Friday, January 20, 2017

January 20, 2017 Newsletter

Dear Parents,

The children are certainly learning quite a bit about sea life!  Their aquariums are on the back wall and they have made octopuses and sea turtles and have learned many interesting facts about them both.  You should ask them how many legs an octopus has and about where the sea turtle lays her eggs!

We are getting excited to go to the Aquarium on Tuesday, January 31st.  More information about the trip and what the students will need will be going home the day before we go.  They will need a disposable drink and lunch.  Chaperones should plan to be at the school by 8:30am.  If you have not sent the $12 to cover the cost of the trip, please send it in as soon as possible.  It should be a fun trip!

We will be having our Fish Day this Friday, January 27th.  Students will get to travel to all the different Kindergarten classrooms to complete various fish and other sea creature projects.  Thank you in advance to those who have offered to volunteer.  Volunteers should plan to be here from 9-10:15am and should check in at the office first.

We will be celebrating Valentine's Day on Tuesday, February 14th by passing out Valentines.  Please don’t attach any candy or other edible items to the Valentines.  If you would like to send something, pencils or stickers make great alternatives to food.  I will send a list home with students next week for students to use to write out their valentines.  Students can also bring a special snack from home to eat in the afternoon on Valentine’s Day.  They will need a morning and an afternoon snack that day.

The students continue to write in their journals.  We continually encourage them to write on their own in their best guess spelling and not to be afraid to make a mistake.  We will be starting a unit on persuasive writing.  The students will try to convince me to get a class pet!  We will be talking a lot about features of good persuasive writing.

We have been practicing our letters and numbers but it never hurts to have them practice at home too. The more they write numbers 0-20, the easier and more natural they will become.  The teen numbers are particularly challenging so those are great numbers to practice.  We have are currently working on subtracting in math.  Please be sure to have your child practice his her addition fluency facts.  I will be testing them soon!  If they are doing well with the addition facts, they can get started on the subtraction facts too!

We started our guided reading program last week.  Guided reading enables children to practice reading strategies with the teacher's support in small groups.  This is just the beginning.  It helps your children to become more and more comfortable with text.  It’s amazing how far they have already come since September!

Progress reports will be going home on Monday.  Our next scheduled conference isn’t until March, but feel free to email or call me if you have any questions or concerns with the progress report.  We can certainly set up a time to talk on the phone or meet in the classroom to talk.

Have a great weekend!

Melanie Duncan

PS...We will be going to the library on Wednesday.

Wishlist items:  Large paper plates and small brown paper lunch bags.  Thanks!

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