Weekly Jungle Update, Jan 3-6…

January 3-6…

Welcome back to routine and happy 2017! It was great to be back this week! I was so impressed with all that the students remembered over our long break! We will keep practicing and reviewing our school routines!

Popcorn Words:   Just was this week! We looked for was in our popcorn book titled, The Mitten this week.

Reader’s Workshop:  We have begun a new reading unit this week, called “Revving Up”.  The kinders learned that just like race car drivers rev up their engines to get them ready before a big race, we need to rev up our minds to get ready to read.  Some ways to do this is to *look at the cover and title of a book, *take a picture walk and *tell the story.  We used the book, The Mitten to practice these skills together. We read in our book boxes independently and with our reading partners this week to practice our “revving up” to read skills.

Writer’s Workshop:  We also started a new unit in writing this week, “Diving Deeper into Small Moment Writing”. The students were exposed to small moment stories at the start of the school year, however now were looking to dive back in deeper to write true one time, one place stories from our lives. On Monday we started this unit by talking about the exciting things that happened over our break. We talked some of these ideas out over our fingers with a partner. Finally it was time to begin writing a story with a beginning, middle and end! We did the pictures, added labels and finally wrote the words! We had fun sharing these over the big screen! We will keep talking about small moment writing across the month as we develop our stories! I can’t wait!  We also talked about the New Year and made some New Years resolutions.  We had fun talking about things we hoped to do better.  Some things we wanted to do included helping others, eating healthy, running more, etc. They were so precious!

Math:  This week we continued working in Unit 3.  We worked on reviewing our adding and subtracting skills! The kinders are working their math addition/subtraction fact fluency for numbers under 5. It would be helpful to get some flashcard games going at home to increase their fact fluency. Were learning that anything + or – 0 doesn’t change the number! We are also working on telling and solving addition and subtraction stories by using objects.  Finally this week we worked on seeing  5-groups for numbers 6-10, for teen numbers and to tell why that is useful when counting.

Mystery Reader: Jetts’s dad, Mr. Doorenbos, surprised the class on Friday with one of Jett’s favorites, In the Wild. We had fun guessing what animal was hiding behind the flaps! Thanks again! We loved having you! 

We currently do not have any mystery readers signed up in the weeks ahead!!! I am flexible if you would like a different date or time! Just e-mail me! If you would like to sign up for a second reading this year, please do so!! If you haven’t been in yet, please consider inviting an aunt/uncle, grandparent, babysitter, etc. to sign up! I would love it if everyone could have a special someone surprise them as the reader this year! Thank you!

We’re using SignUp.com (the leading online SignUp and reminder tool) to organize our upcoming SignUps.

Here’s how it works in 3 easy steps:

1) Click this link to see our SignUp on SignUp.com: http://signup.com/go/RiEjGy
2) Review the options listed and choose the spot(s) you like.
3) Sign up! It’s Easy – you will NOT need to register an account or keep a password on SignUp.com.

Note: SignUp.com does not share your email address with anyone. If you prefer not to use your email address, please contact me and I can sign you up manually.

Upcoming Dates:

  • Tuesday, January 10…LIBRARY…BOOKS DUE
  • Friday, January 13—ART; “Fast Friday” Early Release,  Dismissal at 12:15pm  EMAIL ME OR SEND A NOTE BY THURSDAY (1/12) IF YOUR KINDER WOULD LIKE A SACK LUNCH.
  • Monday, January 16th…Take Home Book Program starts…calendar schedule came home this week if you volunteered, please e-mail me soon if you can’t do a date or can add on to our schedule 
  • Wednesday, Jan. 18…Bring Take Home Book Back
  • Thursday, Jan. 19…Bring Take Home Book Back