Our class waved goodbye to the last week of April on Friday. It’s hard to believe we turn the calendar to May tomorrow! God has been so good to us this school year! Thanks to each one of you who are a very special part of what God is doing! At this time of year it’s always fun to reflect on how far your kids have come. We’ll continue diving into our curriculum, but it’s never to early to celebrate God’s faithfulness over the school year so far!
Important Dates:
- April 28: All school chapel (1:00)
- May 5: Pen Pal Celebration- Kindergarteners will meet their secret pen pals and enjoy some pizza-themed literacy and math centers together!
- May 5: Family Fun Night @ ZCS
- May 10: 1/2 Day for Tulip TIme
- May 11: No hot lunch or pm busing
- May 12: No hot lunch or pm busing
- May 29: Memorial Day (no school) Kindergarteners who are interested and available that day are invited to march in the parade in downtown Zeeland! More information will be coming soon!
- June 1: PBL Celebration (10:00-10:30) I’ll be sending details home soon, but for now please note that your child will be taking part in a PBL unit about animals in May. On June 1st at 10:00 each child will present his/her project in a group! Please join us for cookies and lemonade afterward.
- June 7: Holland Farmers Market and lunch at Kollen Park
- June 8: Last day of school! Happy summer!
- June 8: No hot lunch of pm busing
Phew! That’s it until the end of the year I believe! The end of our school year brings many special things! Please make note of these dates in your calendars and, of course, let me know if you have any questions! Thanks for hanging with us!
Important Announcements:
- Mother’s Day Flowers: The greenhouse is taking great care of our Mother’s Day hanging baskets. The dates to pick up the flowers are Thursday, May 11, Friday, May 12, or Saturday, May 13.
- Farmers Market: On Wednesday, June 7 we’ll be heading to our last kindergarten field trip, the Farmers Market! From there we’ll head to Kollen Park for a picnic lunch. We will not be eating hot lunch that day. We will be back to school about 12:45. “Morning kids” are welcome to stay until then! If you need to pick your child up at the normal 11:50 time, please meet us at Kollen Park.
- We are still looking for a couple more drivers for this field trip! It’s a little more hands-on so I’d like to make the groups a bit smaller than normal if possible. The only way to do that is with your help! ? We’ll be leaving about 9:30 that morning. Please use this link to sign up. Thank you!
- Pen Pal Celebration: Please follow this link to sign up for volunteering during our pen pal celebration or to bring pizza ingredients if you are able and interested! Thank you!
Check out how much we’re learning and growing in Christ!
Bible: This week we talked about Pentecost. We celebrated the power the Holy Spirit living inside of us gives us to share the good news of the Gospel. We also discussed what a powerful event this story is for us as immersion language learners. When the Holy Spirit came as tongues of fire on the disciples, they began to speak many languages and share the Gospel so that all could understand! It was a good reminder of our responsibility as language learners to share the Gospel in English and Spanish.
We’re also practicing our Bible memory verse. I’ll assess this sometime in the middle of May. We’ll have 1 more Bible verse after this one to learn in Kindergarten.
Mateo 28:5-6 El ángel dijo a las mujeres:―No tengan miedo; sé que ustedes buscan a Jesús, el que fue crucificado. No está aquí, pues ha resucitado, tal como dijo. Vengan a ver el lugar donde lo pusieron.
Matthew 28:5-6 The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.
Literacy: This week our grammar focus was on the verb estar. We looked at a Keynote presentation full of pictures of our class and used the verb estar to describe what the people in the picture were doing.
- Reading strategy: Inferring
- Read aloud: El pez arcoiris y la cueva de los monstruos
- Vocabulary words
- el pez (fish)
- la cueva (cave)
- el brazo (arm)
- la piedra (rock)
- el arcoiris (rainbow)
- Word wall word: ¿qué? (what) que (that)
- Phrase of the week: ¡Hablemos solamente español! (Let’s only speak Spanish)
- Letter of the week: Kk
Math: Using the fruits and veggies from our play kitchen we made addition and subtraction story problems as if we were in a grocery store. Then we practiced making partners to 10. A practice worksheet for this skill went home this week.
Exploring God’s World: The kids are loving the new writing daily 5 choices all about the animals we learned about at The Critter Barn! They’re doing a great job with all of that Spanish vocabulary!
Writing Workshop: We celebrated our Small Moments stories! When the music stopped, we stopped dancing, found a friend, and shared our stories with them.
On Friday we started our next unit, How To Books. I asked the kids to tell me step-by-step how to make a pb&j sandwich. We all giggled when I took their directions literally and squished the bread by placing the jar of peanut butter on it. We’ll be using that exercise to make a class book.
Handwriting Without Tears: We’re making our way through the lowercase letters. This week we worked on r, n, and m.
Up in Lights: Benson was Up in Lights this week! Thank you, Benson, for introducing us to your brother, Max, sister, Kendle, and your mom and dad! Benson is one of the biggest football fans I know, in particular the Bengals! He was also very excited to show us his new house. He moved just a couple weeks ago! We’re so glad you’re in our class, Benson!
From Our Immersion Coordinator
Do you use a foreign language in your day-to-day life? Perhaps you know of someone else who uses their bilingualism in the work place or elsewhere. We are always looking for individuals who can demonstrate to our students the advantages of knowing and using a second language. If you or someone you know might be willing to visit a classroom or connect with a class online, please touch base with me (Jodi Pierce, jpierce@zcs.org) or your child’s teacher.