❄ Winter Break ❄

Ask Your Child About...

1. Sequencing a story from beginning to end

2. Creating addition and subtraction equations

3. How to make plywood

4. All of the fun crafts and activities this week

✨ Wow! It has been quite a week - full of discoveries and fun! We started off the week very similarly to any other week, but we quickly become swept up in all of the festive fun. One of our first excitements was chasing after the Gingerbread Man. He is quite the mischievous little fellow! We started our hunt in the library where we found the Gingerbread Man pretending to sleep on a pan. We then read a story and somehow the Gingerbread Man escaped! He was loose in the school! We went on a hunt through the other classrooms where he had done various things including putting everyone asleep, knocking all the chairs and desks over, and putting the student into an endless singing spell! We never did find that pesky Gingerbread Man, so don't be alarmed if you notice him around your house causing trouble. 🙂

    

⛄ You will find various crafts coming home with your child today including a new favorite: snow painting! This craft was a ton of fun and very easy to create. You can get all of the materials (shaving cream, glue and glitter or buffalo snow) at any store... I got mine from the Dollar Tree! This would be a good craft to get creative with at home, and if you want to make an academic connection you could have your child write with the paint. So much fun!

      

🍎 A special thank you goes out to all of the parents who helped bring supplies for our celebration this afternoon. The kids loved it and agreed a future Paw Jar celebration should be a game day. I will let you know when we plan to bring games for our Paw Jar celebration. Thank you!

🎅 We had a wonderful time celebrating our winter season with an all school Lincoln/Mann Sing-A-Long assembly! The kids have been working on the winter songs during music and were very excited to sing them along with all of the other students. My apologies for the not so great photo below... there was a lot going on! The video clip at the beginning of this post is a little taste of one of the kiddos' favorite songs: Light A Candle For Peace. So sweet!

😊 I hope you all have the most wonderful winter break and are able to get plenty of rest and relaxation filled with loads of fun with family and friends. I will see you all again in two weeks on January 7th. Thank you all for everything you do each and every day to help your child be their best selves!

Oh the excitement! 🐧

Ask Your Child About...

1. Identify the words 'here' and 'now'

2. Cause and Effect

3. What the subtraction sign looks like

4. To take away some items from a group

5. How to make particle board

6. What evaporate means

Our particle board creations will come home next week!

🎉Next Friday, December 21st is "Ugly Sweater Day" per student council all school spirit day! We hope this brings a little extra cheer and excitement to our before break celebrations. 😊

📚 Reading this week focused on cause and effect. This is a pretty tricky concept that the kids will continue to work on throughout their grade school experiences. We worked to identify cause and effect of feelings, weather, and play actions. You can help your child develop a sense of cause and effect using things around you every day!

🔢 Math moved to look at subtraction! We worked to create two groups out of one number and use the number sentence: ___ take away ___ is ___. This is very similar to our addition sentences which has helped them make the connected of addition and subtraction being opposites. We often practice saying our math problem one way and then the other! Today we even added in the subtraction sign. This was very exciting for the students! You can practice subtraction at home by setting out a group of objects, asking your child how many there are in all, then asking them to take some away and count how many are left! If you wanted to stretch them further you could have them write down the equation that matches their objects!

🌳Science was filled with fun activities this week involving sawdust, shavings, water, and paste! We started the week by looking closely at the components of particle board: sawdust and shavings. This led us to an investigation of comparing the two materials and mixing them together to see how they react. We then took it a step further and added water! We observed this new mixture and then stirred it up to see if it would change. We then worked to strain the water from the wood pieces and discussed how they would dry... evaporation! We also collected a few cups of water (uncovered and covered) to see how long it would take for them to evaporate. Lastly, we mixed our dry sawdust and shavings with a homemade paste (corn starch and water) and shaped it into our very own pieces of particle board! Sadly these pieces are still drying, so they will come home next week. 🙂

       

❄ First Week of December ❄

Ask Your Child About...

1. Identify the word 'what' in text around them

2. What the author's purpose of a story is

3. What three things a story needs

4. To create equations using objects around them

Kindergarten Noodlers - Mrs. Hubbard's class comes to visit!

✨Student Council has created another school spirit day for next Friday the 14th: class color day! They have assigned each class with a color to wear that day and encourage all to find something in their wardrobe to match their class for the day. Our designated color is light green! No worries if you don't have light green (I'm not sure I do!), you can aim for anything green that you might have.

📗 Monday, December 10th will be the last day to submit this month's scholastic order through flyer or online. This ensures all orders will arrive to us before we head out for break. If you are wanting certain books to be a surprise simply let me know and we can figure out a way to keep it a surprise.

      

🎭 4th Grade put on a Readers Theater for us in the library!

📚This week in reading we focused on author's purpose. We discussed how authors always have a reason to write the book and we can figure out this reason in various ways. Sometimes all we need to do is read the title or a small excerpt, but sometimes we have to read the whole story to find a deeper meaning. This also helped our students focus their own stories while writing!

🖊We continued our picture prompt writing from last week using the elephant, lion and snowman. The students focused on providing details and not just telling us who/what is in their illustrations. We discussed what they want their reader to know or learn from their story. This lead us to understand that stories have three main needs: Who, Where, and What. I encourage you to help your child write stories at home  and ask them the 3W's of their story. Help them to get all of their ideas on the paper so that anyone can know exactly what their story is about. 🙂

✅ Writing equations and number sentences is tough work! We have continued to work with addition and how we can write equations from story problems. One way to work on this at home is to make simple story problems for them to solve. This could then consist of them telling you the equation and number sentence verbally, written, or using objects. The story problems do not need to be elaborate, they can be things such as: Julie had 9 stuffed animals. Todd gave her 3 more stuffed animals. How many stuffed animals does Julie have now?

Ms. Grady was at training and we did a great job with the substitute!

🙂I hope you all have a fantastic weekend and as always, if there is anything you have questions, comments, or concerns about please let me know! Go Lions! 🦁