Popcorn Words: said and make – We talked about the bossy e on the end of make and looked for these books as we read! It makes me smile when I see how excited the kiddos get finding/reading these words in their own books. The January flashcards were sent home, keep practicing!
Reader’s Workshop: We continued “Revving up as Readers” by looking at how letters can help us read! This was a review of our beanie baby decoding strategies. We looked at how “Lips the Fish”, focusing on the beginning sound in a word is important. Then we talked about how this strategy works, but sometimes we have to switch up our thinking using our “Eagle Eye” and “Lips the Fish” together, for example, a picture of a heart could be the word “heart” or “valentine”. Finally, we ended the week by talking about looking all the way through the word as we read to make sure were reading the author’s words.
Writer’s Workshop: We are learning and working on writing Personal Narratives, also known as Small Moments. The children are growing as writers and are doing a fabulous job of zooming in on a small moment and writing about what happened first, next, then and last. They are also editing their work to make sure that have included spaces between words, sentence stoppers (. ! ?), as well as including detailed drawings with labels. I am so very proud of our Kindergartners!! We love sharing under the camera 🙂
Math: We continued working on seeing the tens in the teen numbers (13 is a ten and 3 extra ones). We also reviewed our shapes (triangle, rectangle, circle, square) and used shape manipulatives to create other shapes. For instance, we put together triangles to make rectangles, it was a puzzle of fun! Math this week also worked on ways we can sort objects, size, color, shape, etc. Were having fun and learning lots! Keep doing your Wednesday math homework!!
Handwriting: We learned how to write more lowercase letters this week! Keep reinforcing lowercase at home! The kinders are excited to see their last name written on their table name tags. We are working on writing our “full name” correctly on our papers. This means ONLY the first letter is capital and the rest of the letters are lower case. The kinders are able to write their full name but many of the letters are written incorrectly. There is a mix of upper and lower case letters within the first and last name. Please begin practicing this new skill at home. Thanks! 
Lauren’s Birthday: Happy 6th Birthday Lauren! It was fun to celebrate you on Wednesday!
Hand Washing Lesson: With the flu season approaching we were reminded by Grandma Pinque, (a kindergartners grandma in Mrs. Estefan’s class) how we can keep bad germs from getting inside our bodies. We learned to keep our hands away from our eyes, mouth, ears, nose…all of openings on our face. Germs get in that way. We also learned that proper hand washing will help keep the germs away. She sprayed special germ away lotion on Mitchell and Emma’s hands (chosen volunteers) and used a special light so we could see germs. That was so cool!! Then we learned that if we scrub our hands with soap and sing “Happy Birthday” two times, it will be long enough to clean away most of the dirty germs. Boy, were we all lined up at the sink afterwards to wash those germs away! I hope they showed you their good/bad bug this weekend and shared their knowledge!
Rockstar PJ Party/Mystery Reader: We had a great time Friday in our cozy pj’s! Mrs. Bromley, Kadon’s mom and his little sister, Lilah showed up as our mystery readers! We loved listening to 2 stories with our stuffed animals. THANK YOU!!! Then later in the afternoon it was a fort, fun wonderland! We will continue to work towards our next rockstar jar party for great behavior!
5th Grade Buddies: We also got to enjoy our special Friday with our 5th grade buddies. We loved listening to the stories they checked out from the library especially for us!
Save the Date/Reminders:
100th Day of School Celebration: Thursday, Feb. 13th, 100 Day collection note will come home this week and will be due on the 13th. Start planning your 100 day collections soon!
Valentine’s Party: Friday, Feb. 14th 2-3:00 pm. Mark your calendar! More information to come! Start thinking about buying valentines, we have 24 students total. A note with the class list will come home this week.
Thank you to all of the people who have shown an interest in helping with our Take Home Book Program. This program will be a success thanks to the volunteers who come in to allow the children the opportunity to read aloud. I am beginning to prepare the volunteer schedule, and will share that with my volunteers as soon as it is completed. My hope is to start this program the beginning of February.
Library: We will visit each Wednesday, so please help your child remember to return their book. Thanks!
Backpack Snack: Please pack your child a healthy daily snack.
Box Tops: We will collect Box Tops through Thursday Feb., 13. Please label with your child’s name and teacher. Thank you for saving these for our school!!
No School: There will be no school on Friday, January 31 and Monday, February 3.
Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their Sunday! 🙂
