Friday, April 29, 2011

The sun is shining, the birds are singing and today is Friday! Happy Friday 301 Parents!

It has been a fun-filled week for the Weckies of 301! After 133 days of school we went on our very FIRST Field Trip! For several of the Weckies, this was their very first trip on a school bus! Despite some rainy and windy conditions, I'm happy to report that we had a BLAST at the Health Exploration Station in Canton :-). Everyone was very well behaved on the bus, in the class, in the hands-on exploration and at lunch! A special thank you to our TEN parent chaperones that came with us on our first field trip! We are in the works of planning another field trip for June 2nd (more information to come home in the next week).

Reader's Workshop
Due to the Field Trip and several children out on Thursday, Reading Groups got off schedule this week! Please be sure to return your child's book in a prompt manner... Many kids did not have their books on their assigned days this week. This makes it very tricky to do reading groups when some children are well practiced on a book and others have not looked at their book since our last reading group day. In Workshop this week we talked about the words "what" and "that' within our reading. We even brainstormed a list of "-at" words to help us when we read and when we write.

Writer's Workshop
This week in Workshop we completed our books on the Horse. Each child completed a book that we wrote as a whole class filled with horse facts. We researched what a horse looks like, what a horse eats and interesting facts about horses. We even learned how to make a labeled diagram of the horse for our book! We will be sharing these books with our families at the end of our "Down on the Farm" unit! Next week the kids will begin their own group investigations of farm animals. A letter will be coming home today asking for your help at home with the research about the animal.

Math
This week in math we have been talking about counting patterns and coins. We have been practicing our counting by 5s and by 10s. We also have been working on reading pictographs using the weather for April.

Important News:
Snack Leader: Monday: Kasey; Tuesday: Matt; Wednesday: Kelsey; Thursday: Narek; Friday: Kaylee

SCHOOL BUDGET MEETING will be held at Dublin on May 3rd at 7:00pm in the Media Center. It is important that we have a good turnout at Dublin for this meeting as members of the WL Administration and Board of Education will be present to explain the cuts WL will be making as a result of the actions happening in Lansing.

Have a fantastically fabulous weekend!! :-) Mrs. W.

Going down on the farm!

Howdy 301 Parents!

This week we began a month long non-fiction research investigation that is on the topic of "Farms"! The Weckies learned a new version to a popular song, "Take me out to the Farm" and began working on a class investigation about horses. Be sure to ask your child what new facts they learned about horses this week, and in particular, foals (baby horses)! This project will encompass reading, writing and science for the next several weeks. The kids are very excited about this project and have even picked a farm animal of their own to investigate in the coming weeks. I'll be sure to send home information on how you can help your researcher at home soon. Animals of interest include: horses, sheep, ducks, goats, pigs, cows, chickens and roosters! If you have any books at home that are of an early elementary level, please label them with your child's name and send them in!

Reader's Workshop
This week in Workshop we took a look at two books about Horses. Both books were examples of non-fiction (real world books with facts). We spent time noticing the non-fiction features of the books - the pictures were real photos and both books had a Table of Contents! In work stations this week, the kids had time to look at farming books that were also examples of non-fiction texts.

New reading groups have also formed based on my latest reading assessments. I have to brag how PROUD I am of this group and their abilities as readers! Everyone is showing growth, enthusaism for reading and an excitement about books! I let the groups choose their names and new info will come home in their book bags for the days that the groups meet (Weckies Group, Awesome Group, Smart Group, Cool Boys and Mario Brothers and Sisters).

Writer's Workshop
This week in Writer's Workshop we tied the work we had been doing in Reader's Workshop with the two horse books into our writing by reading and re-reading the texts to look for facts. We generated two large lists of all that we learned about horses on the first day and foals on the second day. The facts that we collected will be used to help put together our class report on the horse!

Math
Money, money, money, money, money, money! This week we learned about coins! You may have noticed your child came home with an additional 41 cents.. it was pretty exciting! We talked about the names of the conis, talked about their values, and even added the coins into our Calendar Routine on the Smartboard in the mornings! Be sure to show your child when you are out how you use coins and how you count them. While we are still introducing them to the names and values, many have caught on quickly! We read books about the coins too and learned neat facts about many of the coins.

Important Info
Next week, on Wednesday, April 20th (6:30pm at Dublin) we have the return of the ever popular Dublin Sock Hop! Having been a part of the committee of Student Council Advisors for seven years, I have been fortunate to participate and be in charge of 2 Sock Hops (this one being the 3rd). I have to tell you, it is a BLAST! We will have the DJs from Star Trax getting the kids dancing in the Old Gym, while the New Gym will feature 50s treats like: Rootbeer Floats, Cotton Candy and Popcorn. There will also be two different auctions in the New Gym to help support Student Council (which ultimately gives money to our classrooms and school for various uses). The baskets (our Beach Day basket ROCKS) from each classroom will be available for purchases with bids being placed on them all evening... You can bid from 6:30-8:00pm. Additionally each grade level of teachers will also be offering a special prize. You can buy raffle tickets to place in your child's teachers' cup. Each teacher will have a cup and your child could win me! So what does that mean? For Kindergarten that means that your child along with a child from the three other Kindergarten classes and teachers, will get to stay after school one day to bake cookies in the teachers lounge and play games in the building! What kid wouldn't want to play Hide-and-Seek in Dublin?!? I hope to see all of you there - if you still need to buy your tickets, please let me know!! :-)

Secondly, budget cuts... Please make sure to follow the progress of our WLCSD budget on www.wlcsd.org . We are heading into a very rough time where some major changes will be happening across the district as a result of funding cuts to our school district. There will be an informational meeting held at Dublin on Tuesday, May 3rd at 7pm in the Media Center by district administrators. It is my belief that it is very important to have a "full house" that night to show our support for our school and our district. Not much is being said yet about how cuts will be made, but our district is facing the need to cut $24 million dollars for next year's budget when they have already cut $31 million in the past 10 years.

Snack Leaders: Monday: Hannah; Tuesday: Robby; Wednesday: Nick; Thursday: Carly; Friday: Ava

Have a fantastic weekend - stay warm and stay dry! :-) Mrs. Weckie

Happy Friday 301 Families!!

It has been a wonderful week to be a Weckie!! The Weckies have been busy with all sorts of things this week, leading us up to a well-deserved break!! Please remember that all of next week the building is closed for Spring Break.

Today we celebrated March is Reading Month with one big bang... dressing up as our favorite book characters!! We had all sorts of characters in the room today and enjoyed playing the part of our character all day - even at Art! A special thank you to our parents for sending in such fantastic costumes and for one special mom who came to the rescue with extra costumes (you know who you are!)

A lot of time was spent this week on three main things...

#1 We PUBLISHED our own book... Well, it's being shipped off to the publishing company this weekend! Each child spent a lot of time writing a poem. We used several "kid-written" samples of poems to help inspire our work. We looked at the Author's Craft (i.e. reapeating lines, repeating words, descriptive words, etc.) to see which craft we could use in our own work. Once our poems were written on paper the work had only just begun! On Tuesday, our fourth grade learning buddies from Mrs. Barry's classroom came down to help us "edit" our work. On Wednesday we spent time working on our "About the Kindergarten Poets" section of the book (our own mini-biographies) and on Thursday our Writers' who were rushing to still get their drafts done finished up their poems. Thursday night Mrs. W. typed the poems onto the special paper and today, we illustrated our book (first with pencil, second with sharpie outlines and third with markers). All in all, it has been a fantastic process and I'm thrilled to see that we have 15 books ordered!

#2 We learned how to tell... TIME!! While we are becoming experts at telling time to the nearest hour, I was beyond impressed how quickly our kids picked this up! We have done different activities with books, on the Smartboard, and even some cut and paste involving telling time to the nearest hour. Be sure to ask your child to demonstrate their new skill to you if they haven't done so already!

#3 We worked with the word "and". This word pops up ALL of the time in our reading, writing, word study, etc. So we spent time this week adding it to our word wall, reading the book, "Foods I Like" which has several AND's in it, and even got out the magnetic letters and stamps to practice making the word and. We also brainstormed a list of words we know that have "and" in them (hand, sand, stand, land, etc.).

Important Announcements:

Snack Leaders: Monday, April 11: Nolan; Tuesday, April 12: Skylar; Wednesday, April 13: Geneva; Thursday, April 14: Gabby; Friday, April 15: Emma

Rollerskating at the Rolladium returns on Thursday, April 14th from 6:30-8:30pm and once more, Mrs. W. will be there to rollerblade with the kids. I hope to see many of you there!!

Have a fantastic week off next week! If you are going out of town, I wish you safe travels and a safe return! Enjoy your Weckie next week, I sure will miss them!  Mrs. Weckstein :-)