Announcements
Crew Pictures: If you ordered a Crew Picture, they came home in Take Home Folders today!
Important: Camp Elim Information: Here is the slideshow presented at the Camp Elim Informational Meeting. Please review that you have everything on the SPRING VOYAGE GEAR LIST: GRADE K including rain pants, wool socks, and hiking shoes.
HELPFUL HINT: If you are buying new hiking shoes, please make sure that your child has time to break them in before our two long hikes and practices how to tie them.
Elephant & Piggie Performances Next Friday 8:45-9:30
Ms. Liesl is inviting families to our crew performances of Elephant and Piggie on May 5th. Small groups will be performing based on the wonderful books by Mo Willems. This will replace our Community Reading for this week. The performances will be held in our classroom. I will record these, in case you are unable to attend. I AM SUPER EXCITED that Ms. Liesl is bringing this fun tradition back to kindergarten!
-Letter & Number Formation Volunteers (M, Tu, & Th 8:30-9)
-Reading Volunteers (M, Tu, Th, Fri 9:25-9:50)
-Teacher Helper Volunteers (at home projects- Friday; in-classroom helper Friday morning; and iPad helper Friday afternoon)
Calendar
Crew Highlights
Learning Update:
The biggest celebration this week is that our crew completed the Reading and Math iReady diagnostic. How exciting to see their growth!
In reading, we have began Unit 9 on Wants and Needs. Our crew is learning new vocabulary as we explore examples of a need as something that you must have to live and a want is a thing people may like but is not needed to live. *Have you listened to your reader lately?!? Switch up the bedtime routine to have them read well known stories to you.
In Writing, we have done a variety of writing styles. In Buddy Journals, our crew wrote an opinion piece about their favorite season. With Ms. Monica, our crew wrote about what they want to be when they grow up and how it will help the community. For fun, we wrote cards to our office staff for Administrative Assistant Day (on Wednesday) and birthday cards to Ms. Staci and Ms. Lisa. *In small groups, students selected a goal that they have for opinion writing (such as telling the opinion at the beginning, telling three reasons why, finger spaces, punctuation, and so on). Ask your child what goal he/she selected and how it is going.
In Phonics, we have covered the letters V, Q, Z, and X. We added my and to to our sight word list. We studied the word family -ick: sick, quick, lick, and tick. We learned a silly song to help us remember that q is always followed by u. We practiced sounding words out to spell, such as quit, quick, van, vet, zip, zap, fix, and box. *Here are our latest sight words.
In math, we are working on Addition and Subtraction Word Problems to 10. We have been using counters and drawing pictures to help solve and write equations for simple word problems. For example: If I have 9 donuts, and I eat 5; How many will I have left? If there is 2 red markers and 6 green markers, how many do I have in all? Our crew has raced through this unit and is showing fantastic growth in learning simple facts 0-10. I caution them to always be detectives to look at whether the equation has a minus or a plus sign. *Continue your great practice of 0-10 facts at home, in addition and subtraction.
In Expedition, we have wrapped up our learning of weather cycles and are moving onto life cycles. We begin with an exploration of plant cycles. The highlight of the week was planting sunflower seeds with our buddies. Our crew will be documenting growth in our Sunflower Observation Journals. We look forward to seeing our plants grow! *There were a few expedition items that came home in take home folders earlier this week, such as their weather journal, living vs. nonliving sort, and items from learning about Earth Day. Please take a few minutes to have your child share some of their learning.
