parent-Teacher Conferences & Early Dismissal
Monday, 11/11: No School: Veteran's Day
Friday 11/22: Friendship Feast at 10:00
11/25-11/29: Thanksgiving Break
Thursday 12/19: Nutcracker Performance at 10:00
12/21-01/05: Winter Break