Newsletter 29: Week of April 29

Week Overview

I am so proud of your kids! They continue to work hard and love each other well. This week we started a new Spanish incentive plan. Everyone starts with 10 gems at the beginning of the week. If someone accidentally slips into English that person give me a gem. Sometimes I recognize excellent Spanish, especially Spanish during an unstructured time, with an extra gem. On Friday we “cash in” the gems. Each gem=1 minute of free choice time. Each gem lost=1 minute of helping the teacher with something in our classroom. 🙂 Today we cashed in our gems for the first time!


Important Dates

May 4: Pen Pal Pizza Party

May 4: Fun Night

May 9: 1/2 Day (Tulip Time)

May 10&11: No PM busing and No hot lunch

May 28: Memorial Day (No School) Kindergarteners are invited to march in the parade. (More details soon.)

June 6: Field trip to Farmers Market


Reminders

  • Farmers Market: On Wednesday, June 6 we’ll be heading to our last kindergarten field trip, the Farmers Market! From there we’ll head to Kollen Park for a picnic lunch. We will not be eating hot lunch that day. We will be back to school about 12:45. “Morning kids” are welcome to stay until then! If you need to pick your child up at the normal 11:50 time, please meet us at Kollen Park.
    • We are still looking for a couple more drivers for this field trip! It’s a little more hands-on so I’d like to make the groups a bit smaller than normal if possible. The only way to do that is with your help! 🙂 We’ll be leaving about 9:30 that morning. Please use this link to sign up. Thank you!
  • Pen Pal Celebration: Thank you to everyone who signed up to help! I’m looking forward to this special day! A few reminders…
    • If your child attends 1/2 day please plan on picking her/him up by our classroom.
    • If your child attends full day our pizza is actually 1/2 English muffin with pizza sauce and cheese. It would make a great main dish of a lunch. It would be very appropriate to send along some sides like fruits, veggies, etc. please.

Curriculum

Bible: We continue learning about parables. This week we read the parable of the Lost Son or the Prodigal Son. Each time we read a new parable your child completes a simple project. We’re collecting these in a bag to bring home at the end of our unit.

Literacy: Over the last 2 weeks we’ve talked about the verb estar to describe the location of a person or thing and to describe an action in progress in the first person. This week we learned how to describe actions other people are doing right now. In English this would be equivalent to present progressive verbs in the 2nd and 3rd person. Sound hard? You’d be surprised how often your students use this tense without even realizing it! This is the beauty of immersion. I get to introduce your children to the “fancy names” of things they say every day. 🙂

  • Reading strategy: Inferring
  • Read aloud: El pez arcoiris y la cueva de los monstruos
  • Vocabulary words
  • el pez (fish)
  • la cueva (cave)
  • el brazo (arm)
  • la piedra (rock)
  • el arcoiris (rainbow)
  • Word wall word: ¿qué? (what) que (that)
  • Phrase of the week: ¡Hablemos solamente español! (Let’s only speak Spanish)
  • Letter of the week: Kk

We’re also talking about rhymes. On Monday Maestra Angelica and I led small groups in a rhyming activity. On Friday we finished our Cat in the Hats by adding rhyming words to the stripes in his hat.

Math: Our math lesson took us to the grocery store this week! It was fun using fruits, veggies, and other pretend food (or empty containers) to practice addition and subtraction in a very familiar context.

Writing Workshop: We wrote to our pen pals two more times this week! Your kids are very excited to meet them! We also wrote a small moments story about the Critter Barn.

Up in Lights: Brooklynn was up in lights this week! Her parents, older sister Madilynn, and puppy Sophie joined us! Brooklynn shared some of her favorite books and, after seeing how many colors she chose as her favorite, it wasn’t surprising that one book had a rainbow theme. 🙂 We love you, Brooklynn!

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