This has been a busy week, full of workshop practice, and learning about how we are all different and how we are all the same! We have been reading books about Dr. Martin Luther King, and the work he did to help all people have the same rights in our country.
*There are LOTS of upcoming events that are very exciting. Please pay close attention to our upcoming events. Chinese New Year begins next Friday, and our 100th Day of School is Tuesday, January 31!
*These days our "Rest and Recharge" time in the afternoon is a lot shorter than it was at the beginning of the year. After lunch, we have Math Workshop, and we're spending more time with our math "play" station activities. So rest time is only about 15 minutes, from 1:15-1:30. Quite a few children have been choosing to keep working on their math activities, and not rest at all.
*Several Peeps have started to bring their devices to use at our afternoon center time, which is from 2:40-3:10. We have a "bring your own device" policy at school, so that is OK for them to do, but I strongly caution you to keep in mind that this is kindergarten. As the Robert Munsch book We Share Everything states, "This is kindergarten. In kindergarten we share EVERYTHING." Sometimes it's very hard for us to realize that we shouldn't share personal devices with anyone and everyone. Kindergartners are also prone to breaking things sometimes...I've seen 2-3 different devices broken in my experience here. Even though there are some wonderful apps out there to help build academic skills, old-fashioned Mrs. Powell really prefers children to play with each other in our classroom centers, rather than playing on electronic devices at this age. We need to practice our social skills, and playing in centers is the best way to do that. 😀 If you do choose to let your child bring his/her device, we need to be playing academic games on it while we're at school, and be able to manage the device independently.
*Upcoming field trips:
Thank you for setting your January goals and reading with your child! Reading logs look terrific so far for January!
In our Guided Reading groups, we are working hard on using ALL of our reading powers when we read: Picture Power, Pointing Power, "Snap!" Word Power, and Sound Power. We look at the pictures to get an idea of what the words might say. We point to each word as we read. We quickly recognize our sight words, and we confirm that the unknown word in the story is correct by getting our mouth ready for the first sound. (That's how we know if a sentence says, "Look at the bunny," or "Look at the rabbit." We use our Sound Power on that first letter.) As the stories get more complicated and rely on patters less, our reading superpowers become more important. We need to be able to use all of them--so keep practicing sight words and letter sounds, so we know them in a SNAP!
We wrote a book together as a class called "How to Make a Snowflake." It was a lot of fun to practice our snowflake making skills as we figured out just how we wanted to break down the steps, and write and draw about them! (We've gone through lots of white paper!) Each child wrote and illustrated a book; they look great! Those will be in our writing portfolios, and we'll be adding another new book next week.
Please look for our Chapter 4 booklets coming home in binders today. We've finished composing and decomposing numbers to 10, and in our next chapter, we'll make the connection to addition and start writing equations. At home, you can practice this skill by getting a group of objects, and having your child divide them into two groups. Then say, "____ and ____ make ____." Or say, "___ breaks into a group of ____ and a group of ____."
Today we have a new President of the United States. It's Inauguration Day, and the Peeps were able to watch Donald Trump take the oath of office after lunch today. We also read our Scholastic "Let's Find Out" magazine, and learned a lot about the White House. Did you know that there are 35 bathrooms? In the flyer, you can see Donald Trump's signature. (We read that the president can sign laws.) This was a big topic of conversation for the children. They thought that he has the worst signature they've ever seen. "It looks like SCRIBBLES!" Then we looked at Barack Obama's signature. As soon as it was on the whiteboard, I heard, "Well, that's the worst B I've ever seen!" and "Can you even believe that?" You can tell that we've been thinking about writing our names very neatly on our work! I love it!
Monday is C Day - P.E.
Please have your child wear tennis shoes.
Tuesday is D Day - P.E.
Please have your child wear tennis shoes.
Wednesday is E Day - Library/Technology/EARLY RELEASE DAY
Please remember library books today.
The Peeps will have Show and Tell today!
Thursday is A Day - Art
Friday is B Day - Music
Click here to view our lunch menu.
Dates to Keep in Mind:
Friday, January 27 - Chinese New Year (We have some special things planned!)
Saturday, January 28 - Long Trivia Night
Tuesday, January 31 - The 100th Day of School
Friday, February 10 - Valentines Day Parties
Tuesday, February 14 - Valentine's Day (We will hand out Valentines to classmates today.)
Friday, February 17 - LPTO Movie Night
Monday, February 20 - NO SCHOOL (President's Day)
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