A week in review: January 14-18

Kindergarten Days!

It has been another busy and productive week in our kindergarten classroom! We are truly back into the swing of things after Christmas break! We are continuing to work hard while also learning to be good friends and classmates, another very important part of kindergarten! Here are just a few reminders for you. I sent the towels home today to be washed if you could please send them back on Monday. Also library books need to come back on Wednesday for your child to be able to check a new book out. Lastly, I have noticed this week that many students run out of food by our last snack and then they want to share. I am trying to avoid that as there are so many illnesses going around right now. If at all possible throw something extra in your child’s lunch just in case. Thank you in advance for your help with this!

Important Dates:

  • January 21: In service day for all teachers, NO SCHOOL for students
  • January 24: All School Chapel with Cleo Kennedy
  • January 28: Field Trip to For the Kidz gymnastics
  • February 13: 100th Day more details coming soon
  • February 14: Valentine’s Party more details coming soon
  • February 15-18: No school Winter Break

A Few Additional Reminders:

Our Field Trip is scheduled for January 28 at For the Kidz gymnastics in Wyoming MI. I believe I have received all my permission slips already, way to go parents! Also, if you signed up to drive please make sure that the office has a copy of both your driver’s license and your proof of insurance before we leave or you will not be able to drive any children. I will also be sending home driver’s guidelines for those who are driving us which need to be signed and returned! Thank you for your willingness to drive and your help in this regard. One other matter of importance is we are in need of car seats so if at all possible if you drive your child to school could you please bring a car seat in for them on that morning or even the day before. That would help us immensely! I am so looking forward to this field trip and I am sure the kids will love it!

We have only ten bugs to go in our class incentive jar! When we reach our goal we will be having an indoor picnic. I would like to do a “class fruit salad” for this if you would be willing to contribute some of your child’s favorite fruit please let me know!

One final reminder, there is No School on January 21 as there is a professional development day for the teachers.

Curriculum:

Bible: This week we started full swing into our study of the ministry and life of Jesus here on earth. We learned about how Jesus chose 12 disciples and how they picked up everything to follow Him. We also discussed how we are His disciples now and how we can point others to Him by the way we live.

Word Wall Word: and (keep practicing a, at, and, am, go, here, I, is, look, like, me, see the, up, we)

Daily 5: Each child was able to add a new book to their bag this week. Enjoy reading this with them and make sure to send their bag in on Tuesday. In the next few weeks I’m hoping to add some cards with sight words to their bag as well as some cards that will have dots under each letter so they can learn to say each sound slowly and then slide them together to say the word. We will be practicing them at school so they will be able to show you how they work! I am very excited about this!

Phonics: We continued to work on ending sounds this week by playing a game where we matched the ending sound to a letter on the game board.

Math: This week we noticed patterns when we subtracted one. It is simply counting backwards one number. We then talked about how when you add one the pattern just becomes one more. We are continuing to work on simple addition and subtraction with manipulatives. Finally, we learned about a triangle and talked about different things we see that are triangles.

Writing Workshop: Last week we started working on creating pattern books and we will be continuing that over the next several weeks. A pattern book is a book where each page starts with a phrase such as “I like..” or “I see..”. Right now we are simply writing one page on our own but my goal is for them to be able to write a four page book. This week we specifically worked on “finger spaces” between our words as we write.

Engaging God’s World: Gravity was our focus this week. We had so much fun throwing or dropping different sizes and shapes of different items, including a feather, weighted balls, light balls, tissues, paper and pretend block bricks. We learned about the effect gravity has on everything on earth and how whatever we drop always goes down. It was very interesting to see their reactions as they saw the feather and tissue took the longest to drop. Our discussion was amazing and I think we have a lot of mini scientists in our class!

Interactive Read Aloud: We read The Mitten by Jan Brett and sewed a mitten of our own. We learned about sequencing and then retelling the story by putting the animals into the mitten.

Up in Lights: This week Sawyer Ipema was Up in Lights. Sawyer’s mom and siblings came to share about him and his dad came and had lunch with him. We loved looking through his favorite book about dinosaurs and learning from him some of their names. We are so very happy that Sawyer is a part of our class!!

Afternoons: This week we were able to do math centers as well as learn about feelings and that it is ok to be sad or worried or homesick or even to not know how you feel. We also learned that it is ok if your feelings aren’t the same as your friends. We are working on being understanding of the feelings of those around us. In addition we enjoyed our regular play time, quiet time, snack, recess and art!

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