Ms. Lauren's Kindie Crew 22-23: Crew News October 7th, 2022

Announcements

Renaissance Adventure Day:

Thank you so much for supporting this year's Renaissance Adventure Day Fun Run! The program was a huge success and everyone had so much fun! Renaissance Elementary Magnet School raised over $46,000 to go towards outdoor improvements, voyage transportation, technology, and the library

That is amazing and we could not have done it without your support!

If you haven’t already, please check your email (the one you registered on mybooster.com with) to see if there are any pending donations you need to confirm with the Booster team.

Finally, please encourage your student to thank all of their donors for helping our school this year.

Thank you! Let me know if you have any questions.

Halloween Parade on October 28th:

Kindergarten will have Community Reading from 8:30-9am that Friday morning.
We will have our Halloween Costume Parade from 9:30-10:00 AM on Friday, Oct. 28th. Please note the new time. We are starting at 9:30 so that we do not interfere with RSS arrival. Students will come to school dressed in their costumes (school-appropriate). After the parade students need to change out of costumes.
Ms. Leslie, our Crew Parent, will reach out to you to help plan a fun morning of crafts and celebration. There will be no food due to allergies.

October Lunch Menu: Here is a link to the website with our lunch menu. You can always access this by going to the Renaissance website, parent tab, & lunch. :)

Ongoing Volunteer Opportunities:

-Friday afternoon volunteer- to help plug in the iPads to charge over the weekend and rinse the paint brushes.

Please sign up here if you are interested.

-If you are interested in being a lunchroom volunteer please sign up for our time 11:10-11:30 on this lunchroom sign up.

-Here is a classroom volunteer sign-up for days and times to come in. If you can not volunteer for the full time listed- that is no problem! Any amount of one-to-one formation volunteering is much appreciated, even if it is only 20-30 minutes.

Calendar

10/10-10/21 Fall Break. No School.

10/28 Community Reading; Halloween Parade at 9:30.

10/31 Teacher Professional Development Day. No School.

11/21-11/25 Thanksgiving Break. No School.

Crew Highlights

Check out our Expedition Wall!

Our social studies unit (aka expedition) is titled "We Are Crew." It is based upon the guiding questions:

Who am I?

Who are You?

What is a Crew?

How are WE a Crew?

Who am I? From our very first interaction at homevisits, each child had the opportunity to reflect on themselves of what was special or their favorite when I was taking pictures for their All About Me book. Who are you? Then we used the All About Me books to play Mystery Person to get to know each other. We began the year doing Name Game and lots of greetings to get to know each other. Each day, we are constantly drawing connections (they love the "me too" hand signal) to identify common interests as we talk about books, the weekend, or play get to know you games. What is a Crew? We hear the words all the time, "We are crew" but I have challenged them to really think deeply about what it means to be a crew and to show crew. How are WE a Crew? Students share a list of things that we do together that shows that we are a crew. I took notes and went back into my photos to print a picture that would represent what was said. Ta Da! We have a lovely wall to share this great thinking and learning with you!

Next steps: We will be making connections to a family as crew, our community as crew, and other groups that work as crew (including animal groups!).

Learning Update:

-In Reading, we have shifted away from nonfiction books to learn about fiction books. We wrapped up Unit 1 (Plants and Animals have Needs) on Monday and launched Unit 2, also called Every Story Has Characters. One of the great things about our Benchmark curriculum is that all our Literacy blocks are aligned and spiral off each other. It is great to see our Crew making connections and transferring what they learn in one subject to the other! In Fiction texts, we know that characters are the "who" in the story, which is not real. Our mentor text is called Horrible Bear and it is very cute! We have been learning about mental images, pictures in our mind of the characters, setting, and events and then comparing those to the illustrator's actual artwork. Our crew did a great job noticing that fiction books include characters that are not real, the stories are made up, and the story can be realistic or not be realistic.

*Any fun picture books that you are reading over break, you can ask: Who are the characters? What is the setting? (where) Is there a problem that needs to be solved? (events).

*Continue reading lots of great books over Fall Break. Talk about what makes them a fiction or a nonfiction book.

-In Writing, we have been working on adding captions, labels, and more sounds to our writing. We have noticed that authors and writers use Labels when they are writing. We studied our mentor text My Desert Home. We made connections to favorite things we saw on our Hike, things we enjoy in our classroom, and what we like most about Fall. I am blown away with how comfortable our writers are in using the word wall and using print in our room to copy words. WOW!

*In Take Home Folders, you will see a piece of writing that was done in a guided writing group with me and an indepedent piece of writing that was done with no help. I am already seeing growth in adding sounds, spaces, and high frequency words into their writing.

*Our writers are on a roll! Have them write about something fun that you are doing over break!

-In Phonics, we are working on the letter /S/ and the new sight words the and we. I did a recap assessment to see how much learning students are absorbing with our focus letters m, a, and s, as well as sigh word: I, a, am, can, see, like, the, & we. Your child should be indepedent in reading and writing these words. We are continuing to reinforce phonemic awareness with rhyming, listening for beginning and ending sounds in words, and handwriting practice.

*To help support practicing these sight words, a flier in take home folders gives a ton of great ideas about how to practice these at home. Several parents wanted some ideas of how to keep this great learning going over the break.

-In expedition, we have gotten through all 24 members of our crew being the Mystery Person and several children know all 24 names! What a celebration of this first quarter of school! We have focused on a theme of kindness, bravery, and growth mindset in our read alouds.

*What other examples of a crew do you notice over break? When do you see people working as crew?

-In math, we have finished up Unit 1 on numbers 0-5. The major themes of the unit were: • Counting is an important mathematical skill. Knowing how to count a group of objects lets you know how many are in the group. • You say one number for each object in a group when you count. • You can use what you know about counting to build sets from smaller sets. We have primarily been focused on the numbers 0-5, and will build on with 6-10 when we return from Break.

*Board games, dice games, and card games all reinforce

learning the numbers 0-6.

*Go on a number walk. Predict how many steps to get to the tree with yellow leaves and then count as you go.

We love our 4th grade buddies!

This week, our crew did some of their best writing when they wrote for the first time in their buddy journals to their 4th grade buddy. Then during buddy time, buddies got to do a fun leaf investigation and hilarious drawing of a leaf and/or pumpkin person.

*Check Seesaw for pictures!