February 29-March 4

March is here! 

Here is our March homework calendar.

Here is the March lunch calendar.

Upcoming events: 

• February 29th: Family Night-Music, Munchies, and Masterpieces
• March 14th: Culver's Night 
• March 17th: All School Field Trip to PAC
• March 21st and 22nd: Portfolio Conferences
• March 23rd: No School for student

What’s happening in Kindergarten this week?

Reading: Readers begin a new unit that focuses on nonfiction books! We will get our library ready by sorting the books into fiction and nonfiction bins. Students will also find topic bins that hold books on animals, places, etc. When your child brings his/her book bag home this week, you will find books from their dot level as well as topic books that may or may not be at their individualized reading level. As you read any of these with your child, encourage him/her to  look closely at the pages, point to pictures to find even more, ask questions, and talk about books to become experts on their topics. These are high interest books for the kids--I am so excited to see how they work with them! 

Writing:  As our persuasive writers continue to try to solve problems, they will be thinking about teaching information to persuade and writing how-to books to explain how to make a change. We will continue to make sure each writer is including a problem, reasons why it is a problem, and a fix it idea. Later, we will work with our partners to edit for punctuation and practice reading our work before we share with others.

Math: It will be an exciting week in math as we learn a new concept: Math Mountains! Math Mountains are a fun way for students to think about the partners of a number. Here is an example of math mountain for partners of 7

 We will rotate through the following centers: 

• Students will use a stamp pad and pencil to create Math Mountains for the numbers 5 and 6.
• We will use Playdoh to create flat and solid shapes. Students will discuss the similarities and differences between the shapes.
• Students will pick two number cards. They will draw math stories using those numbers. They will tell the math story to a partner and write the equation. Ask your child to tell you the math stories when they bring their booklet home! 

Word Study: Our sight words are on, are, up, an, & this. 

Here are our sight words.

Science: Scientists will make recycled paper using facial tissue and water. We will also be painting the paper mache bowls we made last week. Students will make constructions using paper and wood. 

Thank you and Science Pictures

Here are some pictures from this morning! As part of our science unit, we made paper mâché bowls. It was messy but really fun! 

From the Opinion Writers of Room 82

These Kindergarteners continue to amaze me! 

Recently, many of their dry erase markers have been running out. When another marker ran out today, the student said, "This is a problem!" Suddenly, another student blurted out, "Hey! We could write about that just like we do in Writer's Workshop!"

Here is the letter. Beautifully crafted by 5- and 6-year-olds who know what it takes to write letters to make changes. I'm so proud of them! 

Proud writers:) 

February 22-25

I can't believe it is the third week of February already! Time flies when you're having fun and learning lots! 

Upcoming events:

• February 25th: Half Day
• February 26th: No School 
• February 29th: Family Night-Music, Munchies, and Masterpieces

What’s happening in Kindergarten this week?

Reading: Rereading is our big focus this week! Here are the reasons why it is so important! Readers reread to: 

• read with a smooth voice
• figure out confusing parts
• figure out tricky words
• find new information or details
• make your voice match the character's feeling

Writing:  Opinion writers are on a roll writing letters to fix problems they see! Don't be surprised if you see some letters coming home about problems that can be changed. Writers are looking at a sample opinion letter to check to make sure they are doing the same things in their writing. The students can learn a lot from studying an example, which we call a mentor text. Talk with your child about possible problems they could write about. What do you see that could be better at home? The bus? The grocery store? How can they fix it?

Math: Students will rotate through the following centers:

• Students will flip over 5 playing cards. They will put two cards together that make a sum of ten. Then they will add more cards and continue to find more partners of ten!  
• We will roll two dice and write the numbers that we see. Then, students will show greater than, less than, or equal to. 
• Students will choose a number between 1 and 10. Then, they will show dots/numbers for the same as, more than, and less than. 

Word Study: Our sight words are jump, funny, go, find, & not. 

Here are our sight words.

Science: Scientists will do folding paper tests! They will work together to determine which paper samples are easiest and hardest to fold. We will figure out which paper is the strongest and how to fold it to make it sturdier. It is impressive to listen to their conversations and reasoning during these simple experiments!

Our field trip to the Paper Discovery Center!

We had such a great time at the Paper Discovery Center! 

Here are a few of the things we did: 

• Built bridges out of paper and explored ways to make them stronger
• Sorted items by deciding if they came from a tree or not
• Counted the rings on tree cookies
• Learned about the different parts of a tree by dressing 2 of our friends up in tree outfits! That was funny! 
• We even made our own paper! 

Thank you the our parent volunteers who came to help. 

February 15-19

We look forward to our field trip on Wednesday. Remember to pack a lunch if you did not preorder one from school!

Upcoming events:

• February 16th: Turn in your Read to Succeed forms. By filling out this form, you can receive a FREE ticket to Six Flags! 
• Let me know if you need a new form
• February 17th: Field Trip
• February 25th: Half Day
• February 26th: No School 
• February 29th: Family Night-Music, Munchies, and Masterpieces

What’s happening in Kindergarten this week?

Reading: Readers will revisit our classroom charts to make a plan for strategies they can use as they read. One great benefit to having a reading partner is that there is someone to help you when you really cant figure out a tricky word! Partners can coach each other by checking charts together, asking questions, talking about tricky parts, and suggesting strategies. Our Super Reader chart is a great resource as a list of strategies. Coach your child when reading by reminding them of these strategies: 

Writing:  Writers will set goals to fix up their writing. They could choose to fix up spelling or punctuation. They could also choose to elaborate by adding more drawings and labels, telling more reasons to convince others of their opinions, or adding speech bubbles. These writers have done a wonderful job finding problems and writing about ways to make them better. They are quite convincing! 

Math: The big ideas in math this week are finding the partners of ten and teen numbers. Students will rotate through the following centers:

• Students will roll dice and use a ten frame to find the partners of ten. After rolling a number, they will place that number of chips on the ten frame. They will need to look at the spaces with chips and the spaces without chips to name the partners.
• They will write addition and subtraction equations for numbers 1-10 by looking at a grocery store picture. 
• We will create teen number boards with paint and qtips.
• Partners will play the unknown partner number game. Students will place a number of cubes on the table. While Partner 1 closes his eyes, partner 2 takes some of the cubes away. Then partner 1 needs to say how many pieces were taken away. 

Word Study: Our new sight words are jump, funny, go, find, & not. We have been working really hard to make sure we are using uppercase and lowercase letters in the correct places in our writing. Whenever you are writing at home, encourage lowercase letters unless it the is beginning of a sentence or a name!

Here are our sight words.

Science: We shift our focus to paper this week. We will explore different kinds of paper. Scientists will test the effects of water on different paper products. We will conduct experiments to answer these questions:

• What paper is easiest to write on?
• What paper is hardest to write on? 
• What paper absorbs the most water?
• What are the different kinds of paper used for? 

100 Days Smarter!

We had a blast on the 100th day of school! 

We saw how many things we could do in 100 seconds! We hula hooped, stacked blocks, wrote sight words, and more! 

Cup Stacking! 

We did sit ups for 100 seconds! 

We hopped on 1 foot for 100 seconds. It was tiring! 

We put 100 Fruit Loops on a necklace!