Week Overview
What a memorable week! It was so exciting to share our news with your kindergartener and then with your whole family! Thank you so much for the emails of congratulations and for all of the prayers! I couldn’t think of a better group to support us and share in our excitement! I’ve been told the class you teach when you’re expecting makes its way into a special part of your heart. I can see why people say that!
I will keep you posted as I figure out details regarding my long-term sub and anything else that might be helpful for you and your kids to know for a smooth transition. Right now I’m planning to teach until the end which means I will be with you until spring break!
Celebrating a new baby!
Important Dates
- October 17: Morning Field trip to DeGraaf Nature Center- Please bring a booster if your child doesn’t ride the bus!
- October 22-23: PT conferences in the evening- Please see Reminders section
- October 24-26: CEA convention – No School
- November 2: Grandparents Day- Details coming soon!
Reminders
- Parent Teacher Conferences: I’m excited about the opportunity to touch base with each of you early in the year.
- How to Sign Up: Access the link to the conference site from the ZCS website parent page. The link on the website is live! Please make sure you do this asap and, if you will not be available either evening, please make arrangements with me very soon!
- Questionnaire: If you haven’t already done so, please use this link to complete a Google form/conference questionnaire. I’d like to have these by the end of today, (Friday.) I use this information to guide our conversation when we meet together. I’m looking forward to celebrating the growth your child has experienced already in the first couple short months of school!
- New Student: We are excited to welcome the Glerum family who is moving to our area from Muskegon! Kai and his family visited our class this week and your children did an excellent job welcoming them to our class! His parents’ names are Rochelle and Josh. Thank you for your help in supporting the Glerum family and their transition to ZCS!
- Book Bags: Hopefully you had a chance to play with some letters last weekend. These bags went home again this weekend and will continue to go home every weekend. Please help your child remember to bring the bag and the materials inside back to school on Monday.
- DeGraaf Nature Center Field Trip: Last reminder! We will leave school at 9:00 am and return by 11:45 AM in time for lunch and AM dismissal. Parents who sign up to drive will transport your child to the trip. We have a limited number of boosters! Please help by planning to bring in your child’s booster seat if you are dropping your child off at school.
Curriculum
Bible: This week we focused in on God’s promises- His promises to Noah, to Abraham, and to us. We did a rainbow painting and each child uncovered their name which was written in white oil pastel. I hope this is a reminder that God’s promises are for each one of them!
Your children said the our Bible verse, Genesis 8:22, in groups for me on Friday. They did awesome! Our new Bible verse is below. Check out the Bible verses tab for a video!
Genesis 28:15 Yo estoy contigo. Te protegeré por dondequiera que vayas, y te traeré de vuelta a esta tierra. No te abandonaré hasta cumplir con todo lo que te he prometido.
“I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.
Literacy: This week we talked about proper nouns. These are names that use a capital (mayúscula) letters. We also opened the next of the Daily 5, Work on Writing. I have been meeting with small groups to start this new center. We’ve been working on drawing our stories.
- Reading strategy: Making connections
- Word wall word: si, sí
- Read aloud: Este soy yo
- Vocabulary Words:
- la sonrisa (smile)
- la fresa (strawberry)
- el ratón (rat)
- el cabello (hair)
- los cachetes (cheeks)
- la lana (wool)
- la luna (moon)
- Phrase of the week: No entiendo. ( I don’t understand.)
- Letter of the week: Ii
Book of Friends: We “met” some new friends this week- Aiden, Lydia, and Sophia! Your kids are getting eager to put their pages together into a book!
Math: We’ve been working on addition and subtraction. We aren’t using the symbols yet, but this week we practiced acting out story problems. In small groups, we used tiny dinosaurs to add two different numbers of dinosaurs or take a dinosaur away from the group and count how many were left. We also started a shape book and talked about circles, rectangles, and squares.
Exploring God’s World: This week we used our sense of taste to determine which color apple we prefer: red, yellow, or green. Then we used our math skills to make a class graph and compare the number of classmates who prefer each color.
Project-Base Learning: This week we talked about Grandparents Day coming up in November. I asked the class what we could do to help our grandparents find their way from the gym to our classroom after chapel. We discovered that one thing we could give them is a map! Soon we’ll work on creating a map of our school together.
Afternoons: This week during play the kids have been extra creative in the blocks. They built Zeeland Christian and the playground. Then they combined the blocks center and the vehicles and people center to act out school. 🙂 In our math centers we’ve been working on adding and subtracting, reading books with numbers, shapes, and patterns, number sequencing 1-10, and drawing number scenes in our own versions of Anno’s Counting Book.
Up in Lights: This week Daniel Capestany was Up in Lights. It was interesting to learn that Daniel would like to be a train conductor and some kind of professional athlete, although he’s not sure which sport he’d like to play. 🙂 Daniel’s mom read the book El Pingüino Tacky, a hilarious book about daring to be different. We’re so glad you’re in our class Daniel! You are an amazing friend to your classmates and your joy is contagious!
From the Immersion Program Director
I spent some time this week reflecting on some stats of Zeeland Christian that I thought might interest some of you. Did you know that ZCS employs teachers from 8 different countries? Of our immersion teachers, 12 teachers are non-native speakers and 15 are native speakers of the language in which they teach. In looking at our student population, we are evenly balanced with half of our students in immersion and half in English classrooms. When considering Young 5’s through 8th grade, 41% of our students are in Spanish immersion, 8% are in Mandarin immersion, and 49% are in English classes. Praise God that our students are able to experience such a variety of cultures and languages everyday at school.
