May 11th Newsletter

Truly, truly thank you for the really special Teacher’s Appreciation Week.  The flowers, notes, goodies, and daily amazing spread at lunch was such a wonderful treat.  It is such an honor to work with your children, and to be shown such support.  Thank you from my heart.

This week we…

…focused our ocean learning on sharks.  What can your child tell you they know about sharks?  What can they tell you about cartilege?  How about denticles?

…are doing many neat art projects with our ocean unit.  This week we made colorful fish out of painted papers.  We also drew sharks and painted with liquid watercolors.

…had our final Spanish lesson.

…ran and ran and ran at recess.  If your child has brought a completed Miles in May card home, this means they’ve run close to 5 miles!!!

Mark your calendars:

• Last book order of the year due Thursday, May 17^th.
• See email regarding help needed May 30^th for our OMSI Whale Presentation
• Stafford’s Field Day will be Wednesday, June 13^th.  Many parent helpers are needed for this day to be a success.  Please let Mr. Minor know if you can help.  Also, the activities that day run until 11.  We are looking into arranging busses that day for an 11:15 dismissal.  As it gets closer I will provide all the details.
• Thursday, June 14^th is Kindergarten’s last day.  We are planning on an end of year party the last hour of the day.

May 4th Newsletter

This week Stafford launched its  annual “Miles in May” program.  This program is to encourage physical activity and fitness.  Each child is given a pink card with little feet around the outside.  At recess time they are given the option of running laps around the track.  For each lap, a recess teacher punches a foot on the card.  When a card is full it will be sent home and they can choose to start a new one. Participation is voluntary, but I have been blown away with the high level of participation!  Many children ran close to a mile a day this week!  This will continue for the month of May.  At the end of the month, children will be given a necklace with feet on it to show their participation.  In 1^st -5^th grade the feet on the necklaces is equivalent to miles each child ran, but in kindergarten everyone will get a “participation necklace” with the same number of feet.

The book order sent home this week is our last one of the year.  Due date will be Thursday, May 17^th.  As a reminder you may either return the paper order form with a check, or order on-line using the class code: H23C2.  If you go the on-line route there is a much wider selection of books available.

This week was largely given over to our experience with Tears of Joy Theater.  Each day we spent an hour with Kelly learning The Sargasso Sea story, creating our own puppets, practicing speaking in different voices, and learning some performance tips when working with puppets.   For those of you able to come, I hope you enjoyed the performance!

In the limited time we had this week, we wrote in our Oceanography Logs, learned some facts about fish and worked in our Ocean books, and played some math games.

April 27th Newsletter

* At morning sign-in we’ve been working on writing our first AND last names.   We continue to work on using appropriate lower case letters in our names each time we write our name.  Please reinforce this at home.

*Thank you for all the donations to our Invention Center.  It continues to be a favorite destination for our Discovery Time.  Realizing that the end-of-year clock has begun to tick, I think we’ll be fine with our current supplies until the end of the year.

* This week we began our final inquiry of the year: the ocean.  We  will be learning about a variety of animals that live in the ocean.  This week we talked about our ideas and wonderings of the ocean, explored ocean books, and learned about coral.  We read the book Rainbow Fish and made our own rainbow fish. We will be working on making oceanography books to record our learning.

*Next week we will have the special opportunity of having an Artist-in-residence.  For kindergarten, the residency is with Tears of Joy Puppet Theater.  Over the course of the week, we will be creating puppets and learning a story to act out with our puppets. The story we’ll be working with is The Sargasso Sea, and will tie in with our ocean unit.  This experience (brought to use by our wonderful PTA!) will be an hour each day, so your child can expect to have a different week/schedule than they are used to. I will find out for sure once we start, but in the past parents have been invited on the last day (Friday) to attend a little performance in-class.  The time will likely be around 9:00 but I will send home details for this on Monday.

* For your consideration: Screen Free Week is April 30-May 6^th.  “Screen Free Week is an annual celebration where children, families, school, and communities turn off screens and turn on life.  Instead of relying on screens for entertainment, participants read, daydream, explore, enjoy nature, and enjoy spending time with family and friends.” – Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood

April 20th Newsletter

This week we….

…continued adding to our bank of math games which involve adding up and adding onto numbers.

…did some work with the word family “-in” (chin, win, bin)

…discussed safe and unsafe words and behavior at school.

…read the story Miss Rumphius, a story which inspired a conversation about how we can make the world more beautiful.  See our painted lupines (also inspired by the book) and our ideas posted on our class bulletin board.

…took a walk outside to find the rainbow of colors provided by mother nature.  Encourage your child to notice this at home too!

…attended a performance by the senior choir.

*Last call for fabric donations….please send any in by next Friday (18” squares or larger).

April 13th Newsletter

Thank you all for your attendance and enthusiasm for our Three Piggy Opera.  What a valuable experience for the kids to perform on the stage, memorize some lines, and practice speaking with expression.  Weren’t they great?!   I didn’t get a chance to film the show myself so if anyone has a version that would be easy to burn a copy for me, I’d love one!  Thanks again to Alaina for taking such great photos and putting them on the share site!

This week…

…was more about the three little pigs!   We practiced our opera each day.  We continued reading more versions of The Three Little pigs.  We retold the story and sequenced the main events.

…We also celebrated Kevin’s and Carl’s birthdays.

…We sent home some of the little books we put in our literacy binders in the fall and winter.  These may be easy for your child now, or a good source of practice for home reading.

…We learned about the art of ancient Greece with our Art Literacy parents.

…We planted our pumpkin starts out in the Stafford garden!

….in math we learned a few more games which involved counting and adding up 2 numbers.

Upcoming….

• I’ll be collecting donations of fabric squares at least 18”x18” until April 27^th.

April 6th Newsletter

This week we….

…welcomed a new student to our class.  Sarah and her family have just moved here from Oregon, Illinois.  We’re so glad to have her, and the class has been very welcoming and helpful in getting her settled.

…practiced the Three Piggy Opera in class and on stage.  We look forward to performing for you next week!

…read with our 3^rd grade buddies.

…read different versions of the story of The Three Little Pigs and compared and contrasted  them.

….did some measuring and counting activities in math.

…made some more frog observations.

Upcoming….

* 3 Piggy Performance will be Thursday, April 12^th at 8:30 in the mpr.  Please join us after the performance in our classroom for refreshments.

* At the end of the month we’ll be doing some puppet work with Tears of Joy Theater.  They will supply us with some puppets using fabric they already have.  They are asking us to send in some fabric to replace their supplies.  If you have any extra fabric that is at least 18” x 18” please send it in by Friday, April 27^th.  Thank you!

March 23rd Newsletter

This week…

…we wrote and illustrated math story problems about frogs.  This month in calendar, we’re talking about and using some mathematical notation for number sentences (i.e. 3 + 6 = 9).  It was an optional challenge to add a number sentence to the math story problem.

…as we continue to learn about frogs, we’re discussing the differences between fiction and non-fiction books.  We’re also talking about some of the features of non-fiction books.  We did a book browse through our non-fiction collection and each wrote a fact about frogs in our Frog Logs.

…visited the 2^nd Graders’ Great People presentations.

…enjoyed our monthly Milk and Cookies with Scout’s mom.

Other notes:

• After break, I’ll send home a line for each child to memorize in the 3 Piggy Opera.  Please help your child memorize it, and mark Thursday April 12^th at 8:30am on your calendar for our performance.
• If you would be interested in donating some cookies or juice for a little celebration after our Piggy Performance, please let me know.

Have a wonderful Spring Break, and may spring finally start!

March 16th Newsletter

This week…

…before writing our Weekend News we brainstormed a list of some of the things that we need to remember as writers.  Our list included: add details, put space between words, spell the word wall words correctly, do your best, and more.

…we wrote observations about frogs in our Frog Logs.

…talked about the life cycle of frogs.

…began our math unit on measurement by using cubes to measure each others’ shoe lengths.

…we celebrated Sawyer’s birthday and Scout’s summer birthday.

…we visited the Science lab.  We learned about the habitat of ponds and learned about how the creatures there have bodies specially designed to help them live in the water.

March 9th Newsletter

This week we…

…began learning about frogs!  A shipping error meant they arrived later than we’d planned but we do now have little tanks showing four different stages of the frog’s life cycle (tadpole, tadpole with back legs, front legs, and frog).  We’re learning about the frog’s life cycle, frog’s basic needs, and what makes a frog a frog.  As we learn these things, we’re also learning about how to observe like scientists, as well as getting some practice doing non-fiction writing.  We have “Frog Logs” where we’re recording observations and new learning about frogs.  Next Friday from 8:45-9:30 we’ll be going to the Science Lab to learn about Pond Life.  Mrs. Darzes would appreciate 1-2 parents joining us to help out as needed. Let me know if you’re interested in coming.

…attended Stafford’s Science Fair and were especially proud of Hogan, Berkley, and Parker for their projects!

…had a guest engineer (Marie’s mom!) talk with us about some of the things that engineers do in their work.  She then guided us in a project building toothpick and gummy drop domes.  We load-tested the strength of some of the domes with a big stack of books.  They were really strong!

…have been talking about the things good readers do.  One of these things is making connections between ourselves and the book we’re reading (“text to self”).  For example many kids could relate to Toad’s frustration over losing something in Frog and Toad Are Friends.  Making connections between how we feel and how the character is feeling deepens our understanding and comprehension of the book.

Mark your calendars!  Our class will join the Stafford kindergarten tradition by performing the Three Piggy Opera this spring.  Our performance will be Thursday, April 12^th at 8:30 in the mpr.  More details about this fun learning experience will be coming home in the next few weeks.

March 1st Newsletter

This week…

On Monday we celebrated the 100^th day of school with a number of centers having to do with the number 100.  Throughout the day we tried to tie the number 100 in when we could…we counted 100 steps on the way to recess, did 100 jumps, and more! Thank you all for your great 100 collections.  We loved seeing them up on the wall.  On the 100^th day we took them down and shared observations and predictions (which do we think is the heaviest, lightest, biggest, smallest?).

On Monday we also attended Metro’s puppet show “Mother Nature’s Garden”.  What can your child tell you about natural gardening?

In writing, we started new journals using papers with even more lines.  I told the kids “None of you are 1 line writers anymore!”  Our previous journals were sent home for you to keep and enjoy.

In math, we played a game “Breaking the Train” in which we identified the part of a pattern which repeats and broke the pattern into individual “train cars”.

*Next week Library will be held on Friday instead of Tuesday.