Monday: Library Day! Please return books.

Wednesday, March 27: March is Reading: Beach day *dress in bright colors or beachy clothes (no swimsuits) 🙂

March 29-April 5: Spring Break

April 9: Back to School

What a wonderful job our students did on Tuesday night! I felt like it was such a nice experience for all grades and a wonderful way to celebrate all of the learning that takes place for our class on Friday mornings during music.

Daily 5: Readers continue to grow! I am happy to see growth in reading and writing choices during this time. Many are moving onto books with more and more words and they are up for the challenge! I enjoy this time working with small groups and watching students work independently.

Bible: We finished our unit on miracles. It has been amazing to reflect on the power of our God. We were able to learn motions to Chris Tomlin’s song “Our God.” This is a beautiful song to worship and praise God for his miracles. Next week we look forward to beginning our study on parables.

Math: This week we focused on a few different concepts. We are studying teen numbers. The kids are practicing writing teen numbers as well as representing teens with cubes and tallies. They are picking up on them! We also worked on five groups and adding beyond 5. We looked at shapes and explored how to make a new shape by putting two shapes together.

Phonics: We studied sentences. We saw that they are letters put together to make words and words put together to make sentences.

Writing Workshop: We began our study of Small Moments. This is just a small, true event that we can write about. We are working on our small moment stories having a beginning, middle and end. Through this we are also working on making sure our sentences begin with a capital letter and end with a period. We also are trying to include spaces between our words.

Word Wall: We have added who and where. The class is enjoying these harder words and writing questions with who and where.

Along with all of the academics, we have had some great conversations with week. We have talked a lot about taking care of our classroom, including the bathroom. We had a long talk about germs and that it is healthy for us to keep a clean bathroom.

We also were able to read the book, “Stephanie’s Ponytail” by Robert Munsch. I paraphrase a few parts, but the main story is that Stephanie is trying to be unique with her hairstyles and becomes frustrated when her classmates first tease her and then copy her. At the end Stephanie outsmarts them all. You can ask your child how 🙂 We talked about God giving us all brains that think. We make choices that please God, not always others. We encourage each other to make choices pleasing to God. It has been wonderful to see how our devotions have also connected with this. Big concepts for our kindergartners, but it has been great to see growth in these areas.

Monday: Library Day! Please return books.

Tuesday, March 19: Spring Elementary Program @ 6:15

Wednesday, March 20: March is Reading: wear stripes like Waldo!

Wednesday, March 27: March is Reading: Beach day *dress in bright colors or beachy clothes (no swimsuits) 🙂

March 29-April 5: Spring Break

April 9: Back to School

A note from the music teachers:

Our Spring Elementary Music Program is quickly approaching! Mark your calendars for Tuesday evening, March 19, at Community Reformed Church in Zeeland. Two short performances will be held: K/1/2nd grades at 6:15pm, and 3/4/5th grades at 7:15pm.

We love the support you show to your students! We hope you will enjoy their gifts and spirit as you watch and listen to them. Here are some guidelines to help you plan for the evening:

1. Please don’t plan to save seats in the auditorium or to come incredibly early. It creates additional supervision issues for staff. We will need the students in the auditorium at least 15 minutes prior to start time. Performing students will be directed to sit with their class and homeroom teachers. There should be plenty of room for all.
2. There is no ‘uniform’ for the evening. Students should wear something ‘nice, clean, and bright’. It’s a night of celebration and joy!
3. Please don’t feel obligated to stay for both programs if you don’t have students in both. In fact, we would encourage you to exit the building quickly to make room for others.
4. Parents, no matter which program you are attending, please keep all of your non-performing children with you. In the past, we have had supervision and even vandalism issues caused by unsupervised students roaming the building. We do not want to jeopardize our great relationship with the church.

Daily 5: We are working on our reading strategies when we come to a word we do not know. We “slide through the letter sounds” to sound out each letter in the word. We also “look at the whole word” to give us clues if it is a big word or if it has familiar parts. We also “re-read the sentence” when we figure out the word to understand what the sentence means.

Phonics: We compared word families at and an. We also focused on how words are put together in a certain order to form sentences. We are learning more about writing a sentence.

Math: We are understanding teens more and more! We watched a fun song from Peg + Cat that showed us that in teens, the ten is always there, we just add to it. We are practicing showing teens with tally marks, cubes and writing teen numbers.

Bible: We continue to read about the miracles Jesus did. This week we read about Jesus healing the blind man. We highlighted the fact that this man was born blind. It was not caused by any sin. We saw that God’s plan can take years as this man was blind and made to see as an adult to show God’s power and glory. We read about Jesus healing the lepers and how only one man came back to thank Jesus. We also read about Jesus walking on water.

We added a few motions to our Bible verse. Ask your child if they remember them 🙂 “The blind will receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the good news is preached to the poor.” Luke 7:22b

Word Wall: We added who to our wall.

Interactive Read Aloud: We read “A Chair for My Mother” by Vera B. Williams. We noticed this book had a story within a story. It is a touching book about a mother, grandmother and daughter that were saving money to by a chair because there home was destroyed in a fire.

We enjoyed listening to artist and illustrator Joel Tanis talk about using art to bring glory to God.

Monday: Library Day! Please return books.

Wednesday, March 13: March is Reading: Waldo goes to the Game *wear sports gear

March 14: Chapel with Joel Tanis 11am in the Media Center

March 19: Spring Elementary Program @ 6:15

Wednesday, March 20: March is Reading: wear stripes like Waldo!

Wednesday, March 27: March is Reading: Beach day *dress in bright colors or beachy clothes (no swimsuits) 🙂

A note from the music teachers:

Our Spring Elementary Music Program is quickly approaching! Mark your calendars for Tuesday evening, March 19, at Community Reformed Church in Zeeland. Two short performances will be held: K/1/2nd grades at 6:15pm, and 3/4/5th grades at 7:15pm. Families who do not have students at both levels do not need to stay for both events as there will be transition time. More details to come!

Daily 5: We cleaned out the book bag this week! Instead of working on a new book this week, we worked on sounding out words and writing the sounds we hear. We enjoyed our special flashlight reading time on Wednesday.

Phonics: We met a new family, the an family! We made a house and read all of the family members names (pan, man, ran, tan, fan, van). It is a fun way to show the class the pattern of -an words.

Bible: We read about Jesus calming the storm and worked on our memory verse:

The blind will receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Luke 7:22b

Math: We looked at teens a little more this week. We made a tower of 10 cubes and added a few more to show a teen number. We also practiced tally marks and understanding they are a fast way of counting.

Word Wall: We are reviewing our word wall words and writing sentences with them. Our words include: a, at, and, am, come, go, here, I, is, it, in, look, like, me, my, on, see, the this, to up and we.

Writing Workshop: We are wrapping up our unit of pattern books. It has been fun to see the growth in our young writers!

We enjoyed watching a sneak peek of Peter Pan on Wednesday. The 8th graders did an amazing job!

Donations:

If you are able, our classroom is in need of: gallon sized bags, band aids and dry rice (for an upcoming project). Thank you for all that you do!

We had such a fun time celebrating 100th Day! These children are truly super heroes 🙂 Look closely and you may even spot Zero the Hero!

Reminders & Important Dates

Monday: Library-please bring in library books

Tuesday: Optional Parent/Teacher conferences

Wednesday, March 6: March is Reading: Waldo at Night *Wear pajamas and bring a flashlight

March 7-9: 8th Grade Play

Wednesday, March 13: March is Reading: Waldo goes to the Game *wear sports gear

March 14: All School Chapel with Joel Tanis 11am

March 19: Spring Elementary Program @ 6:15

Wednesday, March 20: March is Reading: wear stripes like Waldo!

Wednesday, March 27: March is Reading: Beach day *dress in bright colors or beachy clothes (no swimsuits) 🙂

A note from the music teachers:

Our Spring Elementary Music Program is quickly approaching! Mark your calendars for Tuesday evening, March 19, at Community Reformed Church in Zeeland. Two short performances will be held: K/1/2nd grades at 6:15pm, and 3/4/5th grades at 7:15pm. Families who do not have students at both levels do not need to stay for both events as there will be transition time. More details to come!

Daily 5: Students are continuing to grow as readers! Along with reading to self or someone, students have been listening to reading, working on writing and doing word work. A lot of our word work is focusing on sounding out letters and words. This is an important skill in reading. I love the practice your children are doing!

Phonics: This week we listened to the book “A My Name is Alice.” Each child made a list of words that begin with the first letter or their name. This was hard, but the kids tried and were so successful! Writing the sounds they hear is wonderful.

Word Wall: we added three this week! on, it, in. We had such a fun time practicing these words. We are also writing sentences with our word wall words. We will continuing writing sentences as part of our writing workshop as well. This has also been fun and exciting to see growth. Many are remembering to capitalize the first letter in the sentence and add a period to the end. We continue to work on spacing between words.

Math: We are learning teens. We are seeing them as 10 plus a few more. This week we also practiced tally marks. We also worked on a very long Math workbook page. I told the class we were practicing, so I wanted them to try their best, but did not require that everyone complete the pages. Again, they worked so hard!

Bible: This week we began our new unit. I introduced our new Bible verse, Luke 7: 22b

“The Blind will receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the good news is preached to the poor.”

The class could tell me that we were going to read about MIRACLES! We read of Jesus’ first miracle: turning water into wine. We highlighted that there wasn’t a spot light or fireworks going off to focus on Jesus. We have seen that every thing Jesus does brings glory and honor to God. That is how we want to live as well. Anything we do, is for the glory of God.