Important Dates and Reminders

Monday, February 25: Please make sure library books are returned. It has been a long time since we have had library, so I think most have turned their books in already. 🙂

Tuesday, February 26: 100th Day! Celebrate with Zero the Hero by dressing as a favorite super hero. This can be a traditional hero or one you create! We will focus on the gifts (super powers) God has given each one of us!

Thursday, February 28: No PM Elementary bussing

If you have decided as a family to set money aside for our Philipine student the Kindergarten classes sponsor, please turn in the February heart/donation sheet and money. Thank you!

March 1: No PM bussing

March 5: Optional Parent Teacher Conferences *Please email me the week of February 25 to let me know what you would like to focus on during conferences-social, emotional, academic). Thank you!

What have we been doing in Kindergarten? 🙂

Social Skills: We are working very hard on respect-using kind words and asking thing politely, working to take care of our classroom materials and personal belongings as well as following directions.

Daily 5: Our readers continue to grow! The are meeting with me 1-2 times a week to read a new book, read with someone, work on writing (writing pattern books), listen to reading and reading to self.

Word Wall: We put two words on the wall this week: my and to. It was so neat that when I showed the class to, many of them knew it! I asked how and they told me they had practiced in the hall 🙂 Thank you to those that have been able to volunteer to work on word wall words. Some are using flashcards to memorize the words, others are working on spelling the words. It has been so beneficial!

Writing: This week we tried creating our own pattern for our pattern book. This is a big step in forming new sentencing. We will continue pattern books for one more week before moving on to a new unit.

Phonics: We worked worked listening to word chunks and figuring out the word. Example: I say pen cil and the students have to figure out the word is pencil. Breaking the word apart in syllables helps us hear the sounds when we are reading and writing.

Math: We demonstrated all the partners that come together to make 6 by using students. We put them in groups and divided them by 1 + 5, 5+1, 2+4, 4+2 and 3+3. They had a lot of fun acting out addition. We also are learning about teen numbers and seeing them as 10 plus a few more. We will continue to work on teens for the next few weeks.

Bible: We read the story of Mary and Martha. It was such a relevant story for us as we sometimes rush to clean or finish things at school, but we were reminded that we should focus on the important things: our relationship with God and others.

Engaging God’s World: We continued our study of Motion by exploring how different balls move. The class worked in small groups with a variety of balls. The compared how each ball rolled and talked about why some were fast and some were slow. I then gave each group a “tool” and let them decide what to do with it. Two groups immediately used it as a tunnel while two others created a ramp. It was so fun to watch them explore and learn!

It is hard to even remember the last time we had a “normal” week of school! I am taking things one day at a time and enjoying the days when I do get to see your children and teach them 🙂 We are still learning in Kindergarten! It is a time of year that we see so much growth! There is an opportunity coming up soon to talk to you about your child’s growth. March 5 ZCS will have optional parent/teacher conferences. If you would like to sit down face to face to celebrate your child please sign up (details coming later on that process). We can talk about your child’s spiritual, emotional, and academic growth. If you receive a personal email from me, that simply means I’d like you to sign up for a conference. This doesn’t mean I am necessarily concerned, but that I feel that face to face time would be good. If you don’t receive an email from me, you may still sign up. More details on all of this will come in the next week.

Reminders and Important Dates:

Monday, February 11: Field Trip at For the Kidz (gymnastics) Please send along a booster seat if your child does not ride the bus. Please dress children in comfy clothes.

February 14: Valentine’s Day! Please send in 21 valentines and anything you sign up to bring for our class party. Thank you for all of your contributions! I truly appreciate it!

February 15-18: No School, Winter Break

February 28: No PM Elementary Bus

March 5: Optional Parent/Teacher Conferences 4-8:30pm

Daily 5: As I said, this is a time of growth and I feel like I am changing book levels each time I meet with your children. This is awesome! Please continue to work on reading at home with word wall words, blending cards and good books 🙂 The kids were very excited to have their new book bags. We talked about taking good care of them because they will be used for classes next year and the year after that and many more. They were very serious handling them this week.

Math: We worked in centers on adding to make 10. We also practiced counting by 10s and forming numbers in shaving cream.

Phonics: We learned about word families. Similar to our families, these words have the same last name. This week we learned about the at family. We made a list of at words (bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat and sat). We celebrated with an at hat. 🙂 This is a great practiced for kids to hear the same sound and see the same letters in the words. We will be learning more word families in the next couple weeks.

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

Bible: We read about Nicodemus and focused on God making us new.

Engaging God’s World: We experimented dropping different items to explore gravity. We talked about how air effects how things fall. We could see this when we dropped golf balls and feathers.