Highlights from our week…

This week our classroom community learned about the power of prayer in difficult situations. We learned that when one of us is down, whether it be from being tired, missing mom or dad, not feeling well, or just having an “off” day, it takes a loving community to lift that person up. I love our classroom family and I know that God is doing great things in and through your children! Thank you for sharing your children with me this year! God is so good!

Important Dates:

• March 2: Wear stripes in honor of Dr. Seuss’ birthday!
• March 15: Wear black and bring a flashlight to school! (We’ll have a black out day to celebrate March is reading month!)
• March 20: Parent Teacher Conferences- no school
• March 21: Parent Teacher Conferences PM- full day of school
• March 24: Garden Crossings field trip (AM only- I will send a SignUp Genius out soon.)

Important Announcements: 

• Quarters for Wayne: Kindergarteners will work together to help raise money for our sponsor student in the Philippines by earning quarters throughout the month of February. You may collect quarters directly on the sheet with tape or in a separate Ziploc bag. If you need to view the sheet again, please click here. I would like to have all quarters and/or recording sheets by the end of February please.
• Conference Sign Up: Click here for sign up instructions for conferences. Please remember that sign up isn’t open until March 3rd @ 9:00 am. Unless you have been notified from our CLC, please only sign up for ONE 15 minute time slot. Thank you!
  

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Check out how much we’re learning and growing in Christ! 

Bible: We continue to learn about stories that show Jesus’ power. We learned about the healing of the blind man and the feeding of 5,000 people with 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread.

Literacy: This week we talked about how to change verbs to show that we, nosotros, are doing something. We brainstormed things that we do at school and noticed how the ending of the verbs change in this tense. Then we classified verbs according to their endings. We worked with verbs in the first person singular, yo, second person singular, tu, and third person plural, nosotros. Sometimes as I write the grammar concepts we’re studying I feel more like I’m describing a high school English class than a Kindergarten class. I want to remind you that these tenses are nothing new for your children. They use them all the time when they are speaking Spanish. My job in these lessons is to draw the kids’ attention to what they are already doing and help them notice and practice the patterns in the language.

• Reading strategy: Visualizing
• Read aloud: Quiero Viajar
• Vocabulary words
  • avión (airplane)
  • yate/bote (boat)
  • el velero (sailboat)
  • el autobus (bus)
  • el cohete (rocket)
  • el tren (train)
  • explorar (to explore)
  • viajar (to travel)
• Word wall word: tengo (I have)
• Phrase of the week: Hice ___. (I did ___. or I made ___.
• Letter of the week: Rr

Math: This week we talked a lot about teen numbers as 10 and some more. Like we used manipulatives to divide numbers 1-10  into 2 smaller parts, we also used them to divide numbers 19-20 into smaller parts. The first part was always 10.

Writing Workshop: This week we “fixed and fancied” our favorite pattern books. This coming week I hope to celebrate our writing together. Time permitting, I also hope to kick off our next unit, Small Moments.

Exploring God’s World: On Friday we “played” with ramps and a variety of balls and other rolling things. We discovered that the weight of an object affects the speed at which it moves. We also learned that an object needs a push or a pull to begin moving and that the object will move in the direction that it is pushed or pulled.

From the immersion coordinator: Why does my child’s teacher feel that she/he needs to step out of the classroom to talk to me? Our teachers do a phenomenal job of protecting the target language-only environment in the classroom, and you can play an important role in protecting it as well! When we set clear boundaries and expectations with children, we know they are much quicker to respect our expectations. It is the same with the language use; we need them to see that the classroom is for Spanish or Mandarin only. You can help by using even broken Spanish (or Mandarin if you know it!), by stepping out of the classroom to talk with the teacher, or at minimum, by turning your back and whispering when English is needed. Thanks for the support!