Newsletter 16: Week of January 21

Week Overview

It was another great week at school together! The highlight of our week I think was our field trip to For The Kidz Gymnastics. The kids were able to experience first hand the push, pull, and gravity concepts we’ve been talking about in science. From their smiles it was clear they loved the trampolines, obstacle course, inflatable course, and foam pit! I suspect they slept well on Friday night! Thank you to everyone who helped make our field trip possible from filling out waivers to driving us there safely. I appreciate you all!


Important Dates

Monday, January 22: No School, Teacher In-Service

February 9: NO PM Bus – NO Hot Lunch

February 19: President’s Day break – No School (Preschool-8th)

February 28: All School Chapel 9:00


Reminders

  • Report Cards: By Friday, January 26 I will complete a report card for every child in our class. I have been doing lots of assessing the past couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to reporting on the data I’m collecting! Your kids are working so hard and you should be very proud of them! To access the report card you will need your parent portal log in. If you need help the office will be able to assist you.

Curriculum

Bible: In Bible we continued walking through the events of Jesus’ ministry. This week we read about Jesus calling his 12 disciples, ordinary people like you and me. Then we learned about Jesus blessing the children. It was exciting to read the story of where our January Bible verse comes from.

Matthew 19:14 But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them. For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

Mateo 19:14 Pero Jesus dijo, “Dejad a los niños venir a mí y no se los impidais. Porque de los tales es el reino de los cielos.”

I don’t have a separate video for this verse, but we are learning this song by Steve Green. The lyrics are from our Bible verse. Please click here to share the song with your child. (Please be aware of unpredictable ads that may play before the song.)

Literacy: In grammar we continued to talk about adjectives. This time we focused on long possessive adjectives- mio, tuyo, suyo, (mine, yours, his/hers) for example.

  • Reading strategy: Questioning
  • Read aloud: Las estaciones
  • Vocabulary words
    • abrigar (bundle up, wrap up)
    • ilumina (light up)
    • las luciérnagas (lightning bugs)
    • el deporte (sport)
    • rodar (to roll)
  • Word wall word: el día (day)
  • Phrase of the week: Yo tengo ___. (I have ___.)
  • Letter of the week/Handwriting letter: Zz

Math: The kids got to do a couple rounds of math centers in the morning as Maestra Medrano and I worked with small groups on solving simple addition and subtraction problems, including how to draw them. We also practiced looking for groups of 5. These are all parts of our unit 2 test. I’ll be administering this test in small groups and I’m excited and grateful for this opportunity for the kids to show me how much they are learning! 

Writing Workshop: Right now we are working through a unit on pattern books. Pattern books have repeating words on each page. We’ve been reading lots of pattern books and working on identifying the pattern and theme of each book. As a class we wrote our first pattern book together about the objects we see in our classroom. On each page we also used an adjective to describe the object.

Exploring God’s World: On Thursday we learned an important word, gravedad, gravity! We built ramps and slid a variety of balls down the ramp. We discovered that, because of gravity, the balls will always fall back down. We headed to For the Kidz Gymnastics to get more practice feeling push and pull in our bodies.

Purposeful Play: We added some new toys to our collection and traded some toys with another kindergarten class. It was very refreshing and sparked some fun and creative ideas!

Up in Lights: Asa was up in lights this week! It was a treat to learn more about him and his family. Asa loves all things sweet and when he grows up he’d like to be a police officer. Thank you for sharing some of your favorite things with us, Asa! 

 


From the Immersion Coordinator, Jodi Pierce

Have you heard the news? I am excited to share that the Michigan Department of Education has added the potential of receiving a Seal of Biliteracy to a high school diploma. We join over half of the US states in recognizing this important skill in our youth. Students must demonstrate high levels of proficiency in two languages during their junior or senior year of high school. The great news is that nearly all of our students are reaching the recommended levels already during their time at ZCS, and should they apply for this seal as they graduate from high school, they will be able to share this recognition with both colleges and employers. For more information visit this link: Seal of Biliteracy

 

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