Newsletter 30: Week of April 23

Highlights from our week…

It was another fun and full week of Kindergarten for our class! On Thursday we celebrated Earth Day. We talked about our role as stewards of God’s creation. Each child created a book about how to take care of God’s world. On Friday we saw many animals at the Critter Barn! It was another fun way to celebrate God’s creation! A very special thank you to the families who helped us make this possible from driving to preparing snacks! Thank you so much! Please check out of photos tab for pictures of your cute kids! I’ll be adding them sometime this weekend.


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 10: 1/2 Day for Tulip TIme
  • June 7: Holland Farmers Market

Important Announcements: 

  • Garden Crossings: The dates to pick up the flowers from Garden Crossings are Thursday, May 11, Friday, May 12, or Saturday, May 13. Please see the link below for information. If you’re unable to pick them up that weekend, I’ll pick them up on Monday and take them to school.
  • 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: On Monday we finished our timeline by adding the Resurrection! Christ has risen! We opened an empty egg to represent the empty tomb.

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.

Later on in the week we talked about the Ascension. There were some beautiful discussions about Heaven. Christ is coming again!

Literacy: This week we turned our focus to Earth Day and The Critter Barn. Kindergarteners will begin a new Daily 5 writing option all about animals on Monday. We also created a book about how to take care of God’s Earth. We classified words according to the verb “estar” and placed Jj words we found in books and around our classroom on the syllable wheel. It was a great week of review and real-life application lessons in the context of things happening in the world around us.

Math: We continued to work in small groups to complete our math test. It’s time consuming doing it this way, but it’s worth it. 🙂 I think we are finished now! I’m looking forward to beginning unit 4! I can’t believe this is the last math unit of the year. Please stay tuned for a parent letter coming home next week. It highlights some of the things we’ll be covering in this unit.

Exploring God’s World: Our Exploring God’s World unit took us to The Critter Barn this week! Thank you, again, to everyone who helped make this day so amazing! We learned about many different animals including goats, chickens, ducks, cats, rabbits, and cows. I’m excited to use this adventure to give one of our Daily 5 writing choices a memorable context.

Writing Workshop: We’re finishing up our unit on Small Moments stories and getting ready to celebrate this coming week! When we fix and fancy our writing we are looking for spaces between words, uppercase letters at the beginning of sentences, and periods at the end.

Handwriting Without Tears: We’re making our way through the lowercase letters. This week we worked on k and reviewed some of the other lowercase letters we’ve been learning lately. As you watch your child write at home or write with him/her please help them remember to start at the appropriate place, (usually the top.)

Up in Lights:  I forgot to add this section at first last week (Sorry VanderVeen family!) so I kept it on here again. There was no Up in Lights presentation this week.

Lily was up in lights this week! She introduced us to a new song based on 1 Samuel 16:7, “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Thank you for this important reminder, Lily and family! Lily, you are a beautiful child of God inside and out!



From Our Immersion Coordinator

What is an AALPA? This acronym stands for add.a.lingua performance assessment. This assessment allows us to assess and track each child’s development throughout his/her years of immersion education. During the aalpa, each child is evaluated through the three modes of communication: interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational. Teachers conference with each child after each section and help them to determine linguistic goals. All of our K-8 immersion classrooms will be working through an aalpa before the end of the year.  Ask your child’s teacher if you would like to know more about the aalpa at your child’s grade level.

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