Propósito (Purpose) Ephesians 2:10 "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
I hope you’re enjoying your long weekend! We had an awesome 4 days of school together this week, including a visit from a real artist, Mr. Tannis, on Thursday afternoon. Meeting with teachers from Zeeland Christian and Holland Christian today was a wonderful opportunity to collaborate and get to know other teachers. I am always grateful for the “take-aways” I get when I have the chance to learn from other educators!
Bible: We closed our unit on creation by reading the whole creation story together with the Bibles Mr. McAboy presented to us several days ago. This was a very special moment for our class. The kids loved following along in their own Bibles as I read the words out loud. I hope you and your kindergartener were able to look through your child’s own creation book. I think they did an awesome job illustrating the work of our Amazing Creator!
Genesis 8:22 “Mientras la tierra exista habrá siembra y cosecha, frío y calor, verano e invierno, días y noches.”
“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”
Literacy: Our linguistic focus this week was indefinite articles, un and una. In English this is like saying “a ___” as opposed to “the ___.” All nouns in Spanish have a gender. Masculine nouns use un and feminine nouns use una. We are excited to add these indefinite articles to our word wall!
Book of Friends: We “met” two new friends this week- Declan and Lily! Watching friendships grow in our classroom is one of the favorite parts of my job. I love seeing your kids say good morning to each other and wave to each other as they get picked up at the end of the day.
Math: We read a book called Anno’s Counting Book. Each page is illustrated with a scene that represents a number 0-10. Soon we’re working on making a book with our own illustrations.
Exploring God’s World: We continue to talk about our 5 senses: gusto, (taste,) olfato, (smell,) oído, (hearing,) tacto, (touch,) and vista (sight.) This week we focused on sight, vista. Every child used a sticky tape “bracelet” to find and keep one piece of nature they found on our walk outside. Then we closely studied and illustrated our treasures with a magnifying glass and our sense of sight.
Afternoons: This week the favorite choices in play were blocks or with the vehicles and people. I’ve giggled a lot as I watch and support your kids acting out school during play! 🙂 In our math centers we continue to work on numbers 1-10, spatial awareness, and one to one correspondence.
Up in Lights: This week our first friend was up in lights! Kayla, you are a sweet friend and a great helper. Thank you for introducing us to your family and to your favorite song, “Give Me a J-E-S-U-S!” We love you!
We had another awesome full week of kindergarten together! This week we created a classroom contact 100% led by the input your kids gave on how they think we should do school. Their awesome ideas included: raise your hand, do not interrupt, close your eyes when you pray, sit like a pretzel in your carpet square, be loving, be safe, share, learn, obey, and listen quietly when it’s not your turn to talk. Everyone signed the contract promising to do their best to follow their suggestions. They are getting the hang of this school thing!
Have you noticed we have the blessing of some extra hands in our room? Maestra Katie Poynter is officially joining our class in the mornings M-F! She works under the umbrella of CLC. She and her husband have two kids, a kindergartner and a 2nd grader. Maestra Angelica is with us 4 mornings a week. She works in our immersion program and is spending her time with us until December when Maestra Zondervan’s nephew heads back to Mexico. I will try hard to share her at that point! 🙂 Maestra Angelica has four kids 8th grade and older. Breanna Lamer, a 6th grader here at ZCS, expressed interest in helping in our classroom while she waits for her younger siblings to finish their school day. Of course I took her up on that offer! I am so grateful for these teachers and they are amazing with your children!
Bible: We continue to walk through the 7 days of creation. This week we completed the pages for days 5-7. We learned that God rested on the 7th day and encourages us to have a special day of rest too.
We’ve also started practicing our Bible memory verse. I’ll assess this verse sometime in a few weeks and we’ll continue practicing at school in the meantime. This would be a great addition to family devotions or bedtime routine. Please visit our Bible Verses tab to see a video to help your child practice at home. (Please don’t laugh at me too hard! I’m not above looking like a fool to help your child!) 🙂
Genesis 8:22 “Mientras la tierra exista habrá siembra y cosecha, frío y calor, verano e invierno, días y noches.”
“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”
Literacy: We continue to build our stamina in Read to Self. Our goal is to read for 10 minutes on 5 different days. When we do we get to learn about the next choice in The Daily Five!
Our linguistic focus this week was articles, el and la. In Spanish all nouns have genders. El is used for masculine nouns and la is used for feminine nouns. Usually masculine nouns end in -o and feminine nouns end in -a. We noticed the articles before each noun and practiced classifying them together!
Book of Friends: We “met” two new friends this week- Porter and Braxton! It was fun to search for the letter O in their names.
Math: We continue to work on numbers 1-10. This week our math centers included: putting the correct number of play dough apples on the apple trees and forming numbers with play dough, practicing turn taking and counting as we played Hi Ho Cheerio, a roll, count, and color with dice, and making puzzles.
Exploring God’s World: We continue to talk about our 5 senses: gusto, (taste,) olfato, (smell,) oído, (hearing,) tacto, (touch,) and vista (sight.) This week we reviewed our experience with the popcorn and talked about the body parts God made for us that help us use each of our senses.
Writing Workshop: Your kids continue to be great story tellers! About now it might be a good time to remind you I’ll believe a portion of the stories that come from home if you believe a portion of the stories that come from school. 🙂 This week we learned that good writers respond to the stories they hear. We learned how to use phrases like “Yo también,” (Me too,) and “¡Que emocionante!” (How exciting!)
Afternoons: In the afternoons we spent our time resting, playing, and doing math centers. Friday the kids went to K-5 singing for the first time! This is always a highlight and Mr. Meyer does a great job leading us. Just so you’re aware, when we have K-5 singing we may have to miss a special. This week singing was during our usual art time. Mr. Meyer is doing his best to switch up the days we sing together so classes do not always have to miss the same special or any specials at all.
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! I am encouraged as I see your kids taking care of each other. One morning I witnessed one of the girls wiping the grass and wood chips off the knees of a friend who had fallen at recess. I pray this is only the beginning of wonderful friendships and being Jesus’ hands and feet to one another!
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 a new friend, Ana, a puppet we helped look for words with Aa.
Handwriting: We worked on writing uppercase and lowercase a. As you watch your child write at home, consider reminding them to start writing their letters at the top.
Book of Friends: We “met” a new friend this week- Alaina! 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.
Exploring God’s World: This month for our science/social studies time we will be learning about our five senses. We 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!
Writing Workshop: Our first unit of writing workshop is oral story telling. We are working on telling true stories from the paste. It has been fun to share stories as we practice being good listeners and speakers.
Afternoons: Our afternoons are a favorite time to relax a little. During rest your children stay quietly on their beach towels as they color or read. Playtime has been an amazing time to get to know each other and practice problem solving. 🙂 Math centers continue to be a fun time of day as well. This week in our centers we: practiced matching numbers to sets of the same number of apple seeds, used fine motor skills to string beads onto pipe cleaners according to the number on the pipe cleaner and clip clothespins onto cards according to the numbers represented on the cards, and cut and paste apples in order according to their size. Thursday afternoon we practiced the letter Aa and each student made a book. Friday afternoon the kids created scenes full of shapes in art class.
We have completed 8 days of Kindergarten! God is good! Thank you for all that you are doing to help us start this school year off well! I am speaking almost 100% Spanish. I’m thrilled with the amount of Spanish your children are comprehending and many of them are bravely speaking Spanish to me already! The week started out very hot, but one afternoon we enjoyed refreshing popsicles from Daniel’s family- thank you! The week ended a lot cooler and I think we were all relieved!
On Tuesday Mr. McAboy presented the Bibles the kids will get to use this year in kindergarten. He put on three different pairs of sunglasses- a red pair, a yellow pair, and a blue pair. We noticed that, while everything looked pretty much the same with each pair of sunglasses, it did look a little red, yellow, or blue. The Bible, Mr. McAboy told us, is like the glasses we use to look at the world around us. We pray that all of us look at others and the world through the lens of God’s Word.
We’ve been talking a lot about using kind words and actions. The Fruit of the Spirit we’re studying this month is love. On Thursday during devotions I squirted some toothpaste on a plate and asked the class to help me get it back in the tube- impossible! The toothpaste, I explained, is a lot like our words or actions. Once we say something we can’t take it back. Once we make a sad choice we can’t take it back. We asked God to help us use loving words and actions. Then I taught the phrases for I’m sorry, lo siento, and It’s okay, Esta bien. While these phrases don’t erase the words or actions we used, we determined they are powerful in making the situation a little better.
Bible: God’s creation is amazing! We have learned about the good things God created on days 1-4. Each time we learn about a day of creation I pull out a surprise from the mystery bag that represents what God created on that day. After the lesson, the kids create a new page for their creation book. I love the way slowly going through the creation week in this way helps us focus on our creative God.
Literacy: Our literacy block is taught through The Daily 5. Right now we are building stamina in the 1st of the Daily 5, Read to Self. The kids are working on reading the whole time, staying in 1 spot, and reading quietly. Try asking your child to model how we do these things for you. In our first round we read for 1.5 minutes! In the next round we read for 6 minutes! We are graphing our reading stamina together. For more information on The Daily 5, please see the document under the “More Resources” tab.
Our vocabulary words below come from our mentor text, a book that I read out loud and use to focus on different reading strategies.
Book of Friends: Each kindergartener is working on a book of friends. When the project is complete they will have a page for each of the kindergarten friends in their book. Creating the pages helps us focus on our different names- how many letters? vowels or consonants? etc. It also gives us an opportunity to celebrate how God made each one of us unique as we draw a picture of the friend on that page. So far we have completed a page for Jesus and started a page for Elle Koster! Before drawing, we discussed how to draw people without skipping some of the most important features like eyes, hands, ears, etc.
Math: We are working on counting up to 10 in Spanish and using different manipulatives and strategies to represent the numbers. Try asking your child to find a group of objects that matches the number you tell them. Each morning we count the days of school we’ve completed and do that number of a variety of different exercises. Twice in the morning and once in the afternoon this week we ran math centers. While I or Maestra Angelica worked with a small group of students, the rest of the class worked on puzzles, creating masterpieces with large foam pattern blocks, or building with unifix cubes.
I wanted to take this opportunity to re-introduce myself to our immersion families. My name is Jodi Pierce, and I serve as the director of our immersion programs. Among other professional experiences, I have taught in the immersion setting abroad, served as the director of another immersion program prior to ZCS, and hold a MA in Dual Language and Immersion Education. I am passionate about the opportunities that immersion education offers our students, and I am determined to help our staff make our immersion program the best it can be. If you have any immersion-related questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to stop by my office (Office #69 between the media center and gym) or send me an email (pierce@zcs.org). It is a blessing to be partnering with you as we strive to “Love God, Love Kids, and Love Learning!”
It has been such a joy to get to know your children more this week! I see the beginnings of some wonderful friendships. Thank you for entrusting your children to me during the school day. I am so blessed to be partnering with amazing families like yours! In the beginning of each newsletter I will give some of the highlights from our week at school. I often hear from parents that their children don’t share much with them about their school day. Take a peek at this section for some of the things we’ve been up to and some ideas of what to chat about with your child.
This week our main focus has been on getting to know one another and setting up classroom routines in the hope that everyone will feel comfortable and confident here at school. We’ve practiced our morning routine, how to line up, where to sit on the carpet, where to put notes for Maestra Izenbaard, and how to walk in the hallway. I’m proud of the progress your kids are making in learning how to do kindergarten together! Here are a few pictures of our awesome week!
Here I will always include important dates coming up.
In this section of our newsletter you will see announcements and reminders.
In this section I’ll share some of the curriculum we worked on over the past week.
The first day of school we read about Chester, the raccoon, and his first day of school. Chester left a note for us at the back of the book and we searched for him around the school. Our scavenger hunt led us to many different classrooms where we met our specials teachers. Chester wasn’t in our room, but he left a special stuffed animal for us to remember him by.
Each morning we start our day doing devotions. This week we talked a lot about names. We learned the name Jesus means Savior. We talked about God’s plan to send his son to die on the cross to save us from our sins. I told the kids that God thinks names are very important and that we’d try to make names important in our classroom too. Incidentally, I explained that I don’t change their names to Spanish and I’d like them to use my name, Maestra Izenbaard, instead of just “maestra.”
The kids created their first page of My Book of Friends and included Jesus’ name on the first page! He is the very best friend we could ask for- always there for us and ready to listen.
We started our first Bible unit on God’s Creation. We learned the first day God created light- day, and darkness- night. The second day He created the sky and the sea.
We learned there are three ways to read a book: read the pictures, read the words, and retell the story. We practiced using these three strategies as we read Un Beso en Mi Mano, The Kissing Hand.
In the afternoons we spent a short time resting, worked hard in math centers, and ventured into purposeful play. In math centers we learned that the class has important jobs and the teachers have important jobs. While the students are doing their jobs at each center, my job is to work with small groups of students.
Specials Schedule: I wanted to include the specials schedule this week because there has been a change in our library time. We will now be going on Thursdays instead of Wednesdays. Students may check out a book for 2 weeks before it is considered overdue, but they may not bring home a new one until they return the one they already have checked out. We’re excited to visit the library this week!
Thank you for a wonderful first 4 days with your children! I’m looking forward to our week coming up! I will be thinking about you all and praying that you have a fun and relaxing long weekend! The first day after a long weekend can be a little tough, so I’ll be praying that the transition back in goes smoothly for everyone! As always, please let me know if you have any questions and I will be happy to get back to you as soon as possible! Thank you! I’m excited to partner with you all this year!