Have a Wonderful Winter Holiday Break!

Thanks again for such a great party, a generous gift and a superb first trimester!  While I am looking forward to a 2 week vacation, I can honestly say I cannot wait to get back to work with these kids in January!  I am expecting great things from them!

Just a few things:

In your child's backpack is a gift from them to you.  Enjoy!

I am keeping folders so I can freshen them up in January.

I attached a math packet to your child's work and the school fliers.  The "homework" is optional, but I know some kids might enjoy some routine at some point over the break.  They should be able to do the whole packet independently.

Try to log in to Lexia a few times over break.


See you all in 2015!  Have a safe and happy break!

Report Cards Go Home Today!

I hope everyone is surviving the Winter Holiday frenzy of activities.  We have been super busy in Kindergarten with all things Gingerbread!

Reading:  We have read 6 different Gingerbread stories and practiced our retelling with each of them.  We have also compared and contrasted the different versions.

Writing:  While we have stuck to our routine in writing, we have been focusing on our formal handwriting curriculum and also using only lower case letters in the middle of a sentence.  Finally, we are working on segmenting words as we write so we can write all the sounds we hear.

Math:  We have worked on graphing, sorting, patterns, counting and number bonds!  Number bonds are a big part of our second trimester.  More on those after the holidays!

Theme:  Gingerbread!  We have decorated gingerbread babies, gingerbread houses and made gingerbread glyphs with our book buddies.  Next week we will learn about Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Christmas and Diwali.  (Diwali was actually celebrated in November this year, but all these holidays have a celebration of lights, so we will focus on that common theme.)

REPORT CARDS:  Report cards go home TODAY!  As I write this, the report cards that are printed and stuffed into envelopes do not have Spanish grades on them-only comments.  There was a glitch in our recording system.  Now there seems to be a glitch in the server that is not allowing us to print report cards.  If this is resolved in time for me to print new report cards and stuff them I will do that!  If not-I will be sending home Spanish grades separately next week.
THE REPORT CARD IS YOURS TO KEEP, BUT I NEED THE SIGNED ENVELOPE BACK!

Winter Concert:  Thanks so much to our crew of room parents for organizing our party again!  If you have not yet seen the sign up genius, please click the link below and see if there's anyway you can help!
www.SignUpGenius.com/go/9040F4CA9AF2A1-winter/6809437

Finally, I am opening up the Scholastic Book orders.  I will place an order when we get back in January.  Please click on the link to see all the catalogs available. A sample catalog was sent today, but there are thousands of books to choose from.  It might be nice to have a few new books when headed into the depths of winter!

December 3, 2014

It is a busy time of the year!  We have a few things going on at school in these next few weeks that you should have on your calendar.  Here's a midweek edition of the blog!


Friday, December 6th:   Jack Frost Jam- Dancing in the gym and  food in the cafeteria makes for a fun and easy night out with the kids.  Proceeds go to 5th grade activities.  I hope to see you there!

Saturday, December 13th:  Annual craft fair and cookie crumble-This is a great event, too. Come and see some amazing crafts and artisans.  The cookie crumble is also a big hit!

Friday, December 12:  Report Cards go home.  These report cards are very length.  They contain a lot of information.  Please look over them carefully and let me know if you have any questions.

Wednesday, December 17th:  Winter Celebration and Concerts-one concert is at 8:30, the next at 9:45. Both concerts are the same.  We will have a snack after the first concert and a party after the second one.  Please check email regularly for updates from our room parents.  Thanks!

We are beginning trimester 2 Common Core State Standards in both English Language Arts and Math. We will continue to visit Trimester 1 Standards.

In reading we will focus on retelling fiction stories.  We will also learn how pictures and words work together to bring meaning to a story.

In writing we are enjoying a week of narrative writing before starting some opinion writing next week. During Shared Writing we are working on using lower case letters and sounding out longer words.

During math we are working on the concepts of greater than and less than.  We are also working on counting objects to 20 and decomposing numbers up to 5.

We finished our study of bears and we are enjoying reading lots of Gingerbread Man stories this week and next.  We will also be learning about holiday traditions.