• Monday-Memorial Day Please meet me on Main Street near the intersection of Centennial and Cherry. We will begin to line up at 8:45am. You can look for familiar ZCS faces and those cute blue jackets. 🙂 Please make sure you talk to me and I give you a name sticker. You will give this to me when you pick your child up after the parade. We also discussed after our practice this week that flip flops are not the best choice for parade walking. 🙂 I would suggest comfortable sneakers or sandals with a back strap.
• Tuesday-S wear sunglasses AND our Pen Pal Pizza Party!
• Wednesday-T wear something to support your favorite team AND our field trip to Holland Farmer’s Market and Kollen park. Please pack a sack lunch for your child to eat at the park.
• Thursday-U we will uplift each other with compliments and encouraging words
• Friday-V we will watch a video 🙂 AND we will have our PBL celebration in the choir room at 10:15-11. Please plan on coming and learning a few animal facts from our kindergartners.

We continue to work and play hard in Kindergarten this week. It has been fun preparing for the end of the school year. As much as I will miss your children, I am also excited for them! They have each grown so much this year! They will be ready for first grade next fall AND I am lucky they will be right down the hall 🙂

In Daily 5, we added one new book to book bags this week. We also spent time spelling words.

In Phonics we continue to work on vowel sounds. These will remain tricky for children, but it is wonderful that they are recognizing vowels and using that vocabulary. We have also practiced  digraphs sh, ch, th and wh.

In Bible we wrapped up our parable unit by going through our parable bag. We tried to retell the story Jesus told and the lesson we can learn from it. I encouraged the class to do this at home as well. We talked about reading your family Bible as you go through the parable bag. You could read one story a night for family devotions.

In Math we are learning about 3 dimensional shapes. We realized some names are familiar and some sound a little silly. We talked about the flat shapes we already know and what 3 dimensional shape is similar. We looked for cubes, spheres and rectangular prisms around our classroom.

In Exploring God’s world we are busy preparing for our PBL presentations. It has been fun to see creativity and personality come out in these groups.

Important Reminders:

Whenever I write the date lately I feel like I am a week ahead. This year is just flying by! We are doing are best to work hard and enjoy each remaining day in Kindergarten.

Last Tuesday we had the chance to visit Mrs. Zwiep’s classroom. Her class made a book for each Kindergartner showing what first grade is like. This is helpful to talk to your children about later in the summer. There are many similarities to Kindergartners, but also some differences. We have talked that all of the 1st grade teachers are wonderful 🙂

We continue to enjoy our ABC Countdown. This week we giggled with jokes on Tuesday and I especially enjoyed Kindness on Wednesday. We happen to read the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in the morning. In the afternoon we were talking about our acts of kindness and doing them with a humble heart (not bragging). Your kids were so excited to spread kindness by cleaning around the school. We scrubbed our hallway! Mrs. Walters let us borrow a book she had “Secretly Do Good Deed” by Melody Carlson. It was the perfect book to connect our lesson from the parable to our acts of kindness. On Thursday we connected this lesson again by writing a special letter to secretly give someone.

Next week we will have some more fun:

• Monday: N number fun
• Tuesday: O wear ORANGE
• Wednesday: P popcorn day (we already have it)
• Thursday: Q quiet day
• Friday: R rockin to our favorite music

Other reminders

• Monday, May 28: Memorial Day Parade
• Tuesday, May 29: Pen Pal Pizza Party
• Wednesday, May 30: Field Trip to Holland Farmer’s Market and Kollen Park. Please pack a sack lunch for your child. We will return to school around 12:45.
• Friday, June 1: PBL Celebration Please join us in the music room (located on the main hall across from the school office) from 10:15-11.
• Thursday, June 7: Last day of school!

We are slowly filling book bags back up in Daily 5. These are just some of the books your children are reading. They are each finding that they can read more and more of our classroom books. It is so exciting!

In Writing this week we wrote our pen pals back. I love watching them write answers and ask their pen pals questions. This is working on writing skills of course, but also building communication skills.

Our PBL projects are going strong! We are wrapping up our research and making plans for ways we can share what we have learned.

During Math Centers this week we focused on subtraction for the teacher led stations. I love to see these skills growing stronger and stronger!

In Bible we continue to listen to the parables Jesus told and learn each lesson. We read the Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector as well as the Parable of the Shepherd.

We continue to build or word wall word knowledge. Please keep practicing those at home over the weekend! Thanks!

Important Dates:

Our ABC Countdown is continuing this week. You don’t have to bring anything from home , just practice a joke or two before Tuesday:) It has been fun and exciting to see the class look forward to the letter activities each day.

• Monday: Ice Pop Day (already purchased and at school)
• Tuesday: Joke Be ready with a fun joke to tell!
• Wednesday: We will spread Kindness around the school.
• Thursday: write a Letter
• Friday: Music and Movement

Monday, May 28: Memorial Day Parade. I will plan on your child marching unless you tell me differently. If you are willing to march with us, please let me know!

Tuesday, May 29: PenPal Pizza Party! This will happen during the morning. Your child will still need a lunch to eat. Thank you for signing up to donate items!

Wednesday, May 30: Field Trip to Holland Farmer’s Market and Kollen Park

Please pack a sack lunch for your child to eat at the park. We will return to school around 12:45.

Friday, June 1: PBL Celebration Please plan on joining our class in the music room (located across from the school office) from 10:15-11.

Thursday, June 7: Last day of school!

This week we started returning a lot of books from book bags. Many students continue to grow in their reading and I am trying to pull new books for them. I know it is a very busy time of year, but I appreciate any reading and word wall word review that you are able to get to at home. Thank you! I put new papers and activities in our word wok area. It has been great to see the kids try out some new things!

In writing we were challenged with our Mother’s Day projects. I hope that you enjoy reading them. 🙂 It was a lot of fun to do.

In Handwriting we are wrapping up our pages from the Handwriting work book. I continue to see a few reversals with letters like b and d. It is amazing to see the growth in handwriting from this fall.

In Math, we continue to build our knowledge in “partners”, the numbers that add up to make another number. The class worked hard on figuring out all the partners of 10. We continue to work on addition and subtraction.

In Phonics we continue to listen for letter sounds at the beginning, middle and end. We have practiced the sh, ch and th sounds.

Our PBL groups have been formed and it has been so amazing to see the kids work together! We started with helpers from 8th grade leading the groups in writing down what they know about their animal and then writing what they would like to know. The next time we worked, we had parent helpers and teachers reading books with the class to listen for the answers to their wondering questions about the animals. Each child is keeping a journal with writing and pictures to record what they are learning. It is such a fun time to be in kindergarten!

I told the class I would give you my donut recipe 🙂 We used refrigerated biscuits to make the donut (the ones in the tube). Each child poked a hole in the middle so it would look like a donut. I put it in a deep electric skillet with hot oil. When the edged started to brown I turned it. The kids scooped sugar into a container and sprinkled cinnamon on as well. I removed the donut from the oil and the kids shook it in the container to get the sugar and cinnamon on. It was so much fun! Our class still has a smell of fried food though!

We also enjoyed our experiments this week! We explored what would happen when we added mentors to a 2 liter of regular coke and one of Diet Coke. We made predictions about which would have the highest soda explosion. This was a fun out door experiment. We also saw the reaction baking soda and vinegar have. It created enough gas to fill a balloon and make one pop 🙂 We also used water and food coloring to explore color mixing. These were so fun to try with your children! I encourage you to let them explore and experiment at home as well. It is especially fun when you can take it outside and keep the mess out there. 🙂

Here are a few highlights from our week:

Reminders:

Friday, May 4: Fun Night!

Wednesday, May 9: 1/2 Day for Tulip Time

Thursday and Friday, May 10 & 11: No HOT LUNCH or PM Bussing

ABC Countdown for the week:

Monday: D for Donuts

Tuesday: E for Experiments

Wednesday: F for Fitness Fun

Thursday: G for Games

Friday: H for Hat *Wear a Hat *This is the only day you need to bring anything from home 🙂

Monday, May 28: Memorial Day *An email will be sent out with parade details

Tuesday, May 29: Pen Pal Pizza Party

Wednesday, May 30: Field trip to Holland Farmer’s Market *Half day families, please plan on 12:45 pick up at school (standing stone).

Friday, June 1: PBL Celebration *the class doesn’t know about this yet. If you are able to attend, the kids will present what they have learned through their animal study. We will be in the music room by the front  office and begin at 10:15 and wrap up at 11. More details about this are also coming, but you can add it to your calendar.

Thursday, June 7: Last day of school!

Wow! That is a lot of calendar items and I am sure there are even more! Please check the blog, emails and the school blue note to stay up to date. We tend to have a lot going on during the last month. Thanks for keeping up! Also, remember that we will all practice grace when we forget 🙂

This week our writer’s have been busy writing back to pen pals and writing how to instructions. This week we had a little fun playing Christmas music and writing how to doctorate a tree.

Our reader’s are moving on to next levels in books. It is amazing how much each student has grown! Many are doing very well learning word wall words as well.

In Math we are working on addition and subtraction. We spent small group time seeing numbers as partners. We practiced subtraction using manipulatives.

In Engaging God’s World we began talking about the animals we saw at the Critter Barn. We made a list of the animals and wrote down a few that we were interested in learning more about. Next week I will put the kids into groups based on their animal interests and we will begin researching.

During our Bible lessons, we continue to read the parables Jesus used to teach us lessons. We reviewed the Midnight Visitor and the Good Samaritan. We listened to the Parable of the Lost Sheep and Coin and the Parable of the Lost Son. These two parables tied nicely together, thinking of when we are lost, God will find us and forgives us.

It is always a growing time to read our Daily devotions and listen to the class’ ideas of applying it to their life. This week we talked a lot about being truthful and praising God in all we do.