Thank you for making me feel so special this week! I was showered with sweet emails and notes, yummy treats, special gifts, and a very sweet book your children made for me! It is such an honor to be your child’s kindergarten teacher! I am blessed by all of you! Thank you for partnering with me this year and thank you for showing me so much love this week!
Important Dates:
- May 10: 1/2 Day for Tulip TIme (Dismissal is at 11:50.)
- 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 (10:00-11:00)
- 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.
- PBL Celebration: 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 in our classroom afterward.
Check out how much we’re learning and growing in Christ!
Bible: This week I felt a tug on my heart to make sure every child knew the Holy Spirit has given them the power to tell others about Jesus and live for him. We reviewed Pentecost and each child journaled about how the Holy Spirit helps them. I have goosebumps again just thinking about it! Some kids drew pictures, some wrote a few sentences, and others combined the two. Many reflected on sharing the Gospel while others wrote about the power to love others or do what’s right.
Later we learned about the first church and read a bit about Peter and the other disciples. We learned that the Holy Spirit gave them the power to do miracles in Jesus’ name. Sometimes things were hard. Once Peter was even in jail, but God never left them. He even sent an angel to help Peter escape from jail! I reminded the kids that God is with us too, in the good days and when we have problems.
When we practiced our Easter verse in small groups I was blown away by how well your kids knew it! So much so that I let them earn their prize. There was no certificate sent home, (I wasn’t prepared to assess it that day,) but everyone did such an awesome job! Our next verse is below.
Mateo 28:19-20 Por tanto, vayan y hagan discípulos de todas las naciones, bautizándolos en el nombre del Padre y del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo, enseñándoles a obedecer todo lo que les he mandado a ustedes. Y les aseguro que estaré con ustedes siempre, hasta el fin del mundo.
Matthew 28:19-20 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
Literacy: This week our letter brought an extra challenge as it makes two sounds! In Spanish the letter Cc makes a hard sound /k/ and a soft sound /s/. We played language detectives and noted that Cc makes /s/ when it is followed by an i or an e. In grammar we also learned that the pronoun lo can be used in place of nouns. In English it is similar to saying “it.” Check out our phrase of the week to see this special new word in context
Daily 5 continues to go very well for our class! I have been particularly impressed with the way the kids are independently working hard even when I’m not directly watching them because I’m working with another group! This weekend the kids do have books to read at home. Next weekend they will not be bringing books home. On Monday we are starting a special literacy project called the aalpa. We’ll begin with the interpretive activity, reading a book and answering some comprehension questions about it. I’ll be working with kids in small groups on this project instead of working on take home book reading strategies, so there will be no books to take home next weekend.
- Reading strategy: Inferring
- Read aloud: La familia de Clifford
- Vocabulary words
- el pueblo (village, town)
- el cachorro (puppy)
- el collar (collar)
- la ciudad (city)
- el avión (airplane)
- el bombero (fire fighter)
- Word wall word: ¿cómo? (how)
- Phrase of the week: ¿Puedo llevarlo a casa? (May I take it home?)
- Letter of the week: Cc
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. It was fun to take turns “shopping.” Later we used base 10 blocks to reinforce our thinking of teen numbers as 10 and some extra ones.
Exploring God’s World: We continued learning about living things by closely observing WORMS! We watched how they move and learned all about their ways as living things! Here are a couple pictures, but please check out that page of our blog for more!
Writing Workshop: Your children are showing themselves to be quite talented kids! We made a list of things we know how to do and could teach others. Then each child made their first how to book. Everyone either wrote about how to play or how to color. These were the 2 most popular things from the kids’ lists.
On Friday we celebrated our unit on pen pals. THANK YOU to everyone who made that morning so special! The kids were super excited to meet their secret pen pals and complete the pizza-themed centers together. During lunch several commented on how yummy their pizza was! 🙂 Here are a couple pictures, but please check out that page of our blog for more!
Up in Lights: Ken was Up in Lights this week! Thank you, Ken, for introducing us to your sister, Natalia, and your mom and dad! Ken taught us a song Unstoppable from his VBS. It went along very well with our Bible lessons as we talked about how the Holy Spirit makes us unstoppable!
From Our Immersion Coordinator
All immersion parents are invited to learn more about your child’s immersion education at an Immersion Parent Round Table Discussion. While these are completely optional, I encourage anyone to join at least one meeting whether you have questions or just prefer to listen. The grade levels are just suggested ranges so that we can focus on topics which tend to be of interest to that level but don’t feel restricted by them. We will meet in the classroom at the back of the media center. Bring your lunch and your questions!
- May 17 at 12:00: Preschool-3rd
- May 18 at 12:00: 4th-8th