Reminders:

Please send in washed towels and towel bags on Monday.

We have GYM Monday and Tuesday. Thank you for making sure your kids are dressed for movement.

Great job returning library books! These are due every Monday!

Tuesday, September 28: Picture Day for KA (our kindergarten class) Please send in order forms even if you are not ordering. This is the time to order a year book! 🙂

What we are learning:

We are continuing to work o our Read to Self goal!!!! The class has made it to 8 minutes! By the end of next week we hope to meet our goal of 12 minutes!  Then we will be able to have a small group working with me while the rest of the class is reading to themselves. Our next Daily 5 activity will be work on writing. We will be starting this in about a week!

We have finished studying creation. It has been so nice to take this slow and truly reflect on our amazing and creative God! Next week we will begin learning about the fall and Noah.

In Math we have started adding and subtracting. We used counters to practice as well as having a “farm” in Mrs. Arnold’s room to add up our “animals.” This was something we did to add a little fun during our math time where the kids took turns being different animals! We also reviewed the circle shape and found things in the room that were circles!

We continue to review letters and sounds. This week we worked on letters Oo, Pp, Qq and Rr,

In Phonics we practiced rhymes. We used a silly song (to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It”) to create rhymes. Here are the lyrics: Have you ever seen a sheep in a jeep? Have you ever seen a sheep in a jeep? No I never, never, never. No I never, never, never. No I never saw a sheep in a jeep.

You can replace sheep and jeep with more rhymes!

We also decorated our names, continuing to notices sizes and attributes of letters. Such as short, tall, curvy or straight.

This week Andrew Wiersema was up in lights! His mom came in and shared about Andrew. We learned some great stories including learning that Andrew loves foxes! We are so blessed to have Andrew and his smile in our classroom this year!

We are also continuing to have so much fun at recess and playtime as we are learning how to make new friends as well as how to be a good friend!

Reminders:

Please send in washed towels and towel bags on Monday.

We have GYM Monday and Tuesday. Thank you for making sure your kids are dressed for movement.

Great job returning library books! These are due every Monday

NO SCHOOL-Friday, September 24- teacher professional development.

Optional Donations:

• gallon size bags
• sandwich bags
• Clorox wipes
• plastic spoons
• band aids
• extra snacks (snack packs of pretzels, goldfish or veggie straws)

Thank you!!

What we are learning:

We are continuing to work our way through the alphabet learning the formation of letters, looking for the letter in writing and listening for the letter sound. We worked on J, K, L, M and N this week.

We are starting to learn about Daily 5. This is so exciting! We learned 3 ways to read a book: 1. Read the words 2. Read the pictures 3. Retell the story. After learning this, we decided to try Read to Self (one of the five parts of Daily 5).  We are building our stamina. One day we read for 2 minutes and the next day we read for 4 minutes. This is great! Our goal is read (and focus on our own book, stay in one spot and stay quiet) for 15 minutes. We will have days that our stamina will go up and some days down, but I am so proud of this group already doing so well.

In math this week we continued to find groups of things and we even tried taking our crayons and making more than one group of both 2 and 3 with them!

In Bible this week we started learning about the days of creation and most importantly our Creator! We worked on days 1-3 and next week I hope to finish days 4-7! We also practiced our Bible verse for the first time this week: “in the beginning God created the heavens and earth. And God saw all that he had made and it was very good!” Genesis 1:31

In writing workshop we worked on telling stories and then put our stories to paper by way of drawing. We will be working on this for a few weeks and then we will begin to listen for sounds in our pictures and start labeling! They are doing a great job with brainstorming and remembering stories from their past!

We also read an interactive read a loud this week and learned about the big word INFER and what that means!!!

This week Nora DeYoung was up in lights. Nora’s mom came in to share about her and we loved learning about some of her favorite things. We got a chance to sing her favorite song, “Raise a Hallelujah.” We are blessed to have Nora in our class this year!

From our support services:

We have so many ways to invite your child into a place of learning this year. Sometimes that happens in the middle of a reading lesson, outdoors gathered around a piece of God’s creation, or as part of a worship time in chapel. It’s important to mention, however, that the members of our classroom offer us chances to learn and grow. We praise God for His creative work in forming each member of our class in a unique way. Each one of us has gifts to share as well as areas of challenge. Those challenges may happen in academic, social, physical, or behavioral areas. As we walk together into the school year, it is our prayer that we resemble a living, breathing picture of I Corinthians 12 – one body together in Christ. We will learn that “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you’”, and we have a chance to learn that “there are many parts, but one body”. We are eager to see and discuss together how God will form and grow us this year through the gift of each child and adult in our classroom community.

Reminders:

Please send in a family photo for our wall. The kids love to show off their families. Thank you!

Thanks for checking red folders!

Thanks for packing water bottles and lunches!

Please go over hot lunch menus with your child. I have noticed that many of them are not eating their hot lunches. I want to make sure they are fueling up their bodies for our busy afternoons!

Library is on Monday! Be sure to return your books!

September 24-No school-Teacher professional development

What we are learning:

This week in Bible we finished up the fruits of the spirit. We learned about kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control. We talked about ways to show these fruits in our lives at home and at school.

In phonics this week we continued working through the letters of the alphabet. We reviewed the letters F, G, H and I. Everyday I have a special little bucket that we pull things out of that start with our letter for the day, then we brainstorm and think of things all on our own!  We also are continuing to work on name recognition. We played a fun Happy Birthday game with everyone’s name. We are getting so good at recognizing our classmate’s names!

We started our writing curriculum this week by telling stories. We practiced telling stories with these three things.

1. The story has to be true.

2. The student has to be in their story.

3. The story has to have already happened (be in the past).

They did a great job with this and their stories were great! This is also a fun way to get to know them better! Next week we will continue with this and add drawing pictures of our stories as well.

In math this week we worked on making groups of 2 or 3 with manipulatives, as well as counting every morning and doing exercises along with it! We also reviewed shapes and made our very own “shape monster.”

Finally, I introduced stem bins this week. Stem is short for science, technology, engineering and math. The students work with these different manipulatives to create their very own innovations!!! They have loved this!

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Reminders:

Friday, September 3-Monday, September 6: No School-Labor Day Weekend

Please send in a family photo for our wall. The kids love to show off their families. Thank you!

Thanks for checking red folders!

Thanks for packing water bottles and lunches!

Please go over hot lunch menus with your child. I have noticed that many of them are not eating their hot lunches. I want to make sure they are fueling up their bodies for our busy afternoons!

We do not have library this week as library is on Monday. Feel free to return your child’s library books anytime this week!

What we are learning:

Each morning we begin our day with devotions. I use “Veggie Devos” from Veggie Tales. It has a focus verse, short application, thought of the day and prayer. It is just right for kindergarten. This week we enjoyed getting our hearts ready to hear God’s word and our minds ready to think about it. I always love the discussions that devotions bring! This week we also introduced the fruit of the spirit. . We also read a devotion about joy this week as well! It was amazing to see how everything connected. This week we focused on love, joy peace and patience. We are learning this song with motions and this silly song. We will continue to focus on the fruit of the spirit during our Bible time next week.

We continue to work on social skills in Kindergarten. This includes listening, controlling our bodies and talking to teachers and friends. This week we also worked hard on lining up without worrying about being first or last. We also have been straightening our lines so we can stay on one side of the hallway and let others pass by.

We started classroom jobs this week! Each child will take a turn with various jobs throughout the year. It is wonderful to see the class take ownership of the classroom and help it run smoothly.

We had our first trip to the library! Each child was able to check out a book. You may keep it for a week, but please turn it in to me every Monday or before if you are finished with it. Your child needs to bring the book back in order to check out a new one. It was so exciting to look at all the books Mrs. Joustra had ready for us.

As we continue to review the letters and sounds of the alphabet, we are also starting handwriting. We begin with writing upper case letters on chalkboards. We use the letter formation by the Handwriting Without Tears program.

In Math we are reading the book Anno’s Counting Book. Beginning with 0 and no pictures the book continues to show one landscape on each page and slowly add pictures. Page 1 is a winter scene and one house appears and one tree. Page 2 shows two building and now two trees. As numbers increase the seasons change. This book helps us see objects in landscapes in groups of numbers. Trying looking around your home for groups of items (houses, pillows, back yard trees, etc.).

In Phonics we continue to focus on letters (formation and sound). We reviewed the letters B,C,D and E this week!