Exciting Times in Room 33! 🐟

Ask Your Child About...

1. Identify the words all and she in various texts

2. Count from any number to another within 100

3. Find patterns between numbers up to 100

4. Our goldfish!

5. Talk about what you need to properly care for a pet

6. Write, Tell, or Read how-to books

🎶 Today we were able to enjoy an orchestra concert from South East Junior High. The kids loved listening to the different genres of music they played and were very excited to see the different sizes/sounds of each instrument!

✨Student council has announced that we will be collecting Box Tops through April 18th. Please keep an eye out for any of these, clip them out, and send them to school for our big jar collection. We are aiming for 2,000 Box Tops! They also announced that next Friday, April 5 will be stripe day. If your child would like to participate in this school-wide spirit day all they need to do is wear stripes to school!

🍎SNACK. We are on our last boxes of graham crackers and will be needing more snack by the end of next week. If you are able, please pick out a healthy snack option for the class and send it to school with your child. Options can include, but are not limited to: graham crackers, pretzels, little oranges, apples, veggie straws, goldfish, animal crackers, Nutrigrain bars, and so on. Thank you!

📚 This week in reading we focused on sequence of events and visualizing where the story would go next. This is a great skill to practice at home by reading through a story followed by a retelling verbally or physically acting it out together. Another great way to accomplish this skill is to write down events that took place in the story on separate sheets of paper, mixing them up, and then sorting them back out to tell the real story. Challenge your child by setting out the story in a mixed up order and asking them to correct it!

🖊 Reading this week really helped us connect to our writing as we are now working on How-To writings. These are very fun books to write and correct! Ask your child about when Ms. Grady learned to put on a coat or to make scrambled eggs! Oh MY! How-To stories take a lot of visualizing and sequencing of events. The kiddos have truly enjoyed this unit so far, and I encourage you to keep the joy going at home by writing more How-To books outside of school- then act them out! Remember: How-To books need three things. 1. tell what to do in steps 2. number the steps 3. have a picture for each step. 

🔢 In math we have been working on finding patterns between numbers from 0 to 100. The students are quick to see how we can use a hundreds chart to count by 2's, 5's, 10's and so on- keep the work up at home! This also leads us to looking at how to move from one number to the next easily and quickly. This part can be tricky as we typically want to count on (continue counting from the number we are at until we get to the desired end number). However, we want to encourage the students to look past counting single digits to get to far away numbers and rather encourage them to use what they know about place value. 

For example: If you show your child a 100's chart and ask them to find 42. Hopefully they will use some of the patterns they know to skip count by tens (moving straight down the chart) from 0 to get to 40 and then add two more (moving horizontally across the chart) to get to 42. Or maybe they will recognize that 42 is 40 greater than 2, so they can find the number 2 and count by tens (moving vertically down the chart) until they arrive at 42.

Further example: Now that you are at 42, ask your child what number would be 21 away (or 21 bigger). Many students are currently counting out twenty-one steps from forty-two to find the answer. Instead, we want to help them see how they can use groups of tens and ones to count on. This would mean that your child would start at 42 and recognize that 21 is made up of two groups of ten and one more. They would then start at 42, count by tens (moving vertically down the chart) until they have moved 20 away and then count across the chart to get the one more.

🐟 Life Science has arrived! We currently have goldfish and guppies in our classroom for observation and the kiddos could not be more excited! We will study the structure of the fish so that we are able to name each part, identify the things a fish needs to survive, and discover what happens when we add different things to their tank (such as food, fresh water, plants, and structures). Continue this talk about living things and their needs at home by discussing and observing people, animals, and plants!

Ms. Stephanie sneakily took a picture of our first observations! 😊

  

       

We have two tanks for our fish. One for our goldfish, which we named Nemo (orange and white), Lava (orange), and Steele Panther (silver)- how great are these names?! 😅😃 The second tank holds our guppies, which we did not name as they are difficult to tell apart, but rather we each have our own nick name for them when we talk to them. Our guppies currently consist of one male (has a black dot and is smaller), four female, and two teeny tiny babies.

🌞 What a wonderful week it has been! I hope you all are enjoying this spring weather and have a wonderful weekend! As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns please don't hesitate to ask!

Spring Break 🌷

Ask Your Child About...

1. Identify the words good and said in various texts

2. Use patterns to count and manipulate numbers from ones, teens, and beyond!

3. Healthy habits

4. The kite 

🎳 The kids have been working on their bowling skills in P.E. and WOW they received a cone for every strike made! They worked hard using their focus, persistence, and perseverance skills! 🎳

🍀 Friendly reminder that there will be no school next week Monday, March 18th through Friday, March 22nd due to Spring Break. I hope you all enjoy this week with your family and that any travels are safe and fun!

🎐 In your child's Friday Folder you will find a kite pattern and an instruction sheet that explains the activity. The idea is for your child to decorate the kite in any way they choose and attach a kite tail, which they will then add a bow to for each of the books they read to you over spring break. The idea is to keep the kiddos reading over break, create a calm family activity, and return to school showing their great success in a beautiful way. Thank you for your help in completing this activity! 😊

📚 Reading this week focused on story structure. We talked about how certain events typically happen in different parts of the story; such as a calm beginning leading to a big event, followed by a resolution of some kind and ending with a certain message. This is a tough skill to pick up on, but it is easy to connect across the entire day. You can help your child notice story structure by talking about the different events in a story and why they happen when they do. We can also help point these things out while watching movies, playing games, or completing various activities throughout the day/week/month/year/life. 

🖊 Our true stories have come to an end, with each student picking their favorite true story to keep at school (later to be added to our portfolios) for publishing! In preparation for our next writing unit (How-to books), we are bringing all of the other true stories that may currently be in our writing folders home. Enjoy reading through these stories with your child, and encourage them to add on or clarify any of their stories. Spring break is a great time to keep the writing going! Prompt your author to write stories about fun activities they did and things they observe happening around them in nature!

🔢 We continued working on breaking apart numbers up to 20 this week in math, with an emphasis on finding the group of ten and the group of some ones. We pushed this concept further by expanding our observations to numbers up to 50. We are all starting to understand the place value of a number and what it can tell us. Continue this work at home by asking your child what they notice about patterns between numbers (such as how many more groups of ten are there in 33 than in 3?).

✅ In health we continued our study of how to keep healthy by investigating and discussing various things we can do to keep our bodies healthy. We discussed things that are okay to share with others and things that are not, the importance of exercising and how we can check our heart beat to see how hard we are working our body, how and why we brush our teeth and clean our body, as well as the importance of a good nights' sleep. Please continue to investigate these healthy habits at home and help encourage your child to keep healthy! 😊

🎶🎨 Looking ahead to Thursday, April 25th, we will be holding our annual Lincoln Fine Arts Night at City High Opstad Auditorium from 6:30-8:00 pm. Doors open at 6:00 and Kindergarten will need to be on stage at 6:25 as we are the first to perform. Each class will be sitting together towards the center-front of the seating until the entire night's performance has been completed. Mrs. Langenfeld is requesting that all students return to their class seating spot after performing while parents will be sitting elsewhere in the auditorium. After the entire performance is completed you will come to the class seating area to pick up your child and enjoy the beautiful art being displayed out front. It will be a wonderful evening!

🍀 I hope you all have a super spring break and have plenty of time to enjoy the beautifully forecast weather! 🌞

Spring is coming! 😃

Ask Your Child About...

1. Identify the words play, an, and make in various texts

2. Find the different parts of teen numbers (10 and some ones)

3. The 5 Food Groups

4. What types of words we can use to enhance our stories

     

🍎 Thank you to all of you for meeting with myself and your child to talk about their progress! Conferences were great and I love being able to discuss what we are doing in class with you. If you ever have any questions, comments, or concerns please don't hesitate to reach out! I am always available for you- not just during conference time!

✨ This week we enjoyed a few special assemblies: a University of Iowa dance team and the Jazz Band from South East Junior High. The kiddos loved listening to the music and picking up on a few new flashy dance moves!

🙂 Next Friday, March 15th we will have an all school PAW ticket celebration of listening to Kids Bop during lunch... with the lights off! WOAH- super cool! We will also have a class PAW ticket celebration by wearing our pajamas to school! Stay tuned if we will earn one small stuffed animal as well (we are working on quite bodies in the hallway and cleaning up after ourselves)- I know we can do it!

✉ Coming home in your child's Friday Folder you will find information for Safety Village Camp, a letter from Mrs. Charney our guidance councilor about her upcoming lessons, and the March Scholastic Book orders. The Scholastic Book orders will be due Friday, March 22nd (the online class code is RCYJT).

📚 Reading this week has focused on inferring what a character is feeling based on the words we read and the images we see. We also focused on how this can help us predict what the character might do or feel next. This is a very easy task to complete at home with any sort of book you might have! You can even take it a step further and act out the feelings you see and talk about how you can cope with different feelings or help others cope with their own feelings.

🔢 In math we focused on breaking our teen numbers into two different groups. These groups typically consist of breaking into a group of ten and some more ones. We show this by writing equations, filling out two ten frames, and completing number line boxes. I encourage you to keep working on breaking apart all numbers up to 20 with your student at home. Ask them to show you two groups that can make up a number and encourage them to look beyond the group of ten and some more ones if they seem ready to do so.

😋 In science this week we worked on the My Plate food configuration and why it is important for our bodies. We talked about healthy and unhealthy foods and how everything in moderation is the way to go. We also discussed what each of the five main food groups gives us and how we need those nutrients to keep our body healthy and energized. Keep the conversation going at home by asking your child what food group certain foods belong to and having them help you shop for yummy and healthy foods at the store followed by helping you prepare the meals!

🖊 We are wrapping up our true stories unit in writing (the finale being our published books the first week of April!) and will be starting our How To unit. We have grown a lot as writers and have many skills to show off! We discussed the importance of using different words to indicate the beginning (One day..), middle (Next, Then, After that...), and end (Finally, At last, Later...) of our stories. We have also been focusing on how to form full sentences on paper! We focus on saying the sentence we want, then writing it down word by word until we reach the end!

❄🔆💧 Next week's weather is looking a bit more spring like- YAY! Please help your child be prepared for the expected weather each day so that we may have a comfy and successful time learning. Thank you and have a wonderful weekend!

YAY for a full week! 😃

Ask Your Child About...

1. Identify the words: of, as, and use in various texts

2. Use drawings and equations to represent the numbers 11-16

3. The 5 Sense and how we use them every day

4. What their true story is about

🎉 Yay for our first full week of school in quite a while! I think we are all a little tired, but also very happy that we saw all of our friends and did all of our activities for a full week!

🦅 Meredith from School of the Wild visited Lincoln and Mann for an assembly teaching us about Falcons and the importance of taking care of the wildlife around us. She talked about what the wildlife camps have to offer, what you can see when you visit the park, and how we can help make a positive impact with nature! She even had a Kestrel Falcon with her!

🍎 Friendly reminder that we do not have school this coming Monday, March 4th due to the second round of conferences. I look forward to seeing those of you that are signed up for this day!

✨Next Friday, March 8th will be another all school celebration: Lincoln Spirit Day! This means your student can show their Lincoln pride by wearing anything Lincoln or blue.

📚 In reading we used our skill of visualization to help us sequence a story after we had read it. We read through a story, predicting what might happen next, discussing how characters feel, and why certain things are happening in the story, then once we finished the story we tried to retell it as best we could! We closed our eyes and pictured the first thing that happened, then the next, and the next, and so on until we reached the end of the story! This is something you can easily do with any of the stories you have at home!

🔢 This week in math we finished practicing how to count and write our numbers 11-20 and began looking at how we can represent them. This includes drawing pictures, completing tens frames, using tens sticks and ones cubes, and writing equations using 10 + ___ to show how we can represent these different teen numbers.

👂👃🖐👀👅 The five senses were our main focus in health this week! We learned that every day we use hearing, smelling, touching, seeing, and tasting to help us understand the world around us. The kids really enjoyed this unit and the special activities we completed.  We started the week with a smell test (different scents in small vials), followed by a sound test (unknown animal noises played on a CD), continued by discussing our fabrics unit we recently finished in science for our sense of feel, and finished the week with a whole senses experience using popcorn (we hear it pop, smell it cooking, see the bag inflate and the seed turn to pop, felt the smooth but bumpy texture and tasted the final product)! Keep the fun going at home with your child and discover how we use our senses at home by taking a nature walk or sampling different smells, tastes, sounds, touches, and visuals that you find around you at home or while out and about!

You can sing the Five Senses Song at home with your child! Use this link to hear it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/iA1uLc1uEbI