Highlights

It was a good week of growth for our class! We continue to practice school routines and learn more each day. I have found when students know what is expected of them they are confident, comfortable, and ready to learn so I don’t mind spending “extra” time on building routines and classroom community and starting curriculum slowly.

Important Dates

• September 26- Field trip to DeGraaf Nature Center 9:30-11 (plus travel)
• September 27- No School (teacher pd)
• October 1- Picture Day for our class

Reminders

• DeGraaf Nature Center: On September 26 we are heading to the nature center to continue our study of the 5 senses. I need at least one more driver please. If you are interested, follow this link. Just a reminder to please give the office a copy of your license and insurance if you plan to drive. (Emailing it to Carrie Papay is fine.)
• Lunch Help Needed Please: Our kindergarten team of teachers would like to meet on Tuesdays during lunch/recess. Jill Emmick (Graysen’s mom) will usually be the one with your students while they eat until they go outside for recess. Thank you, Jill! 🙂 I am looking for someone to cover “lunch duty” on October 22 please. If you are willing, please let me know.
• Towels: I tried to send each child home with his/her towel on Friday. Please wash and return them to school. Already done with the laundry for the weekend? (Way to go!) Just send a different towel to school. 🙂 As a reminder, please no blankets or stuffed animals.
• Toys: We’ve had a couple issues with toys from home getting lost, broken, or just not played with appropriately. We have lots of toys in our classroom. (I even bought some new ones at Holland Christian’s sale on Friday!) Please keep all toys from home at home. 
• Library books: As a reminder, we visit the library on Fridays. Your child may keep his/her book for 2 weeks before it is “over due” however only one library book at home is allowed at a time. You may certainly turn in library books before Friday if it is easier to remember earlier in the week!
  

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Curriculum

Bible: We finished talking about the Fruit of the Spirit and created a motion for each one to help us remember. I hope to use what we learned when we create our classroom contract in the next couple weeks. We also continue to talk about creation. Each kindergartener is making a book with one page for each day of the creation week. This coming week we’ll complete these books and I will introduce our Bible memory verse.

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 3 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! Next week we’ll learn how the articles change to talk about more than one noun. For example, more than one person is las personas and one person is la persona. Please continue practicing letters names and sounds at home. I am working on assessing these this week to get a starting point and watch for growth over the school year.

• Reading strategy: Determining importance of text
• Read aloud: Un beso en mi mano
• Vocabulary Words:
  • el beso (kiss)
  • el mapache (raccoon)
  • el corazón (heart)
  • la mano (hand)
• Phrase of the week: Ayúdame por favor. (Help me please.)
• Letter of the week/Handwriting Letter: Oo

Math: In our math centers we focused on 1:1 correspondence as we matched numbers to the amount of seeds in an apple and formed play-doh “apples” to put on apple trees. We also played memory together and continued working on patterns.

Writing Workshop: Kindergarteners begin “writing” stories by telling them orally. We practiced thinking of and sharing true stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. This coming week we will continue practicing telling our stories to each other. Next we will draw our stories.

Exploring God’s World: Our first unit is on the 5 senses. This week we went outside and spent time listening to the world around us. We heard water in the drain, an airplane, crickets, an excavator, and the highway. Then we classified things that make noise and don’t make noise.

Up in Lights: Please watch your child’s red folder this week for a schedule and the project pages. If you need to change dates, please switch with another family in our class and let me know! I can help you connect with another family if you need it.

A note from Support Services:

We have so many ways to invite your child into a place of learning this year. Sometimes that happens in the middle of a reading lesson, outdoors gathered around a piece of God’s creation, or as part of a worship time in chapel. It’s important to mention, however, that the members of our classroom offer us chances to learn and grow. We praise God for His creative work in forming each member of our class in a unique way. Each one of us has gifts to share as well as areas of challenge. Those challenges may happen in academic, social, physical, or behavioral areas. As we walk together into the school year, it is our prayer that we resemble a living, breathing picture of I Corinthians 12 – one body together in Christ. We will learn that “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you’”, and we have a chance to learn that “there are many parts, but one body”. We are eager to see how God forms and grows us this year through the gift of each child and adult in our classroom community.

Threeschool-Kindergarten Support Services Teacher

Sherrie Stuursma

Highlights

It was an awesome first 5-day week! Your kids are troopers and did a wonderful job even through the heat earlier in the week and as they got a little more worn out by Friday afternoon. They are rock stars!

Important Dates

• September 20- No PM bus
• September 26- Field trip to DeGraaf Nature Center 9:30-11 (plus travel)
• September 27- No School (teacher pd)
• October 1- Picture Day for our class (I’ll send a form in the red folder when the date is closer)

Reminders

• DeGraaf Nature Center: On September 26 we are heading to the nature center to continue our studies of the 5 senses. I am looking for drivers please. If you are interested, please follow this link.
• Lunch Help Needed Please: On September 23 and October 21 I am looking for a parent to be in our classroom during the beginning of lunchtime. The commitment is about 11:40-12:10. Please let me know if you’re interested!
  

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Curriculum

Bible: We continue to talk about the Fruits of the Spirit. This week we talked about patience, (paciencia,) kindness, (benignidad,) and goodness, (bondad.) We also started learning about creation. We read the creation story outside! It was a unique experience to learn about God’s creation as we sat surrounded by it. Next week we’ll finish talking about the Fruits of the Spirit. We’ll continue talking about creation and each student will make a creation book.

Literacy: We continue to build stamina in Read to Self, (Leer Solito.) So far we’ve made it to 8 minutes! 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.

• 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

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. This week we did a page for Dawson and stared a page for Brendon!

Math: In our math centers we did a pattern activity, practiced counting out towers of linking cubes, looked at various ways to arrange objects of the same quantity, and completed a roll and color activity. Our math lessons for this week took place in a teacher-guided center.

Writing Workshop: Kindergarteners begin “writing” stories by telling them orally. We practiced thinking of and sharing true stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. It is so fun to see your children’s personalities through the stories they choose to share!

Exploring God’s World: Our first unit is on the 5

Up in Lights: We chatted as a class and agreed on 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 send the schedule and the project pages home next week. If the date of your child’s turn won’t work for your family, please feel free to switch with another family in our class. Your whole family is invited to join us to share the project. It is fun to meet each other’s families!

Highlights

We had another awesome 4 days together! We continue to build on routines and expectations. Every day I see your children able to do more and feel more comfortable. It is exciting to see them make connections and form friendships.

Important Dates

• September 9- Scholastic Book Orders Due online (see below)
• September 20- No PM bus
• September 26- Field trip to DeGraaf Nature Center 9:30-11 (plus travel)
• September 27- No School (teacher pd)
• October 1- Picture Day for our class (I’ll send a form in the red folder when the date is closer)

Reminders

• DeGraaf Nature Center: On September 26 we are heading to the nature center to continue our studies of the 5 senses. I am looking for drivers please. If you are interested, please follow this link. I will create a SignUp Genius for every field trip in hopes that every parent who would like to drive, is able to have a turn. I appreciate your willingness to drive and do my best to make it fair for everyone. This is different from preschool field trips. We all go to school like a typical day. Field trip drivers will come to the classroom at 9 and we will have a bathroom break and go over any instructions. Drivers take the children I have assigned to their vehicle and bring them to the field trip location and stay as chaperones. We have a limited number of booster seats at school, so I will often ask families that are able to leave a booster seat with their child. More details will come later!
• Scholastic book orders: I usually like to order from Scholastic three times a year. The second order will be in November (in time for Christmas) and in the spring (good time for new summer books). Please go to scholastic.com/bookclubs to look over the options. Our class code is MH4J6 . Ordering online is easy and you are able to choose from a range of reading levels. I already saw amazing books at really good prices. I wanted to also give notice that I would like to purchase María Tenía una Llama as a Christmas present for your children, so please do not order that one. 🙂 Orders are due Monday, September 9.
• Paperwork: Everyone turned in their paperwork! Thank you! If you haven’t turned in your family photo, please do so soon.
• We will have PE for the first time Monday! Please make sure your child has appropriate shoes and socks!
  

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Curriculum

Bible: We are working our way through the Fruits of the Spirit. This week we learned about love and joy. Click here for a Fruits of the Spirit song in Spanish and here for a song about finding the joy in each day God has made.

Mr. McAboy talked to all of the kindergarteners about the Bible. He reminded us that it is God’s word. By studying it we learn about God and He speaks to us through it. It is kind of like seeing the world through Bible glasses. Kindergartners are each given a Bible to use at school and they are so excited to read them! We use the Beginner’s Bible and each child has one in his/her book box.

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 minute. In the next round we read for 2.5 minutes and then the 3rd day 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.

• Reading strategy: Determining importance of text
• Read aloud: Bienvenidos a Kindergarten
• Vocabulary Words:
  • la oficina (office)
  • divertido (fun)
  • la enfermería (nurse)
  • especial (special)
  • el patio de recreo (playground)
• Phrase of the week: ¿Cómo estás? Muy bien, gracias. ¿Y tu?
• Letter of the week: What is a letter? What is a vowel? a, e, i, o, u

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. This week we did a page for Oliver!

Math: We read Anno’s Counting book this week. It is a book with no words, but beautiful pictures that develop as the pages go from 0 to 10. We see a country scene emerge with objects beginning with zero (nothing), then one house, one person, one tree, then two people, two trees, two houses, two ducks swimming in the pond etc. On each page we see more objects and more of each object. We took our learning outside and counted lots of objects on our playground.

We also worked in math centers, usually in the afternoon. This time our centers included puzzles, tangrams, a pattern activity, and lacing cards, (not necessarily math, but valuable learning still!)

Highlights

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! I can’t wait to get to know you all better and spend my days with your kindergartener!

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.

Important Dates

• Friday, August 30-September 2 No School Labor Day vacation
• Monday, September 9- Scholastic Book Orders Due online (see below)
• Thursday, September 26- Field trip to DeGraaf Nature Center 9:30-11 (plus travel)
• Friday, September 27- No School (teacher pd)

Reminders

• DeGraaf Nature Center: On September 26 we are heading to the nature center to continue our studies of the 5 senses. I am looking for drivers please. If you are interested, please follow this link. I will create a SignUp Genius for every field trip in hopes that every parent who would like to drive, is able to have a turn. I appreciate your willingness to drive and do my best to make it fair for everyone. This is different from preschool field trips. We all go to school like a typical day. Field trip drivers will come to the classroom at 9 and we will have a bathroom break and go over any instructions. Drivers take the children I have assigned to their vehicle and bring them to the field trip location and stay as chaperones. We have a limited number of booster seats at school, so I will often ask families that are able to leave a booster seat with their child. More details will come later!
• Scholastic book orders: I usually like to order from Scholastic three times a year. The second order will be in November (in time for Christmas) and in the spring (good time for new summer books). Please go to scholastic.com/bookclubs to look over the options. Our class code is MH4J6 . Ordering online is easy and you are able to choose from a range of reading levels. I already saw amazing books at really good prices. I wanted to also give notice that I would like to purchase María Tenía una Llama as a Christmas present for your children, so please do not order that one. 🙂 Orders are due Monday, September 9.
• Snacks: Each day we have a morning and afternoon snack. Please make sure your child has enough snacks in addition to their lunch. This is important to pack even when your child orders hot lunch. If anyone would be willing to send in extra snacks for days someone might forget please, I would really appreciate it! We’ve all forgotten something before! 
• Towel: Please make sure your child has a towel in a reusable bag to use during rest time.
  

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Curriculum

This week our main focus was getting to know one another and setting up classroom routines. We’ve practiced our morning routine, how to line up, where to sit on the carpet, and how to walk in the hallway. I’m proud of the progress your kids are making in learning how to do kindergarten together! Each day things went a little smoother and your kids seemed more comfortable and confident.

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.

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.

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!

From the Immersion Director, Jodi Pierce

Are you looking for an opportunity for you child to use his or her Spanish in an authentic setting? Mecdonia Baptist Church is going to put on a Christmas musical in Spanish and are inviting any intersted students to join them. This is for and children from 1st-8th grade who are enjoy being on stage, and for those who would rather work behind the scenes helping with props, etc. Practices will be about twice a week starting in the middle of September. There will be an informational meeting Saturday Sept 7 – 10 am at Macedonia Baptist Church