Highlights from our week…

The highlight of this past week for me was remembering Dr. Martin Luther King’s lessons on loving one another. As a class we talked about the command Jesus gave us to love our neighbor. The kids brainstormed ideas about how to draw a loving community and decided that some important things to include would be lots of colors, lots of people holding hands, and a heart to represent love. Every kindergartener at school that day contributed to our class drawing. Finally, we added our class drawing to the others on the wall and together we created a mural illustrating Dr. King’s dream of a beloved community. When I think about where I see God throughout my days at ZCS it’s in the way your kids love each other. Thank you for instilling this value in them!

Important Dates

• January 23: Teacher in-service (no school)
• February 10: For the Kidz gymnastics field trip (10:30-12:30) Please see the information below for details!
• February 13: 100th Day of School!
• February 14: Valentine’s Celebration
• February 20: President’s Day Break- No school
  

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Important Announcements

• Report Cards: By January 27 I will complete a report card for each child! They will be available to view online shortly after that so please watch for details on how to view it!  I can’t wait to report back to you on all that your kids are learning! I am so proud of every one of them!
• For the Kidz Gymnastics Field Trip: We are planning to leave about 10:30 and return to school about 12:30. There will be NO hot lunch for our class that day as we’ll be getting back to school too late. 1/2 day families please plan on picking up your child at our classroom door at 12:30. I’m sorry for any inconvenience. There were limited dates and times we could go on this field trip. All students must have a signed waiver to be able to participate. Please follow this link  to complete the waiver for your child. You’ll be prompted to enter in a phone number to add your name and address. Then you will be asked to re-enter the phone number to add your child to the account. Be sure that your phone number is entered in this format: 000-000-0000. See our field trip blog post for more information!
• 100th Day Celebration: The 100th day of school is a big deal in Kindergarten! It means the kids have been working hard for 100 days! They have learned so much, grown a ton, and formed some amazing friendships! I’m looking forward to celebrating! To mark the special day we will be dressing as 100 year old people! (This is optional.) Some ideas include baby powder in your hair to make it gray, glasses, suspenders, a long skirt and sweater, or a cane. We will also be doing lots of fun math and literacy centers, creating a special art project, and eating a special 100th day snack made of 100 items!
• Valentine’s Day Celebration: I’m looking forward to celebrating friendships with your children on this special day! It’s a great way to continue our lessons on what it means to love your neighbor. On Valentine’s Day we will celebrate with a variety of math and literacy centers. One way we will intentionally show love to each other is by sharing valentines. (This is also optional.) When you help your child address valentines for his/her classmates, if you could please write “amigo” in the To: ___ section or leave it blank, that would be very helpful! Thank you!

Check out how much we’re learning and growing in Christ! 

Bible: This week we read about Jesus calling his disciples. We learned that Jesus didn’t choose extraordinary people with special talents, but rather chose normal people with everyday jobs. We talked about the fact that we are disciples as well and God can use us too! On Friday with  Maestra Vasquez the kids learned about the day Jesus blessed the children and taught about how important children are in the Kingdom of God. This story is where our Bible verse comes from! ZCS students collect artifacts in their spiritual journals throughout their years at school. On Friday each kindergartener created their very first spiritual journal artifact! They illustrated what the Bible verse means to them.

Steve Green sings a song that comes from our Bible verse. We have been listening to the song to help us remember our verse and I encourage you to do the same at home! The link is below.

Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBkx_T1_efI

English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMy7rabpY6g

Literacy: In grammar we began to conjugate verbs! I remember this being very hard when I learned Spanish in school, but the beautiful thing about choosing immersion for your children is that they have been conjugating verbs from the very first sentences they spoke! Children in immersion are constantly attending to language and looking for patterns. This week we just put a “grammar rule” to a pattern your children have been observing since day 1- first person singular present tense verbs. We learned that these verbs usually end in o, for example, camino (I walk,) or hablo (I talk.)

• Reading strategy: Visualizing
• Read aloud: Los pollitos dicen
• Vocabulary words
  • los pollitos (chicks)
  • el trigo (wheat)
  • el conejo (rabbit)
  • el maíz (corn)
  • las alas (wings)
• Word wall word: son (to be (3rd person plural)
• Phrase of the week: Ya sé. (I know.)
• Letter of the week: Ff

Writing Workshop: We continue to explore pattern books. This week we learned that a pattern book has a pattern and a theme. On Thursday I read a pattern book that last year’s kindergarteners wrote. The kids thought that was awesome! We noticed the pattern and theme on each page. On Friday Maestra Vasquez read several more pattern books and the kids searched again for the pattern and the theme in each book. Next week we will start writing our own pattern books!

Math: This week we talked about 2D shapes. We read a book about shape that helped us see shapes all around us. Then we completed a math page that gave us the opportunity to practice identifying 2D shapes. On Wednesday morning we practiced making sums with a hot chocolate art project. It was a fun way to practice math in a new context.

Exploring God’s World: This week we talked about gravity. With a partner, the kids stood on top of their chairs and dropped a feather, a ball, and a beanbag. Quickly, they discovered that everything falls down. We also read the pictures of an English book called I Fall Down. 

Up in Lights: Emma Feak was up in lights this week! Emma is full of sparkling personality and almost always has a big beautiful smile on her face. When she introduced us to her dog, Maya, I’m not sure who was happier, the kids or the dog. Thank you Emma and family!

Play: This week’s play was centered around the kitchen. The kids had a great time playing house and even had a birthday party for the twin boys who were turning 1!

Afternoons:

• Monday: art, rest, read aloud, recess, snack, play
• Tuesday: ice day
• Wednesday: rest, play, recess, snack, read aloud, Benson introduced us to his new 8 week old puppy, Teddy.
• Thursday: rest, math centers, recess, snack, play
• Friday: play, rest, recess, snack, circumlocution game*

*Circumlocution means describing a word using other words. It’s kind of like 20 questions in reverse. The person who is “it” describes something and the others try to guess what the “it” person is describing. During rest time the kids listed adjectives and other descriptions of whatever they were thinking of. After snack, the kids took turns reading their descriptions while their classmates tried to guess the idea. This is a great skill to practice at home in English or in Spanish! It’s a very helpful tool for staying in the target language!

From the immersion coordinator: On Tuesday, January 31 at 7:00 pm we will host an informational meeting for anyone interested in learning more about the Spanish or Mandarin immersion programs at ZCS. We will present an overview of what immersion looks like at Zeeland Christian, hear from an immersion parent, and open it up for a question and answer time. This meeting will be geared towards potential families but will also address many questions that existing families might have, so spread the word to parents of young children and consider joining us yourself. Grandparents who want to understand immersion education better are also invited!

Highlights from our week…

Do you ever do something and it just feels “right?” It fills your heart with joy and gives you goosebumps. That’s how it feels to be back with your kids! Each morning we say “good morning” to each other in our special way and on Monday morning hearing your kids say it again after a long break brought tears to my eyes. It was so good to be back together! I think the kids missed each other. As much as I enjoyed sipping my coffee and staying in my pj’s as long as possible over break, I sure missed being with your kids! Your children’s hard work during the first part of the school year paid off and we were able to jump right back into learning. It was a week full of great learning, laughter, fun memories, building relationships, and enjoying being together!

Important Dates

• January 20: Maestra Izenbaard uses the morning for report card assessing and Maestra Vasquez subs in the classroom. (Sarah Vasquez was one of my aides last year and is phenomenal!)
• January 23: Teacher in-service (no school)
• February 10: For the Kidz gymnastics field trip (10:30-12:30) Please see the information below for details!
• February 13: 100th Day of School!
• February 14: Valentine’s Celebration
• February 20: President’s Day Break- No school

Important Announcements

• Report Cards: By January 27 I will complete a report card for each child! They will be available to view online shortly after that so please watch for details on how to view it! Please pray for our class as this means another round of assessments is coming soon! January 20 Maestra Vasquez will be subbing for me while I try to get some assessing done. I’m excited to see all of the progress that your children are making and I can’t wait to report back to you on what I discover! I am so proud of every one of them!
• For the Kidz Gymnastics Field Trip: We are planning to leave about 10:30 and return to school about 12:30. There will be NO hot lunch for our class that day as we’ll be getting back to school too late. 1/2 day families please plan on picking up your child at our classroom door at 12:30. I’m sorry for any inconvenience. There were limited dates and times we could go on this field trip. All students must have a signed waiver to be able to participate. Please follow this link  to complete the waiver for your child. You’ll be prompted to enter in a phone number to add your name and address. Then you will be asked to re-enter the phone number to add your child to the account. Be sure that your phone number is entered in this format: 000-000-0000. See our field trip blog post for more information!
• 100th Day Celebration: The 100th day of school is a big deal in Kindergarten! It means the kids have been working hard for 100 days! They have learned so much, grown a ton, and formed some amazing friendships! I’m looking forward to celebrating! To mark the special day we will be dressing as 100 year old people! This is completely optional. Some ideas include baby powder in your hair to make it gray, glasses, suspenders, a long skirt and sweater, or a cane. We will also be doing lots of fun math and literacy centers, creating a special art project, and eating a special 100th day snack made of 100 items!
• Valentine’s Day Celebration: I’m looking forward to celebrating friendships with your children on this special day! It’s a great way to continue our lessons on what it means to love your neighbor. On Valentine’s Day we will celebrate with a variety of math and literacy centers. One way we will intentionally show love to each other is by sharing valentines. When you help your child address valentines for his/her classmates, if you could please write “amigo” in the To: ___ section or leave it blank, that would be very helpful! Thank you!

Check out how much we’re learning and growing in Christ! 

Bible: We picked up our Bible lessons right where we left off and are now learning about Jesus’s ministry. This week we learned about his baptism. We discussed that this was an important event because it was one way Jesus showed his humanity and also because God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were all on the scene.

Literacy: This week was an exciting week of Daily 5 as we opened up our writing center! Kindergarteners now choose from read to self, read to a friend, word work, and writing. Each child has a notebook with room for writing with words and pictures.

In grammar we continued to talk about the order of adjectives. We quickly discovered that, contrary to English, in Spanish the adjective comes after the noun.

• Reading strategy: Questioning
• Read aloud: Rebeca
• Vocabulary words
  • la maceta (flower pot)
  • contento/a (happy)
  • la paleta (sucker)
  • arrullar (to lull to sleep)
  • regar (to water)
  • la carreta (cart)
  • chupar (to suck)
  • la patineta (scooter, skateboard)
• Word wall word: bien (good)
• Phrase of the week: Estoy emocionado/a. (I’m excited.)
• Letter of the week: Bb

Our culture lessons in literacy this week took us to Mexico! Maestra Flores, a 1st grade aide who is from Mexico, shared lots of pictures from her trip to Mexico over Christmas break and taught us more about the Mexican culture.

Math: This week we started a new round of math centers! The kids were busy using tally marks to represent numbers, rolling and graphing gingerbread numbers, making 10’s with mittens and unifix cubes, and stamping numbers 1-12. 

Exploring God’s World: This week we integrated our adjectives knowledge from literacy and our listing and labelling work in writing workshop with our exploring God’s world work on earth materials. Each child had the opportunity to closely observe the 4 main earth materials: water, sand, soil, and rocks, (agua, arena, tierra, and rocas.) Later on we wrote down all the adjectives we could think of to describe each earth material. This ended up being a great review of our 5 senses as well! The kids loved acting as scientists!

Handwriting Without Tears: This week we finished learning about the uppercase letters that begin with “magic C.” We practiced writing Q and G together with our chalkboards, wet sponges, dry paper towels, and chalk.

Up in Lights: Lydia VanAppledorn was up in lights this week! She brought her mom, dad, brother, sister, and bunny in to meet our class! Lydia is full of spunk and has a heart that cares deeply for others. She’d like to be a doctor when she grows up. Thanks for being up in lights, Lydia!

Play: This week the kids have been busy creating courses for their cars out of a variety of blocks and legos. They’ve also opened the restaurant back up! The focus, laughter, and the way your kids have been getting along so nicely shows me that they missed playing with one another over break!

Afternoons:

• Monday: art, rest, read aloud, recess, snack, play
• Tuesday: rest. play, recess, snack, math centers
• Wednesday: rest, play, recess, snack, “bien” sight word activity and January calendar
• Thursday: ice/snow day! 🙂
• Friday: rest, play, recess, snack, K-5 singing

From the immersion coordinator: On Tuesday, January 31 at 7:00 pm we will host an informational meeting for anyone interested in learning more about the Spanish or Mandarin immersion programs at ZCS. We will present an overview of what immersion looks like at Zeeland Christian, hear from an immersion parent, and open it up for a question and answer time. This meeting will be geared towards potential families but will also address many questions that existing families might have, so spread the word to parents of young children and consider joining us yourself. Grandparents who want to understand immersion education better are also invited!