Reminders:

• April 30 Free Car Wash 9-12 Dollar General Parking Lot in Zeeland
• May 4 There will be a substitute teacher
• May 5 Kindergarten “freaky Friday” (even though it is Thursday) students dress like teachers and teachers dress like students
• May 6 I will be out of the classroom for an hour meeting some families enrolled in kindergarten for next school year. There will be a substitute in the classroom for about an hour.
• May 6 Family Fun Night at ZCS 5:30-8pm
• May 11: NO PM Busing
• May 12: ½ Day *Tulip Time* Busing Available  10:45 am Dismissal for MS. 11:45 am Dismissal for Elementary
• May 13: Y5-8th Grandparents Day – Register here ½ Day. Hereis the 2022 Invite
• May 25: Field Trip to Holland Farmer’s Market and Kollen Park *We are working out some of the details, but we would love parent helpers! Our tentative time will be 9-12:30. I will set up a sign up once the time is confirmed.
• May 29: Memorial Day, no school but your kindergartner is invited to walk in the parade. More details coming soon.

What We Are Learning:

We started about ABC countdown! A is for Airplane. We made our own paper airplanes and tested them out.

B is for bubbles! Sorry, too busy opening bubbles to take a picture 🙂 Bubbles are always fun!

Bible: We are reading what happened after the resurrection. What an amazing sight it must have been to see Jesus ascend into heaven! I think I would have also stared into the sky like most of the disciples. We are also reminded of Jesus’ commission for us to go into the world and spread the good news! We saw the amazing faith of Peter when the crippled beggar was healed with God’s power! We are so thankful for the Holy Spirit living in us.

Math: This week we reviewed all of the partners that make 10. We also created math stories using a grocery store picture. There are so many addition and subtraction problems that can happen in a grocery store. I continue to see number writing improve. This is great!

Daily 5: We exchanged a few of our older books to new ones. It is fun to see the class excited to read books that are not part of our guided reading lesson. They are trying to read many of the picture books that we have in class.

Writing Workshop: We wrapped up our pen pal unit with a fun lunch. Half our class ate with pen pals in Mrs. Arnold’s room and half ate in our classroom. It was fun to see the kids get to know each other even more. Many played with each other at recess as well.

Phonics: This week we reviewed vowel e and ch sh blends. We noticed the ch can also be confused with tr. We tried noticing how our mouth and teeth felt when we were making these sounds. It is tricky! There are slight differences and the kids were doing better and better finding them.

Engaging God’s World: We had our second plant observation. After some water and little more sunlight we noticed that there were more green leaves on our plant! This was very exciting. Friday morning Maestra Geurink brought two baby goats, one chicken, two kittens and one bunny to school. We were able to pet, hold and maybe chase these fun animals around outside.

Reminders:

• Please send in clean towels in reusable bags Monday
• Library books due Thursday
• Kindergarten ABC Countdown calendars will be sent home Monday. This is a fun way to finish the last 26 days of school. The countdown begins Thursday! There are a few days that we ask kids to dress up and those are noted on the calendar, otherwise classroom teachers and donations will take care of the rest. 
• Thursday, April 29 Maestra Geurink will be bringing animals outside of school for us to see! We will learn about her animals and more about God’s creation.
• Thursday, May 12 1/2 day Tulip Time
• Friday, May 13 Grandparents Day Please fillthis out to let me know how your child will go home.
• May 20 PBL Celebration Our project based learning will begin soon. The class will be working in groups and creating something to show you what they have learned. A formal invitation will come later, but you will be welcomed to watch presentation in our classroom on May 20 from 9:15-10am.

What We are Learning:

Daily 5: it was fun this week to watch kids choose writing and write letters to classmates and family members. The writing I see is amazing!

Writing Workshop: We are wrapping up our Pen Pal unit by celebrating with Mrs. Arnold’s class on Thursday. We will get to work with our pen pals and eat lunch with them. It is a pizza theme. Your child may order the pizza hot lunch or bring lunch from home.

Bible: We have focused this week again on sharing God’s love with other through kindness.

Phonics: We sorted long and short a vowels. This is a great activity to try at home. Look for things around home that have a certain vowel. Write them out if you want more of a challenge. We also worked on the ip family.

Engaging God’s World: We are learning about living and non-living things. One student shared that everything is from God. We are keeping journals to remember all that we are learning. This week we wrote about how we know something is living: it needs air, food and water. It also grows/moves. We observed a plant that hadn’t been giving these things. We are hoping to see improvements after watering it and hopefully getting some sunlight. We also learned that God created animals with instincts to adapt in different weather. Some animals fly south, some hibernate and some even change color.

Math: We wrapped up unit 3 with a test this week. It is a lot of focus, but it shows what students are able to do and understand when working on their own. This week we also continued to review teens-understanding they are 10+. We also checked that we can write teen numbers correctly.