Happy Friday! It’s been a bit of a weird couple weeks with so many days off due to cold, ice, snow, and other winter weather! Thank you for hanging in there and staying on top of things, even last minute changes. 🙂 We are taking advantage of every available moment at school and working hard to continue our learning. Wednesday we had a very small group due to our 2-hour delay. I surprised the kids and let them sit wherever they wanted for lunch. It’s the small things in life that sometimes bring the most joy!

Important Dates

• February 14: Valentine’s Day (see reminders section)
• February 15 & 18: No School (Winter Break)
• February 19: Field trip to For the Kidz Gymnastics. Please note the date change!
  • Please send along a booster seat if you are able (if your child doesn’t ride the bus).
  • Children should dress in comfortable clothes and wear socks. We will be moving a lot!
• February 19: Next opportunity to add afternoons (optional)
• February 22: (tentative date) 100th Day of School- see reminders section
• March 5: PT conferences in the evening (optional)
• March 14: Joel Tanis, a local author, will visit for our Young Authors event
• March 31: Baby Izenbaard’s Due Date 🙂

Reminders

Transitional Schedules: February 19 is the next opportunity to add afternoons to your child’s schedule if you’d like. Please let me know before February 15 if you plan to make a change. Adding time is optional this time. The next opportunity to make a change will be April 10 when everyone will begin to attend on Wednesday afternoons.

Field Trip to Visser Farms: Due to missing so much instruction time on our many snow days, the kindergarten team has decided to skip this field trip this year. We feel the time we will gain in our classrooms by not attending this trip is valuable. The money you paid in August to send your child on this trip will be used at the farmers market and for a different project.

100 Day: Zero the Hero (secretly Mr. McAboy) will be visiting our school to help us celebrate 100 days of learning! We will not have a  class party, but will be doing a few fun literacy and math activities. God has been so good these 100 days! We are going to celebrate by dressing up like super heroes! Feel free to be creative by making a cape or using one you already have and think of a special super power 🙂 Perhaps a special gift or talent God has blessed your child with. Have fun!

Valentines Day: I always look forward to celebrating this special day of love and friendship together. We will have a small class celebration where we’ll participate in a few different centers. One center will be passing out valentines. Please make sure there are enough for everyone- 23 students- and that your child fills out only the “From____” section. You may leave the “To ____” section blank. Valentines may be handmade or store bought- keep it simple!

Raising Money for the Philippines: Information went home via email and in red folders last week about this special project focused on loving others and support our sponsor student from the Philippines. I hope it leads to lots of great conversations. If your child is choosing to participate, please turn in the hearts paper and money at the end of the month.

Curriculum

Bible: We continue to focus on Jesus’ ministry. This week we read about Martha and Mary. We learned that Jesus loves to spend time with us!

Matthew 19:14 But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them. For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

Mateo 19:14 Pero Jesus dijo, “Dejad a los niños venir a mí y no se los impidais. Porque de los tales es el reino de los cielos.”

I don’t have a separate video for this verse, but we are learning this song by Steve Green. The lyrics are from our Bible verse. Please click here to share the song with your child. (Please be aware of unpredictable ads that may play before the song.)

Literacy: In grammar we began to conjugate verbs! I remember this being very hard when I learned Spanish in school, but the beautiful thing about choosing immersion for your children is that they have been conjugating verbs from the very first sentences they spoke! Children in immersion are constantly attending to language and looking for patterns. This week we just put a “grammar rule” to a pattern your children have been observing since day 1- first person singular present tense verbs. We learned that these verbs usually end in o, for example, camino (I walk,) or hablo (I talk.)

• Reading strategy: Visualizing
• Read aloud: Los pollitos dicen
• Vocabulary words
  • los pollitos (chicks)
  • el trigo (wheat)
  • el conejo (rabbit)
  • el maíz (corn)
  • las alas (wings)
• Word wall word: son (to be  in 3rd person plural tense)
• Phrase of the week: Yo sé. (I know.)
• Letter of the week/Handwriting Letter: Ff