Category Archives: Hot Lunch

A week in review: September 16-20

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This week was another busy one in our kindergarten classroom. From our science explorations, to our study of creation, to assessing all the students on their letter and number knowledge, we have completed our second full and productive week. The students are all adjusting to life in kindergarten and remembering more and more of their daily responsibilities on their own! It has been so much fun to watch their growth from just a few short weeks ago! I am looking forward to the week ahead!

Important Dates

September 27: No school/teacher professional development day

October 1: School pictures

October 3: field trip to Degraaf nature center-9:30-11:00 (plus drive time)

October 11: No PM bussing

Additional Information

Tuesday .. Remember to return your child’s library book if they would like to check out a new one.

A picture form should have come home with your child on Thursday. Our class picture will be taken on October 1st. Make sure to send the form in that day with your child even if you are not ordering pictures. The company needs correct names for the class composite and yearbook.

I sent towels home with some of the students today, please send them back as soon as possible. For those students who were half day today I will plan on sending them home next Friday to be washed.

Thank you to all who signed up to help with our field trip. If you haven’t emailed me yet please lmk how many children can ride with you and how many car seats you have. You will also need to make sure the office has a copy of your current driver’s license as well as a copy of your proof of insurance.

Also, I am still missing a few family photos, if you haven’t turned yours in yet please send it in with your child so we can include them on our family bulletin board.

Curriculum

Bible: This week we studied the seven days of Creation. We also used our own Bibles and read together. On the last day we went outside and reread the entire creation story and looked around at the world God made! We talked about the variety of things God created and how no two things are the same, we discussed how unique we all are and how amazing our God is to create us all!!! What a mighty God we serve!

Math: This week we continued to work on counting. We practiced making groups of things and then did our first page out of our math book, we focused on drawing pictures to represent numbers. In math centers we made play dough “apples” to match the number on the tree, we made towers to represent numbers with unifix cubes as well as doing some dot to dot pages.

Literacy Centers (Alphabet boot camp): This week we continued our study of a letter a day doing the letters Ii-Mm. We are continuing to work on rainbow writing as well as recognizing the letter in text. A huge shout out to those who donated jelly beans, marshmallows and toothpicks. They made the “J” and “M” days a huge success. We used our marshmallows and toothpicks to make different shapes and create some unique shapes of our own. Please continue to review letters and their sounds at home, as we are focusing on recognizing the letters and sounds at school, it is so helpful for this vital information to be reinforced at home. This week I had the opportunity to meet with each child individually to review all of these. It was so helpful to have this time and see where they are to begin the year!

Engaging God’s World: This week we continued to learn about our five senses. We each took a big piece of tape outside and collected some items, from litter to a moth wing, and used our sense of sight, along with a magnifying glass, to make observations about what we found! This week we will be focusing on some of our other senses including taste. If you would be willing to donate a few yellow and green apples please let me know. I have some red ones but I would like to explore the different tastes that each color has and what our individual taste buds like the best!

Daily 5: We are continuing to talk about the three ways to read a book as well as building our stamina. This week we read for 8 minutes while staying in one spot, reading the whole time, not distracting those around us and remaining quiet! Our plan next week is to reach 10 minutes, which will be rewarded with 10 M&M’s! Our eventual goal is to reach 12 minutes!

Afternoons: Our afternoons continue to be such a fun time to watch the students work together. Whether it is math centers, art or play time, they are learning not only to work together but also to have fun doing it! We end every Friday afternoon with kindergarten singing. This takes place in one of the kindergarten rooms and all the kindergarten students come! It is my absolute favorite activity of the entire week; hearing 70 beautiful voices sing Jesus Loves Me in three different languages is incredible!

 

A week in review: December 17-21

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Happy New Year!

I hope that this letter finds you rested and relaxed after the holiday season.  My prayer is that you all enjoyed some wonderful time with your family and friends as you celebrated Christmas.  It was a great time in the Arnold house but we are all ready for a normal schedule again! It seems like yesterday we had our last day of school but it has already been two weeks! We had such a great week before Christmas including our chapel which was enjoyed by everyone! Also thanks again to Kristin Tubergan and all who helped and donated to make our Christmas party a success! It was so fun to watch the kids enjoying the celebration! Thank you too to the large number of parents who came to cheer us on at the Jingle Jog. What a great way to raise money for our sister school in the Philippines! Now get ready 2019, here we come!

Important Dates:

  • January 18: End of the semester
  • January 21: In service day for teachers, NO SCHOOL for students
  • January 28: Gymnastics trip to For the Kidz

A Few Additional Reminders:

Thursday Afternoons-On January 10 all students will begin to attend on Thursday afternoons. If you want to add any additional afternoons please let me know at this time! I am looking forward to having two afternoons with the entire class!

New incentive-After finishing filling our bucket of bears and having our pajama day we are now starting a new behavioral incentive! I have decided that we will be putting 25 “bugs” in a jar, since often our picnics are invaded by little creatures! J Once we reach 25 bugs (we already have 5) I will be bringing in some big blankets and some picnic food on top of whatever your child eats for lunch! It will be a fun and unique experience to all eat “picnic style” together!

Here is a link to a Sign up Genius for lunch helpers through May. Thank you in advance for your help!

Please continue to practice putting on Snow Clothes at home! This allows us to make the most of our time in the classroom! Thank you!

Our next Field trip is scheduled for January 28 at For the Kidz, a gymnastics center located in Wyoming, Mi.  Here is a link to a Sign up Genius for volunteers for this as well.  It will be a morning field trip and more details will follow soon.

Curriculum:

Bible: We finished up our unit on the birth of Jesus, one of my favorites as well as the students, and now moving to Jesus’ ministry here on earth.

Word Wall Word: here

Daily 5: I was able to meet with most of the students this week and hand out some new books.  My goal is to be able to meet with each student twice a week as we will now all be here on both Tuesday and Thursday afternoons! When you practice reading at home with your child please make sure to emphasize with them how important it is to point to the words as they say them as this will help them when the word and books begin to get harder! I’m hoping to begin assessing their knowledge of letters and sounds this week to see how far they have come!

Phonics: We learned this week about first and last words in a sentence. We made a fun list of some of our favorite foods to practice this!

Interactive Read Aloud: We read an all time favorite this week, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, by Laura Numeroff, and practiced our prediction skills!

Up in Lights: Ailie Bouwkamp was Up in Lights! Ailie’s mom, dad and sister joined us on Thursday and shared about her as well as joined her for lunch! It was fun getting to know a bit more about her! She is such a fun part of our class with her smile and fun sense of humor! Ailie we are so glad you are in our class!!!

Afternoons: This was an especially fun week because we had Christmas singing with K-5th grade with Mr. Meyer.  We were also able to do some gingerbread graphing! We graphed which part of the gingerbread man we ate first.  The majority of our class bit the head off first! We also enjoyed our usual play time and quiet time as well as recess, snack and art!