Week of 4/27

Thank you for meeting with me in Office Hours last week. I took your ideas and tried to incorporate most of them in the Week 5 At-Home Learning. We have added more optional activities based on the feedback that some would like a few more choices, both online and offline. Go to the second page of the template for both the optional activities as well as the weekly schedule to help you plan the activities. For those of you who do not have a school iPad, please email me if you'd like your child to connect to our class Kodable or codeSpark accounts. We are trying to get those added onto the Clever sign-in, but that hasn't happened yet.

New Schedule
Based on the feedback I got on my survey last Friday, it looked like the 2nd small group Zoom was well-received, and that the times worked for you. So we will be following this schedule:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
8:30-9:00	XX	Grasshopper	Butterflies	Ladybugs	XX
9:15-9:45	Butterflies	Ladybugs	Bumblebees	Caterpillars	Grasshopper
10:00-10:30	Whole Class	Caterpillars	Whole Class	Bumblebees	Whole Class
3:00-4:00	XX	Office Hours by request	Office Hours by Request	XX	XX

I do have one adjustment to the schedule, for this week only. There will be NO MEETINGS on Friday 5/1. I will be attending a virtual teaching conference all day Friday, so Friday's Zooms have been rescheduled. I also will be sending out the links to your child's Zoom each morning in SeeSaw, in an effort to make them a little more independent in their sign-on to Zoom. If they go to their SeeSaw account on the morning of their scheduled meeting, the link to the meeting can be found there. I will also continue to send the link to you, but they can also be found in SeeSaw, and I hope this helps with getting your child onto the meeting independently.

Language Arts
This week's sight word is your. Our theme this week is Farm, and we have a few stories and writing activities to go along with the theme in SeeSaw.

In the small-group Zoom, I will continue to be discussing a story that is assigned in KidsA-Z. When they go into Kids A-Z, you will see a new spaceship called "Assignments" and your child will find the story of the week there. I would like the children to preview the story before we meet so that we can discuss the story productively, but please do not have them take the quiz until after our discussion.

Whole-class Zoom meetings will be on Monday and Wednesday at 10:00 this week, and on Thursday at 11:30. On Monday, I will talk about the activities for the week. On Wednesday, it will be a "show & tell" day-- draw a picture of your favorite farm animal & be prepared to share your picture. On Thursday, we will wrap up our week together!

Math/STEAM
This week we have two Farm-themed math activities. We are beginning to work on story problems, so we have a video and an activity to focus on this skill. We also have another math activity in the optional area that can be played multiple times and is great for reinforcing addition & subtraction skills. Because it does need to be printed out, we put it in the optional area.

We have a fun STEAM activity this week-- design and build a barn. Please use whatever building toys you have in your home: Legos, blocks, Playstix, KEVA planks, etc.

Office Hours
Office hours are still on the schedule above, but they are on an as-requested basis. You need to email me & let me know that you or your child would like to meet in office hours. Please email me by noon on the day of office hours (Tuesday or Wednesday) so that I know I need to be available. I will then send you an invitation to the Zoom.

P.E. with Mr. Thomas 

Mr. Thomas will be meeting with the kindergarten students each Tuesday at 1:45 for a live P.E. lesson on Zoom. See the email for Zoom links. He also records one lesson that's a little different that is available in SeeSaw.