Week Overview

It has been such a joy to get to know your children more this week! I see the beginnings of some wonderful friendships. Thank you for entrusting your children to me during the school day. I am so blessed to be partnering with amazing families like yours! In the beginning of each newsletter I will give some of the highlights from our week at school. I often hear from parents that their children don’t share much with them about their school day. Take a peek at this section for some of the things we’ve been up to and some ideas of what to chat about with your child. Here are a few pictures of our awesome week!

Important Dates:

Here I will always include important dates coming up. There is a calendar to the right of our home page that you might find helpful.

September 4: 1st day of hot lunch and busing.

September 26: Field trip to DeGraaf Nature Center

Reminders

In this section of our newsletter you will see announcements and reminders.

• If you haven’t already done so, please turn in our class permission slip and activity fee. If you have multiple kids at ZCS you may write 1 check. Please turn in the permission slip to me and the activity fee to the office.
• Please make sure to take home and check the alerta roja (red alert) every day. There won’t always be something to go home each day, but I do encourage your family to find a routine that helps you remember to check the folder daily.
• Please feel free to send a water bottle to school with your child. Busy learning brains need lots of water! 🙂
• Hot lunch begins Tuesday. Please review the lunch options, A or B, with your child the night before. I will read through them again and help your child sign up for the right thing in the morning.
• I am creating a classroom directory based on the contact information you gave me when you filled out the Kindergarten Interest Inventory, (Google form.) If you do not want your information to be given to the families in our class, please let me know. If I don’t hear from you, I will add your information.
• Notes about dismissal:
  • Busing begins Tuesday. I will do my very best to make sure each child gets where he/she needs to be on time!
  • At 3:30 dismissal, I will say goodbye to the kids waiting for their parents before I walk the bus riders outside. If you’re picking up at school and would like to leave with your child before I get back from the buses, you may.
  • At 11:50 dismissal, please do not leave unless I see you. As you may have noticed, this dismissal is a bit more chaotic as there is lots going on in the hallway during that time. 🙂
    

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Curriculum

In this section I’ll share some of the curriculum we worked on over the past week. The first 3 days of school were light on curriculum. We focused more on getting to know each other and our classroom. Your kids are doing a great job of learning the routines, procedures, and expectations for our classroom. One day after recess they insisted I wait in the hallway because they had a “surprise” for me. When they let me step inside the room, they were all perfectly quiet, sitting on the carpet ready to learn! It made me so happy one of the kids said “my heart must have been as big as the school!”

Each morning we start our day doing devotions. This week we talked a lot about names. We learned that the name Jesus means Savior. We talked about God’s plan to send his son to die on the cross to save us from our sins. I told the kids that God thinks names are very important and that we’d try to make names important in our classroom too. Incidentally, I explained that I don’t change their names to Spanish and I’d like them to use my name, Maestra Izenbaard, instead of just “maestra.” We also learned about our first Fruit of the Spirit, love. We talked about what it means to show others we love them with words and actions. In the afternoons we spent a short time resting, worked hard in math centers, and ventured into purposeful play.

Thank you for a wonderful first 3 days with your children! I’m looking forward to our 4 day week coming up! I will be thinking about you all and praying that you have a fun and relaxing long weekend! The first day after a long weekend can be a little tough, so I’ll be praying that the transition back in goes smoothly for everyone! As always, please let me know if you have any questions and I will be happy to get back to you as soon as possible! Thank you! I’m excited to partner with you all this year!