We hope you enjoyed some family time this past weekend. We all were in much need of the rest. We hope your family is able to find health during this busy season.
Important upcoming dates:
12/13: Birthday Book Club, Treat Friday, Spirit Wear Day
12/16-18: Early Release days
12/18: Kindergarten Gingerbread Hunt
12/19-1/3: Winter Break -No School
1/6-1/8: Early Release Days/Parent-Teacher Conferences: Please be on the lookout for a sign-up form for your student's teacher.
1/11: Grandparent Bingo Night
1/20: No School - MLK day
1/22: Class celebration: 100th day of school
2/7: Early Dismissal at 12:30
2/8: Daddy-Daughter Dance 6-8:30 pm
2/11: Class picture day
2/14: Great Hearts Day - A celebration of Friendship (NO valentines)
2/19: No school - President's Day
2/21: Birthday Book Club, Treat Friday, Spirit Wear Day
2/28: School Field Day
Check out what we learned this week:
Spalding
We continue our journey to learn all our phonograms, and we have now learned cards 1-53. Please continue to practice 10-15 each night and start to make note of the cards your child does not know. Keep those in the rotation more often so they get extra practice with them. Knowing their phonograms will help move them forward with reading and writing as we move through the rest of the year. We talked about similar words, but the words' meanings changed by changing their middle vowel. We practiced recognizing the vowel sounds.
Literature:
Over the last 2 weeks, we have continued reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. We read The Never Go to Bed Cure, where 3 siblings try to stay up late many nights in a row and learn if they are up at night, they miss out on all the fun with their friends during the day. We also saw her cures help A slow-eater tiny-bite-taker. A little boy suddenly decided to eat slowly and take the tiniest bites. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle had unique dishes to help him learn to eat correctly again. Last week, we continued with the Fables reading The Hare and The Tortoise. We learned keeping our focus and not getting distracted will help us do our best to accomplish things. This week, we focused on King Midas and the Golden Touch. He wished to have everything he touched turn to gold so he would be even richer until he realized there were many problems with being unable to touch anyone. He learned that having love in your life is worth so much more than money. Our poem this week was Three Blind Mice. We talked about the original version but also found other silly versions to enjoy. In grammar, we continue to practice hearing a story and retelling it. We also are continuing to focus on how to write complete sentences.
Math:
This week, we took time to focus and practice how to make 10. We used ten frames, number bonds, counters, and cubes and even sang a few songs to help us remember the "friends of ten." We talked about how these two lower numbers, called the parts, combine to become the higher number 10, called the whole. Memorizing the facts of 10 will be very beneficial as your child progresses through math.
History
The children have been learning about Earth's smallest continent, Australia, this week in history! We learned about some of the animals and different traditions of Australia. The children have many favorite animals that are from Australia and enjoyed making a kangaroo and joey. The children were also curious that the seasons are opposite in the southern hemisphere. It's odd to think of the holidays happening when it's the heat of summer!
Science
This week, we learned about the resources that animals get from the places they live to meet their survival needs. We discussed that these resources vary based on their specific environment and location. We "took a trip" to Yellowstone National Park and discovered how a great horned owl, bison, and bear find resources within this large park. The students understand that while these animals live in nature, where they can find resources on their own, some animals may also live in a zoo where zookeepers provide the necessary resources. We put on our "zookeeper caps" to brainstorm how we could care for the animals found in a zoo to meet their needs. Then, we extended our learning to include humans! We recognized ourselves as living things, just as plants and animals are. We discussed the needs of humans to survive and how they relate to and differ from the needs of plants and animals. The students understand that food is one of the things that we need to survive as humans. So we sorted where different foods come from, whether animal or plant.