❄Almost❄ a full week!

Ask Your Child About...

1. Identify for, go and for in various texts

2. Count and write the numbers 1-20

3. What city, state, and country we live in

4. What some special things about our city, state, and country are

📚 This week in reading we focused on cause and effect. What is a character feeling and what led to them feeling that way? What are the characters doing in the story and what is making them do it? Since _______ is happening in the story, what might the characters need to do?

🔢 Math this week has reached double digits! We are now working our way through teen numbers! Many students know these numbers, but they may struggle to write them correctly consistently, go too fast while counting making their count off, or don't fully understand what makes that number what it is. We are working on all of these aspects in the weeks to come. Helping your child write these numbers at home is a great support, as well as breaking the number into groups of tens and groups of ones. This helps us better understand why we write the number a certain way and what it truly stands for. 

🏡🌎 We have been working on a social studies unit that helps us understand different types of neighborhoods and what we might see in them, as well as where we are in the world. We've discussed the city we are in, our state, and our country. We've talked about some special features or symbols for these places and what we like best about them. While completing this unit, we have also been listening to and working on the names of the 50 states! There is a handy song for this called Fifty Nifty United States that you can find on YouTube. It's a great song that will help your student learn the states (in alphabetical order!) and never forget! I personally learned this song when I was in Kindergarten and still remember it to this day! It sure helped when it came to filling in a blank map of the United States in 4th grade..!

🍎 Thank you to all of those parents who have already attended conferences and I look forward to meeting with everyone else on Monday, March 4th! Have a great weekend!

Oh the Celebrations! 🎉

Ask Your Child About...

1. Why the author wrote the story (what do they want you to know)

2. Count and write numbers 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15

3. What a neighborhood might have in it

4. Count to 100!

5. All of our special events this week 💗💯🦁

🙂 We are getting closer to having a full week of school and boy are we ready for it! Let's cross our fingers in hopes of no surprise home days next week! 

💗 We had a lovely Valentine's Day celebration filled with sweet notes, beautiful pictures, kind words, and special treats! Thank you for helping your child get everything together and for helping provide yummy treats for our fun day! 

👵👴 We also had a very successful 100th day! We did loads of counting in fun ways. I hope you all were able to chat about our various activities with your child as you enjoyed a sweet 100 treat from me. We found 100 hidden kisses and matched them to a 100s chart, stacked 100 cups, found how many licks a mini lollipop takes (more than 100!), made 100 gumball dots, created 100 crowns, drew ourselves as 100 year old people and wrote some things we want to do or have by 100 (these are in the hallway - look for them at conferences! 🙂), and wrote what we would do with $100 (hanging in our room). WOW! 

      

     

🥞 We also celebrated Lincoln's birthday today with the annual pancake bash! We LOVED having pancakes together and were so grateful for all the guardian helpers! 😊

      

🍎 Next week we are getting back into our regular routine! I look forward to meeting with those of you who have conferences scheduled for the 21st! In the meantime, if you ever need anything please don't hesitate to ask!

Schedule Update

Ask Your Child About...

1. Infer what characters are feeling in a story

2. Regroup amounts up to 10

3. Different types of fabrics and their uses

🐦 Today we were finally able to hang up our bird feeders! It was bitter cold out and we had to be extra careful not to slip on the ice, but we did it! Our trees in the front of the school are now decorated for the birdies! 

       

💗 Looking ahead to the next week we will have our Valentine's Day Celebration! This will take place on Thursday, February 14th for about the last hour of the day (starting around 12:45 p.m.). I will have paper bags for the kids to decorate earlier in the day so you do not need to worry about sending a special bag or box. We will pass out our Valentines during the day and keep them safe in our special bags until it is time for the celebration. Friendly reminder that if your child is planning to bring any form of valentine, they need to bring one for everyone. 🙂 During our celebration we will have the opening of valentines, snack, and happy choice play time of games and crafts. If you would like to send your child's valentines or your volunteered snack item early, feel free! I can hold onto them in the classroom until it is time to celebrate. Thank you!

👵👴 We are also getting very close to our 100th Day of School! Due to the unexpected school cancelling, our celebrations have moved back a day. We will celebrate this special occasion all day long on Wednesday, February 13th. Our day will consist of various literacy, math, and science activities that all relate to 100! If your child would like, I encourage you to help them dress up for the day. This may consist of dressing up as what they imagine they will look like when they are 100 years old or creating a clever t-shirt. It is sure to be 100% awesome!

 🍇🥜🌻 During the month of February, student council is collecting peanut butter/sunflower butter and jelly/jam donations as a part of the Iowa City Crisis Center's Spread the Love campaign. If you would like to donate to this cause simply send your *plastic preferred* jars to school with your child any day this month! Thank you in advance for your donations and thank you to those who already have!

🍎 Special update about our school days in relation to our cancelled days: an email was sent out explaining we will add 10 minutes to each school day starting Monday, February 18th. This means we will release at 3:05 on regular days and 2:05 on Thursdays. We will also hold classes on Friday, April 26th, which was previously a no school day. Lastly, we will add an extra half day to the end of the school year on Friday, May 31st, meaning we will release at 10:55 that day.
🍏 This also means our full day conferences that were scheduled for Thursday, February 28th will be moved to Monday, March 4th.

🙂 Have a wonderful weekend and let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns!

❄ Snow Day Crazy ❄

Ask Your Child About...

1. Identify "find" and "this" in various texts

2. Identify the purpose of a story

3. Write equations showing parts of 8, 9 and 10

4. Explain how we can manipulate paper

⛄ What a week! Between the snow and the freezing temps it feels like we've had a second winter break! I'm glad everyone stayed warm and safe and kept the kiddos busy. I'm excited to be back to our regular schedule next week!

📗 In your child's blue folder you will find Scholastic book orders. This month's orders will be due the morning of February 15th.

 

⛄ On Monday, February 4th we will venture outside to hang up our bird feeders that we made today. We will work with our 4th grade buddies to get each of the feeders hung from a tree branch at the front of the school. This will require a decent amount of walking through the snow, so please help your child remember to bring their snow gear on Monday! 🙂

🚌 Friendly reminder that Tuesday, February 5th is our school-wide field trip to the Coralville Performing Arts Center to see Johnny Appleseed. We will have a regular school schedule day until about 12:30 when we will load buses as the performance will be from 1:00-2:00 p.m. Thank you for turning in your permission slips early! We are excited to see the puppet show! 🍎🎦

💗 Looking ahead to the next week we will have our Valentine's Day Celebration! This will take place on Thursday, February 14th for about the last hour of the day (starting around 12:45 p.m.). I will have paper bags for the kids to decorate earlier in the day so you do not need to worry about sending a special bag or box. We will pass out our Valentines during the day and keep them safe in our special bags until it is time for the celebration. Friendly reminder that if your child is planning to bring any form of valentine, they need to bring one for everyone. 🙂 During our celebration we will have the opening of valentines, snack, and happy choice play time of games and crafts. If you would like to send your child's valentines or your volunteered snack item early, feel free! I can hold onto them in the classroom until it is time to celebrate. Thank you!

👵👴 We are also getting very close to our 100th Day of School! How exciting! How crazy! How fun! We have grown a lot, learned a ton, and loved every step of the way! We will celebrate this special occasion all day long on Tuesday, February 12th. Our day will consist of various literacy, math, and science activities that all relate to 100! If your child would like, I encourage you to help them dress up for the day. This may consist of dressing up as what they imagine they will look like when they are 100 years old or creating a clever t-shirt. It is sure to be 100% awesome!

 🍇🥜🌻 During the month of February, student council is collecting peanut butter/sunflower butter and jelly/jam donations as a part of the Iowa City Crisis Center's Spread the Love campaign. If you would like to donate to this cause simply send your *plastic preferred* jars to school with your child any day this month! Thank you in advance for your donations!

Manipulating paper: paper mâché, creating paper, weaving paper, paper lanterns