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.
Highlights from our week…
I can’t believe this week will mark the middle of March already! It was another fun and full week in Kindergarten! We celebrated Eli’s birthday, watched Bodhi’s up in lights presentation, I was a mystery reader for a 4th grade class and a mystery teacher, (Maestra Ruiz from 4th grade) read to us, and we welcomed three friends from the Philippines in our chapel on Friday morning. I have been taking advantage of every moment of “down time” to assess your kids in preparation for conferences. I’ve been enjoying this special time to check in and I’m looking forward to sharing this progress with you next week at our conference!
Important Dates:
- March 15: Wear black and bring a flashlight to school! (We’ll have a black out day to celebrate March is reading month!)
- March 20: Parent Teacher Conferences- no school
- March 21: Parent Teacher Conferences PM- full day of school
- March 24: Garden Crossings field trip (AM only- I will send a SignUp Genius out soon.)
Important Announcements:
- Black Out Day: This week Wednesday (March 15) we will celebrate reading by wearing black! Additionally, if you’d like to send your kindergartner with a flashlight, we will read in the DARK!
- Conference Sign Up: Click here for sign up instructions for conferences. The website is now open! Unless you have been notified from our CLC, please only sign up for ONE 15 minute time slot. Thank you!
- Spring Conference Questionnaire: Please answer any or all of the questions here to help me better prepare for our time together. I’m looking forward to celebrating your child with you!
- Field trips sign up: If you haven’t already done so, please check out the field trip SignUp Genius for some opportunities to join us on some special field trips. Please follow this link.
- New Attendance/Absentee Email: Please e-mail attendance@zcs.org and copy ME to report an absence. Please include the student name, teacher, and reason for absence in the body of the e-mail. Thanks!
Check out how much we’re learning and growing in Christ!
Bible: We began our unit on Jesus’ Parables this week! We learned that a parable is a story Jesus used to teach his followers something important. We will be creating a parable bag with a small craft or tangible object to help us remember and retell the parables. At the end of the unit I know your child will be so excited to show this to you!
(Our next Bible verse comes from the Easter story. Because Easter isn’t on the same date every year, we sometimes have a time “gap” between our most recent verse (Matthew 7:7) and the Easter verse. This year that happens to be the case. Enjoy this time “off” to review previous verses and maybe even learn a new one as a family! Thanks for being flexible!)
Literacy: This week we talked about reflexive verbs. This kind of verb is used to express that one does an action to oneself. Often they are used when we talk about routines. For example, I get myself dressed, I brush my teeth, I wash my hands.
- Reading strategy: Inferring
- Read aloud: Corduroy
- Vocabulary words
- la tienda (store)
- la gente (people)
- el botón (button)
- la muñeca (doll)
- los pantalones (pants)
- Word wall word: muy (very)
- Phrase of the week: Yo fui al ____. I’m went to ____.
- Letter of the week: Ññ
Math: Our math time this week was spent working on a practice worksheet to reinforce several important skills including: finding groups of 5 in bigger numbers, adding, and subtracting. We also learned to identify two sets of object as equal or not equal.
Writing Workshop: I am so proud of the way your kids have taken off as amazing writers this week! We began a unit on Small Moments. We are practicing telling true stories from one moment and one place. First we visualize the small moment, then we practice retelling it using our fingers for the parts of the story, and finally we write the story!
Handwriting Without Tears: This week we practiced numbers 8, 9, and 0 on the chalkboards with wet sponges, dry paper towels, and chalk. Then we put our knowledge in context by completing our teen number book pages for 18, 19, and 20. Hopefully you saw these come home! Your kids should be very proud of themselves!
Up in Lights: Bodhi was Up in Lights this week. He introduced us to his mom, dad, and two younger brothers. Bodhi loves the smell of suckers and anything Disney and princess. He can probably put a puzzle together better than anyone I’ve ever seen! We are so thankful for you, Bodhi! Thanks for being Up in Lights this week!
From the immersion coordinator: Do you teach a specific dialect of the language or have a preference of where the native speaking teachers come from? No, we do not focus on dialects or specific regions where Spanish or Mandarin is spoken. Actually, we prefer to expose our students to as much variety as possible when it comes to variations in the languages. This helps the students gain a more diverse vocabulary, better comprehension skills, and a broader command of colloquialisms. In fact, just this week I watched a group of 2nd graders realize that peanut butter has a different name in Ecuador than in México.
Highlights from our week…
It was a full and fun week in Kindergarten! On Monday we celebrated the 100th day of school! It was a very special day of reflecting on God’s faithfulness over the past 100 days. We giggled a lot as many of us dressed up as if we were 100 years old and created portraits of our 100 year old selves. Kids who didn’t dress up and those who did all had an amazing day celebrating together! (I love how Kindergartners just go with it!)
“What will I look like when I’m 100?” — 100 year old portraits
I think a highlight was counting out 100 ingredients in our special snack. THANK YOU to those of you who donated snacks and other supplies to help make our 100th day of school celebration possible!
On Tuesday we celebrated God’s love for us and our love for each other. It was another very special day for our class. Thank you, again, to those of you who helped by donating supplies, running centers, and helping your child bring valentines to pass out.
Important Dates
- February 20: President’s Day Break- No school
- February 23: All school chapel (9:10)
- March 20: Parent Teacher Conferences*- no school
- March 21: Parent Teacher Conferences- full day of school
*More details on signing up for conferences coming soon. 🙂
Important Announcements
- Quarters for Wayne: Kindergarteners will work together to help raise money for our sponsor student in the Philippines by earning quarters throughout the month of February. You may collect quarters directly on the sheet with tape or in a separate Ziploc bag. If you need to view the sheet again, please click here. I would like to have all quarters and/or recording sheets by the end of February please.
- From what I can tell there are two “bugs” going around our classroom- one with severe cold symptoms and the other is the stomach flu. I am doing my best to keep things sanitized and safe at school and I know you are at home too. Winter will be officially over soon and hopefully a long weekend will help! Thank you for your prayers for a healthy class (and teacher!) If your child is sick, please remember to call the office. Thank you!
Check out how much we’re learning and growing in Christ!
Bible: This week we began our unit on Jesus’ miracles. So far we’ve read about Jesus turning the water to wine at the wedding, the great catch of fish and Jesus’ teaching about being fishers of men, and Jesus calming the storm. When we learned about being fishers of men we practiced this song that has also been a favorite during our Kindergarten singing time on Friday afternoons.
Literacy: As you probably know our literacy curriculum, which comes from add.a.lingua is written to be taught over 5 days. Occasionally I’ll squeeze it into 4 days if we run into a snow day or something, but with Valentine’s Day and 100th Day both falling this week I felt it was best to review rather than introduce something new. I also new we’d be hitting lots of literacy objectives during our 100th day and Valentine’s Day special activities. Thank you for trusting me to use my best judgement!
With the bit of extra time reviewing gave us, we did something special with the book The Mitten “El Mitón.” Each child laced their own white mitten and practiced retelling the story with their own animals.
In Daily 5 your children are working very hard in Listen to a book, the final of the 5 activities I introduced a couple weeks ago. This week we learned about RazKids. This is an online application that allows me to choose books for kids to listen to at each student’s specific reading levels. It’s also a tool you can use from home if you choose to. (The app is free!) Please see the instructions below.
Kids A-Z Login Instructions:
- Step 1: Go to http://www.kidsa-z.com
- Step 2: Enter or choose my username, mizenbaard
- Step 3: Your child finds his or her username on the class chart.
- Step 4: Your child enters his or her password (Touch the airplane.)
Math: We continue to look for parts of bigger numbers. In particular, we are practicing looking for groups of 5 in bigger numbers. In the afternoon our math centers include opportunities for adding candy hearts, making patterns with candy hearts, flipping 2-sided math counters to make parts of 10, and coloring by numbers with dice.
Writing Workshop: Your kids continue to amaze me as they put their amazing and creative ideas onto paper! This coming week we will choose our favorite pattern books to “fix and fancy.” After that we will celebrate this unit of writing and each child will have the opportunity to share his/her published piece of writing!
Handwriting Without Tears: This week we practiced writing 4 and 5 the school way. We used this knowledge in the context of our teen numbers books and practiced 14 and 15. This was the first week I felt like the students really took to heart that there is a certain way we are expected to write numbers in school, not because Maestra Izenbaard suggests it, but because it’s best for our writing no matter what subject we are working on. I’m glad they are being so diligent!
Exploring God’s World: We dug a little deeper in our learning about motion and classified real life examples of push and pull, for example, pulling weeds, and pushing a shopping cart.
Play: Our 100th day costumes easily transitioned into play this week as the class decided to play grandma and grandpa. I loved the way even the kids without costumes that day were included in the game. I think this coming week, if they’re interested in continuing that play, I’ll suggest we pretend it’s Grandparents Day!
Afternoons:
- Monday: art, rest, read aloud, recess, snack, play
- Tuesday: rest, sorting and graphing candy hearts, recess, snack, play
- Wednesday: rest, math centers, recess, snack, play
- Thursday: rest, math centers, recess, snack, play
- Friday: rest, play, recess, snack, Kindergarten singing
From the immersion coordinator: Did you know that translation is an advanced linguistic and cognitive activity? Most children will not have the cognitive maturity to translate naturally until middle to late elementary; this is not reflective of their understanding of the new language but rather demonstrates the way children’s brains work and develop. Cognates (words that look similar from language to language) usually go unnoticed by the young brain until late elementary or beyond also. Our teachers intentionally make cross-linguistic connections to help our students discover the relationships between their languages.
