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

❄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

           

Long Weekend Ahead! ❄

Ask Your Child About...

1. Identify "how" in various texts

2. Explain how different papers react to water

3. Use different tools to solve addition and subtraction problems

4. Our whole school lunch sing-a-long

5. Who Martin Luther King Jr. is and what he did

🎉Wow! Today has been a fabulous day! The kiddos have worked so hard all week with our various district testing and all of the usual daily activities. In fact, we worked so hard in all areas of our day that we earned extra celebrations today! PAWsome job Lincoln Lions! 🦁

✨ You will find your child's Blue Friday Folder in their backpack with loads of important information. One of the items you will see is the District Roadmap. This pamphlet lays out the major changes coming to our district, what you can expect, and when things will be due. The back provides a quick glace of important dates to remember. This is a good one to keep on the fridge!🙂

🚌 You will also find a blue form explaining an upcoming all school field trip. This field trip will take place on February 5th from 12:30-2:30 pm. We will ride to the Coralville Performing Arts Center to watch the Eulenspiegel Puppets perform the story of Johnny Appleseed. The top portion of this blue sheet is due back by January 28th if you would like your child to attend.

🦁 Lastly, you will find a school spirit wear order form that provides an opportunity to order school spirit clothing through the pamphlet or online if you would like.

           

💗 A friendly reminder that we do not have school on Monday in remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr. Today we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. with our buddy class by reading about him, discussing some of the important things he did and messages he wanted us to continue spreading about love and peace, as well as a few activity sheets. Next Friday we will meet with our buddies again to complete the natural bird feeders!

 

📄💧 This week in science we explored how various types of paper react to water. Does it absorb? Bead up? Does it cause the paper to fall apart? You can continue this investigation with different types of paper you have at home! We also looked at what happens if we soak paper in water that has been colored on (with markers, crayons, and pencil) or dyed (yellow construction paper). We discovered that some papers keep their color, while others loose it to the water! It was very cool to see the water change color and the effects the water had on each type of paper! Lastly, we created a flag banner to hang outside for a several days to investigate the effects of our daily weather on paper. We can't wait to see it after we get snow this weekend!

😊 Have a great long weekend enjoying the snow and staying warm!

Welcome Back!

Ask Your Child About...

1. Identify the word 'was' in various contexts

2. Retell a story using details

3. Identify different types of paper and their use

4. Explain what makes a paper good for writing or folding

5. Use different tools to solve subtraction problems

UI Women's Basketball Team Members

✨ We have had a wonderful first week back from break! There was lots of sharing about what we did and who we saw as well as tons of excitement for seeing our friends and coming to school again! 😊 We also earned a school-wide celebration for filling the Paw Tank! The University of Iowa Women's Basketball team members came for a chat and some high reaching high-fives! Exciting!!

🍎You will find your child's blue Friday Folder in their backpack with several items inside. One of the items I would like to draw your attention to is the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Recognition sheet. This sheet explains how we will celebrate the great things MLK Jr. did and what you can do to help! Feel free to send any supplies with your child to school throughout the next week or let me know by email that you plan to send something on Friday the 18th. This will help myself and our fourth grade buddy teachers know what we will need to supply for the class. Thank you!

📚 This week in reading we took a look at various tales and stories from around the world! We read and retold the following stories: The Water Princess, The Runaway Wok, Mama, Do You Love Me?, Ganesha's Sweet Tooth, and Anansi The Spider. These were high interest stories that brought diversity, compassion, and curiosity into our classroom this week! You can help your child retell stories by finding high interest books and asking them what happened in the beginning, middle, and end, as well as asking them what some of the main details were. With new stories, there may be questions or connections that you can build their understanding on and desire to read more!

📗 You will find the Scholastic Book order in your child's blue Friday Folder. If you would like to order books for this month, you may do so through the flyer or online. This month's order will be due by Friday, January 25th.

🔢 In math we have continued to work on subtraction problems and understanding the difference between the words "take away" and "___ more". Asking your child how many toys (books, apples, etc.) they have and then asking how many they would have if they took ___ away or ___ more joined is a great way to help them practice this skill at home!

📄 Our science investigations has brought us to our paper study! We started with trees, followed by wood, and now we are taking a close look at paper! This means we are observing different types of paper and how they are made, how they react to various challenges (writing, folding, water, weather) and how we use paper in our daily lives. We have learned about ten different types of paper and where we might see them, as well as how each type reacts with markers, crayons, and pencil and how easy or difficult it is to fold. You can investigate types of paper at home by finding objects that are made of paper or creating something of their very own to test against the elements!

🦁 I hope you all have a fantastic weekend; getting plenty of rest and having fun in the coming snow! ⛄

❄ 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! 🦁