A week in review: January 22-24

Due to the weather and in service day it was a very condensed week! Wednesday was a bit mind boggling to most of the students. They simply could not believe after only an hour that it was time for lunch! We fit in as much as possible and enjoyed the weather at recess. The snow is always so much fun for them, other than putting all the snow clothes on! I hope you all had a great week and try to stay warm this weekend!

Important Dates:

  • January 28: Field Trip to For the Kidz gymnastics
  • February 13: 100th Day
  • February 14: Valentine’s Party
  • February 15-18: No school Winter Break

A Few Additional Reminders:

Our Field Trip is scheduled for January 28 at For the Kidz gymnastics in Wyoming MI. If you signed up to drive please make sure that the office has a copy of both your driver’s license and your proof of insurance before we leave or you will not be able to drive any children. I will also be sending home driver’s guidelines for those who are driving us which need to be signed and returned! Thank you for your willingness to drive and your help in this regard. One other matter of importance is we are in need of car seats so if at all possible if you drive your child to school could you please bring a car seat in for them on that morning or even the day before. That would help us immensely! We will also be keeping an eye on the weather. If ZCS happens to have a snow day the field trip will be cancelled and will hopefully be rescheduled. We will also be looking at the roads we will be traveling on to determine if it will be safe for us to travel. Please watch your email on Monday morning.

We only need 5 more “bugs” in our jar to reach our goal for our class incentive. I am anticipating that we should reach the goal by Friday. I would like to plan our picnic for Wednesday February 6. Please let me know if you would be willing to bring some pre-cut fruit in on that morning to add to a class fruit salad for our picnic. Also, please still send a lunch with your child as I will just be adding a snack along with our fruit salad and a drink box! I will send another reminder about this towards the end of the week!

100th Day is approaching soon! It is scheduled as of now for February 13. We will be doing lots of fun activities that day to celebrate the number 100! One thing we will be doing is dressing up like super heroes! Mr. McAboy will be dressing up like Zero the Hero that day and surprising us in our room as well! Please feel free to use anything you have at your home to make your child into a super hero, be creative and have fun! Do not stress about this as all of your children are super heroes already! We just want this to be a fun day for the kids!

For Valentine’s Day we will be having a party from about 11:00-11:45 on the 14th. It would be great if your child brought in valentines to pass out to the whole class (20 students). You do not have to label the To: section of the valentines, but just the From:. This will make it much easier for the students to hand them out! Also these may be either homemade or purchased, whatever you prefer. Leah Russcher’s mom, Lisa will be heading up this party and will be sending out sign ups for volunteers and donations soon! Thank you Lisa for doing this!

Curriculum:

Bible: This week we had chapel and were honored and privileged to hear our guest speaker Cleopatra Kennedy. She has been actively involved in the civil rights movement and as a gospel singer. She shared stories of many of her experiences with us and then we were able to go back to class and discuss what we heard. We had a great discussion about how people were unkind but can still be that way today. We talked about being kind to everyone and that often people are unkind because they don’t know and have a relationship with Jesus. It was an amazing time of reflection about the difference Jesus makes in our lives.

Word Wall Word: am

Daily 5: After assessing each child’s reading I have constructed some new reading groups and goals for the kids. Each child should be bringing one new book home with them this weekend. They also should have a bag with word wall words and our new consonant, vowel, consonant cards to help them say each sound and then blend them together to work on sounding out words. Please work on these with your child at home! I will also be sending a Sign Up Genius soon for volunteers to help during our Daily 5 to listen to our kids read and practice sight words.
Math: This week we took a unit review test to see where we are at with simple addition and subtraction as well as the numbers 1-10 and a few new shapes.

Phonics: This week we had picture cards and practiced listening for long vowels and then finding the vowel on our pocket chart. This was helpful for the students as well in reminding them that vowels have 2 sounds unlike consonants.

Writing Workshop: This week we continued with our pattern books, as well as making pattern books in the writing portion of our Daily 5. We attempted to write 4 pages on our own. It is still relatively difficult but we will be working on this for several more weeks. I am encouraging your child to listen for sounds and write what they hear. The perfectionist in many of them makes this extremely difficult. We continue to talk about what matters is not perfection but being willing to try their best!

Up in Lights: This week Lindiwe Weeda was Up in Lights. We loved looking at her baby pictures and are still hoping to have mom come visit as the snow day prevented that! Lindiwe is a blessing to our classroom!

Afternoon: We continued our normal afternoon rituals of quiet time, play time, snack and recess. Also, because we have everyone here on Tuesdays and Thursdays we are now able to add some extra Daily 5 during the afternoon!

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