Newsletter 3: Week of September 17

Week Overview

It was an awesome first 5-day week! Your kids are troopers and did a wonderful job even as they got a little more worn out by Friday afternoon. They are rock stars! We had a very special meeting with all 5 kindergarten classes and Mr. MacAboy in the library this week. Mr. MacAboy taught us the Bible is like the glasses we use to look at all of life. When he wore his blue, red, and yellow glasses the things he saw changed colors. When we look at the world through the lens of the Bible we see the world differently. After his lesson every kindergartener was given a Bible to use at school during their days at kindergarten. In 1st grade they will get a different Bible and they will leave their kindergarten Bible at school for the next class. I can’t wait to continue digging into God’s Word with your children!


Important Dates

September 21/October 10: TRIP Registration Meeting

September 26: Field trip to DeGraaf Nature Center

October 3: Picture Day

October 19-20: CEA Convention (No School)


Reminders

  • Please continue to send your child’s red folder back and forth to school each day. I encourage you to find a routine that works best for your family to be sure it gets pulleId out and looked at each day after school.
  • I’d love if you could send your child a water bottle to school each day.
  • Tomorrow (Monday) we will visit the library again! If your child would like to pick out a new book, please help them remember to bring their old book to school and put it in the bin in our classroom.

Curriculum

 

Bible: We continue to talk about God’s amazing creation. Each kindergartener is creating a book  with a page for each day of creation. This past week we made the pages for days 3 and 4. We’re learning a song called “Quien Hizo el Mundo,” “Who Made the World” to celebrate our Creator. 

Literacy: Our grammar focus this week was nouns. We learned that a noun is a person, place, or thing. We learned a song to remember the different kinds of nouns and practiced classifying nouns. We also met 2 new friends, Ana, a girl we helped look for words with Aa. and a squirrel (ardilla) whom we met through a poem.

  • Reading strategy: Determining importance of text
  • Read aloud: No te comas a la maestra (Don’t Eat the Teacher! :))
  • Vocabulary Words:
    • el bacalao (cod)
    • el torbellino (tornado)
    • el pincel (paintbrush)
    • avergonzado (embarrassed)
    • se zambulló (dove)
  • Phrase of the week: Buenos días (good morning) Buenas tardes (good afternoon)
  • Letter of the week: Aa

Handwriting: We worked on writing uppercase and lowercase a. As you watch your child write at home, consider remind them to start writing their letters at the top. 

Book of Friends: We “met” two new friends this week. Ava and Aubrey! We were focusing on names that have A as the first letter because it was our letter of the week.

Math: We read a book called Anno’s Counting Book. Each page is illustrated with a scene that represents a number 0-10. Now we’re working on making a book with our own illustrations. We completed pages for numbers 0 and 1. Your kids can’t wait to show you their books!

Exploring God’s World: This month for our science/social studies time we will be learning about our five senses. We read a non-fiction book teaching us about each sense and how we use them to explore the world God made. We then explored our senses as we listened, smelled, and watched popcorn popping. We used the sense of touch and taste as we got to enjoy eating some popcorn for a snack! Your children loved this! 

Up in Lights: We chatted as a class and agreed upon a fair way to determine the order of our up in lights friends. This is our special student of the week. We decided that it would be fair if I pulled out popsicle sticks (without peeking!) to pick the order. I will create a schedule using the order from our discussion and send it to you this week. When it is your child’s turn I’ll send our special bag and giraffe home with your child as well as the papers to fill out. Please visit our “other resources” page on our blog to see the English translation of these papers. 

Afternoons: This week in the afternoon in addition to rest, play, art, and recess we made a September calendar (I promise to finish it earlier next month!) and enjoyed some math centers. On Friday we sang with our kindergarten friends again. It was a full week!


The Tulipanes Latino Art and Film Festival will be celebrated in Holland September 21-24. If you are interested in engaging your children in the Latina culture of Holland, check out this link for more information. http://laup.org/2017/03/24/tulipanes/

Leave a Reply