Snow Daze ⛄

Ask Your Child About...

1. Identify and write: is, how, find, be, will, for, this, go

2. Identify, sound and write: Dd, Rr, Ii, Gg

3. Identify and solve addition and subtraction in many ways
4. Identify, write, and show teen numbers (11-19)

5. How-to writing essentials
6. Our new science unit focus

Kindergarten penguins enjoying the snow and ice patch 🐧

🦁 Lions ROAR with pride again! We have filled our class paw jar to the brim! We celebrated on Friday with extra iPad time- ask your child what their favorite iPad activity is.

🍎 Huge thank you to all who have brought in snack for the class. The students have loved the variety and are very grateful. Thank you!

💯 If we have no school cancellations, our 100th day of school will be next Friday, February 7th! We will celebrate by doing many 100 activities. To help your child prepare, count with them orally, using objects, and by looking at different numbers to figure out if it is more or less.

💕 The following Friday, February 14th, will be our Valentine's day celebrations! We will have this towards the end of the day for about one hour, followed by our afternoon recess. Our celebration will include special activities and treats! If your child decides to bring Valentine's to school, please ensure you have one for each of our 21 students.

We are readers! We read the entire book all together!

📚 These past few weeks we have worked on several skills! We use a great effort to gather evidence from the words and pictures to help us predict what might happen next and to help us analyze why an author might have chosen to write this story. We used phrases such as: "I saw in the picture....", "The character said they felt... so I think that means ....", and "I think the author wanted us to know... because they showed us a lot about ...." We also worked on retelling a story using major sequence of events. We remind ourselves of the beginning, middle, and end which helps us determine what is the big picture. Then we use major happenings to retell.

🔢 In math we have finished our addition and subtraction of numbers 1-10 and have moved to recognizing and practicing teen numbers. Although many of us can orally count these numbers (and beyond), many of us still forget how to write teens or swap numbers when counting objects. Have your child show you how a teen number fits into a ten frame and has more left over. Help them identify the one group of ten and connect it to the 1 they write first on their paper- then identify how many are left over and connect it to the number they write next to the one group of ten. The will help your child conceptually understand how teen numbers and place value work.

🖊 We have wrapped up out short true story unit and have begun our how-to unit. We have examined a few different stories to decide whether they are stories or how-to. We have come to the conclusion that how-to writing explain something to their reader. They often provide items that are needed, and go through step by step to tell us how to complete the task the author is telling. Help your child explain each step of a task to help them identify each little thing they do and need to tell to their audience.

       

🌳 Our materials and motion kit is on our second material: paper! We have examined how different types of paper react to being folded, colored, and getting wet. We have also begun manipulating paper in new ways. This week we recycled toilet paper to make a new sheet of our very own paper! We also created strong bowls from paper by layering it with a special mixture! 

Hello January!

Ask Your Child About..

1. Identify and write: this, find

2. Identify, sound and write: Gg

3. Determine if a story is addition or subtraction

4. Show addition and subtraction in many ways

5. Our new friends!

⛄ I hope you all had a wonderful winter break filled with plenty of relaxation and fun! We were all excited to see our friends at school again and tell each other a favorite part of our break. As we get back into our daily routines here at school, the kiddos become more excited (and tired). Please help your child get plenty of rest this weekend so they are ready for another full week ahead. 😊

🦁 Starting Monday, January 13th, the Kindergarten students will meet in the cafeteria before school. The other grades have been doing this all year, and a few classes are now meeting in their rooms right away. This leaves some extra space for our Kinders to join in the cafeteria. This will help with supervision and hallway congestion when heading to classrooms. Please help remind your child to head into the cafeteria every morning starting Monday. Thank you!

🍎 Thank you to those who have already brought in some tasty snack options for our class to enjoy. If you would like to bring a snack for the class please remember to check the healthy snack list on the school website and send it with your child in the morning. Thank you so much for such a great supply!

📚 In reading this week we focused on inferring and drawing conclusions. We were able to practice this skill with each of our books this week. We looked at the pictures to help us figure out how a character was feeling and listened to the words for special details. We also transferred this skill into our daily routines! We were able to draw conclusions during math, infer how friends were feeling about certain activities, and so much more! Keep this skill going at home by prompting and asking your child questions that require them to dig a little deeper.

🔢 We have continued to explore our understanding of addition and subtraction in math this week. We worked on identifying addition and subtraction problems and showing our understanding in different ways. This means we can use mathematical words, drawings, and equations to explain our thinking! We also looked at equations "forwards" and "backwards". It is a common confusion that the equal sign has to be at the end, but we know it can be at the beginning as well!

🖊 Writing required our detective skills this week as we completed mystery sentences. These consist of pictures that use their first letter as a part of a word. We identify each letter, put the words together, and are able to read a secret sentence. The kids loved this mystery work! We then used these sentences to help us tell short stories.