Weekly Update 3/7

We have finished the third quarter! The children have learned so much this year, and are excited for all the fun things planned for the rest of kindergarten!

Important upcoming dates:

3/10-3/14: Spring Break

Upcoming Quarter 4:

3/28: Spirit Wear, Birthday Book club & Treat Friday

4/5: Fine Arts Festival at Archway Lincoln with Usborne Booksale

4/18-4/21: No School

4/25: Treat Friday, Birthday Book Club, Spirit Shirt Day

5/9: Kindergarten Field Trip - More info coming soon

***Kinder celebration will be held on May 21st at 11 am***

Spalding:

We aim to continue building recognition of the 70 phonograms and the weekly words. With the words, we talk about why the letters say the sounds referencing the rules so that there is an understanding of which phonogram to use. These words are most often sight words so we also hope they will recognize these words in the books they are reading. Keep encouraging writing at home through random words as well as building sentences. Practice with this is crucial for 1st grade. Make sure as you practice you keep switching the order to give them the best practice. 

Literature:

We have finished our chapter book Mr. Popper's Penguins! There was a fun surprise at the end of the book so talk to your scholar and find out how it ended. 
This week we also enjoyed reading the other side of the Fairy Tales. We read versions where we heard Goldilocks, Cinderella, Snow White and The 3 Little Pigs from the perspective of another character in the story. It was fun to talk about how people have different experiences even when they go through the same thing. We found many of these stories silly and really enjoyed them.  In poetry, we read Little Boy Blue and talked about what he should have been doing instead of sleeping. In Grammar, we focused on retelling a story from the illustrations from our past Fairy Tales. 

Math:

We started our new unit of subtraction talking about how it is the opposite of addition. We spent time discussing subtraction stories using pictures talking about the whole. We then discussed taking part away and asking what is left. We ended the week introducing the subtraction equations using minus and equals. 

History:

This week we learned about our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln. We learned about his childhood and how his fight for equality led him to become one of our most popular leaders. We discussed why he was often called "Honest Abe" and how we could also strive to display our virtue of honesty. The students were amazed to realize that our school is named after him because of all of the honorable things he did for our country. We also learned about Teddy Roosevelt. We have him to thank for our national parks, and the teddy bear! The children created their own teddy bear:)

Science:

We finalized our unit on motion of push and pull. We spent time reviewing activities and reading a fun book called Newton and Me which put all our motion and forces together in a fun way.