Announcements
Volunteers Opportunities for Ms. Staci:
1.) The first step to making the drums is a Dyed Paper Project. Ms. Staci will need 5 volunteers for Sept. 12 (1:45-2:35pm). It will be super fun, but likely a bit messy, so wear clothing you wouldn't mind getting dirty. If you're able to help, please consider signing up at the link below.
2.) Next, Sept. 13 (1:45-2:35pm), parents are invited to attend the Drumhead Dyeing event. No pressure of course if you're unable, but we are requesting only one parent per child due to the size of the art room. It will definitely be memorable, as this is the drum they'll use throughout their REMS years. But again, the project has messy potential, so art appropriate clothing is recommended.
3.) And finally, Sept. 14 (9-11am) we'll be assembling the drums. 6 volunteers are needed for that. Here's that signup link again.
(Repeated) Letter Formation Volunteers: We would like to start having volunteers in the classroom to help with letter formation during our literacy block. Ms. Bethany and I will be hosting trainings if you are interested. In this training, we will go over how, what, and why we do letter formation in a particular way. Please feel free to bring your child as the perfect partner to practice during the training. We ask that you attend a training before you come to volunteer. If these dates do not work for you, let me know, and we will continue to put on trainings. You can attend either training!
*9/7 Wednesday 1:15-1:45 with Ms. Bethany
*9/9 Friday 8:00-8:30 with Ms. Lauren
Please email me if you are interested so we know how many to expect. Thanks!
(Last chance for this round) Scholastic Book Clubs:
If you would like to purchase books through Scholastic Book Clubs:
You can choose to have your books shipped to your home or delivered to me with our class order.
With a $25 order, you can pick a FREE $5 Book (use code: READS).
Class Order Due Date: 09/06/22
Shop Our Class Page: https://orders.scholastic.com/YCRBR
Shop Digital Flyers for Our Grade with Your Child: https://clubs.scholastic.com/kindergarten
Please share the Class Page link to extended family and friends.
***All orders also earn FREE Books for our class. I love that our crew library grows from every order that is placed! Thank you for your support!
Class Code: YCRBR
Calendar
9/5 Labor Day. No School.
9/9 Community Reading 8:30-9am
9/16 Crew Picnic at Bison Park 5-7pm
9/23 Teacher Professional Development Day. No School.
9/30 Crew Hike to Bingham Lake
10/7 Renaissance Adventure Day (aka RAD). More information coming soon!
Crew Highlights
This week our crew took the iReady Reading and Math Diagnostic. This is the platform that our school district uses to show adequate growth over the year. Students take a beginning of year, middle of year, and end of year diagnostic. The beginning of the year serves as our baseline.
We have been using stampers and play doh to practice our 4 high frequency words:
I, can, see, and a.
*Encourage your child to be a word detective for these words.
Additionally, stampers are a great way to practice finding a capital letter for the first letter of a name and then lowercase letters for the rest of the name. This is a change from preschool, in which preschools teach students to write names in all uppercase.
*When your child writes his or her name, encourage to use lowercase for all the letters after the first capital letter.
To strengthen muscles in the hand that are used for writing, we did a fun fine-motor skills activity called "Poke-Pin," in which a push pin is used to poke holes onto a paper. The end result is beautiful, and our crew really enjoyed this activity!
Ms. Erin's lesson during library time was sorting fiction and nonfiction books. This ties perfectly to what we have been learning about!
We began practicing what it might sound like to give a book talk.
Together we practiced saying the title and the author, as well as something about the story or text. A few volunteers were ready to try on their own!
In math, we have been working on counting with accuracy. Students have found that moving objects from one side to the other as they count is a good strrategy. Another strategy is to touch each item with a one-to-one match (such as counting dots on dominos when playing Domino Parking Lot).
Students loved playing "Racing Bears" this week!
*Board games with dice are a great way to practice counting small numbers and then moving a game piece with one-to-one correspondence.
Ms. Monica reviewed the Crew Skill of perseverance, when we did a perseverance workout today. Then we discussed what our bodies feel like when we persevere.
Next, Ms. Monica did a Simon Says activity to talk about perseverance through listening.
It got tricky when her body would be doing something differently than her words- so our crew had to work hard to listen instead of rely on watching to listen.
Ms. Trena welcome everyone to The Beat on Wednesday!
It was a "Family Feud" gameshow version to put some staff members to the test about the culture of Renaissance (as polled by ALL the students).
Lucky us! As a kindergarten crew, we have the best seats in the house!
How fun to see a sea of blue & green!
Don't you just love our school colors?!?
Following directions has been a key theme in Mr. Doug's PE class this week.
More scenes from PE.
How exciting to for our kindies to have their first drum circle AND hang out with a new 4th grade buddy. (We will be doing official buddy partnerships in mid-September; but for now, they are getting to know a few new faces.)
The 4th graders helped show our crew how to use their hands to gently beat on the drum, "ready position," a drum roll, and how we end together after a countdown. It blew my mind that on our first day and first countdown, everyone ended together perfectly! WOW CREW! Way to go!!!
One of our favorite Closing Circle activities is a "Crew Handshake."
We say:
"Thank you for the great day Crew! WOO!"
Thank you for reading!
Here are a few more pictures from PE and from our week.
Enjoy Labor Day weekend, and we will see you on Tuesday!
With love,
~Ms. Lauren
