April 28, 2017 Newsletter

Dear Parents,

I hope you all had a wonderful vacation! I loved hearing all the stories that your children came back with! They were all excited to share what special times you had last week.

We have had a busy week in Room 115!  We have started learning all about seeds, trees, and plants.  We will start learning about insects next week. The students made trees and labeled each of the parts at the art table. They wrote in their journals about their vacations, what trees give us, and about seeds. Their writing is coming along nicely. We have been practicing putting spaces between our words, periods at the end of the sentences, and uppercase letters at the beginning of sentences.  They will continue writing narrative stories during the next couple of weeks and will be writing stories about themselves and some things they have done!

We have read several of Eric Carle’s books this week.  We started making our own versions of “The Very Busy Spider.”  These will come home when they are finished.  We also finished a class book called “If There Were No Trees.”  Please be sure to return all class books as soon as you are done reading them.

In math, we finished our unit on the position and location of objects.  The concepts have been more of a review for the students so we have been trying to come up with some fun and creative ways to practice them.  We even made a ladybug book that will go home next week.  We started a unit on Analyzing, Comparing, and Composing Shapes.  I will be getting ready to assess the students’ addition and subtraction fluency facts in a couple of weeks as well as their sight words.  I would encourage you to continue working on these daily.

We took more pictures of different plants/trees around our school today. We have been discussing the changes in nature we have been observing.  I would encourage you to do something similar at home if you are able to.  I would love for students to bring in their pictures or drawings in a few weeks to show us the changes in nature they observed at their homes!

The PTO sponsored a fun BMX Bike Show this week.  The students were in awe at a lot of their tricks.  We also got to hear a great message about bullying and being kind to each other.

We will be going to the library on Wednesday.  Students will have an opportunity to buy books from the Book Fair.  Please look at the flyer that went home or look online and sent money in on Wednesday if you wish to purchase books.  The Book Fair will also be open Thursday night during the art show if you would rather shop then.  Purchasing books is completely optional.

It certainly was a busy week!  We have more exciting happenings coming up during the month of May!

Enjoy your weekend!

Melanie Duncan

PS… We could really use some cardboard egg cartons for an art project next week.  Thanks!

April 13, 2017 Newsletter

Dear Parents,

Thank you so much for coming to our Kindergarten Museum on Tuesday.  It was an exciting day for the students who got to show off a lot of the hard work they have completed over the past month or so.  They have much to be proud of!

The students finished their individual innovations called One, Two, Three, Four.  These went home today in their folders.  I would encourage your children to read them as often as possible and be sure to point to the words as they read!  It is a wonderful way to reinforce their sight words in context.  The students did a great job thinking of different adjectives to describe the animals in their books.

I would encourage you and your child to work a lot on their sight words and math fluency facts over vacation.  May is a big assessment month for us and I will be checking students on both of these skills during the next few weeks.  I would also encourage you to read, read, read as much as possible!

We will be starting our nature unit when we return from our spring break and will be learning about life cycles, trees, seeds, and eventually insects.  We will also be making observations about the signs of spring we see outside.  We will be taking pictures of different places around the school over a 4-6 week period and comparing the pictures every week to see how nature changes.  It may be a fun project for you to do at home too!  I would love to see the pictures when you are done if you do decide to do it!  We actually went for our first nature walk today and took some pictures that we will add to over the next several weeks.

We have been working with shapes in math.  We even went on a shape hunt inside and outside of the school and talked about the shapes that are all around us.  We also started talking about how we can describe the position and location of shapes and other objects.  We made a pretend minivan today and used position words to describe where everyone was sitting.  Then we “traveled” to the beach, Mrs. Sullivan’s house, and to the movie theatre!  It was fun to see the students using their imaginations while also using great math vocabulary!

Another exciting part of today was that the students earned some game time as part of the whole-school SOARS incentive.  Students could pick between games in the library or games in the gym.  They had a blast!  It was a fun way to end a busy and exciting week!

We also managed to squeeze in a little time to paint this morning.  The students painted forsythia branches that have certainly brightened our classroom and made it feel more like spring!

I hope you have a fantastic, fun-filled, and relaxing week of vacation.  I look forward to hearing all the students' stories when they return!

Have a great week!

Melanie Duncan

Kindergarten Museum

Thank you all for coming to our Kindergarten Museum today!  The students had so much to be proud of and enjoyed giving tours and being guards at the museum.  If you weren't able to come or if you would just like another look, please look through the pictures below.  I hope you also enjoy all the artwork your children brought home today!