Not only does the weather feel like the Arctic, but we have the giant igloo taking shape in our classroom!! Thank you to everyone who has been collecting milk jugs, and yes, we need MORE milk jugs!! We can really use any kind of gallon jug that is shaped like a milk jug.
Please click the link below to see our progress!
Igloo Building
This past week we also took a great field trip to the Marquis Theatre! A special thanks to the parents who accompanied us on this field trip. We enjoyed watching the musical production of Snow White. Our kids were shocked to see that the cast was mostly children just like them! Be sure to check out this link to see more about upcoming shows at the Marquis Theatre in Northville.
Reader's Workshop
Upon returning from Winter Break I have been working on several different reading and writing assessments with our kids! It has been so eye opening for me to see all of the growth our students are making in reading and writing. Specifically I have been looking at: reading fluency, engagement in texts, comprehension of texts, written letter formation, rhyming, segmenting, phonemic blending and sight word recognition. As a result, new reading partnerships have been established based on ability and new reading groups will begin on Monday! If your child's book bag has not yet been turned in, please make sure that it is here on Monday. This is the best and safest way to make sure books get home and back to school responsibly!
Sight word envelopes came home last week filled with cards of our current words. Please use these cards!! Many of our kids have said they took them home but have not used them. In order for your child to be able to spell, read and write 80% of our sight words by the end of the year, daily practice at school and at home is essential. The current list includes the words: a, be, can, go, have, I, is, it, like, me, see, the, to, you. With adult supervision, you can also check out Harry Kindergarten on Youtube for great sight word songs we have been practicing at school!
Writer's Workshop
We are working on completing our Personal Narrative Writing Unit! At the conclusion, every child will have their own short personal narrative story. Look for a packet of writing to come home with your child in the next week! You will see many written pieces in the drafting stage and many that have made it to the published stage of writing. Be sure to celebrate each piece with your child or encourage them at home to finish up something that they haven't completed yet!
Writing Folders will begin to come home next week! Each Monday your child will bring home their writing folder. Please make sure they spend time throughout the week with an adult drafting 2-3 written pieces! Ideas can be tricky sometimes, so you may want to encourage them to think of places they like to go, foods they like to eat, toys they like to play with, etc. Some strategies that work well at school for helping them to write words include:
-Drawing lines on the page in a marker for each word they want to write (for example, if they want to say: The dog is brown. You could write on their paper _____ _____ __ ________. Roughly estimating the length of the line for each word.
-Incorporating sight words from our list that our kids should already be able to spell fluently
-Saying words slowly so that kids can stretch out the sounds in the word (and it's okay if the spelling isn't perfect when they do it this way, in fact, it's better!)
-Breaking words apart to hear the sounds with them (for example, cat = /c/ + /a/ + /t/), so you help them hear the sounds and they record the corresponding sound
Math Workshop
We have been busy, busy, busy in Math as of late! Unit 3 Homelinks have gone home and we are moving along nicely! There has been lots of great work done lately around tens-frames. I have included a few pictures below to show you what they look like and how they help us to add numbers up to 10.
We have also been working on learning about shapes! Shape names we are learning include: square, triangle, circle, oval, rectangle, parallelogram, trapezoid, pentagon and hexagon! We have been practicing drawing shapes with tracers. We have been graphing shapes and we have been counting the sides and corners of shapes. You can point out shapes everywhere at home and see what your kiddo notices! The homelink from Unit 2 did this and this would be something to keep exploring with your children!
Our mathematicians have been diligently working on hundreds grids and learning how to fill them in with different numbers missing in the grid! It's fun to see how aware they are now of number patterns when written in a grid and how fluently they are able to count orally!
Last but not least, we have begun our work with money! We have spent time with the penny and even read a book all about pennies! We are learning to count pennies and determine if we have enough money to buy different things all with values under ten cents! Please get the pennies out at home and help your child explore with this coin value too!
Science:
This week we took a look at Mr. Maple in his winter season. We described the weather in winter and then we went outside and visited our friend. We noticed that all of his leaves had fallen down and many could be seen under the thin layer of snow! Scientists observed that the branches on Mr. Maple had in fact grown and the new sprouts were red! We then found buds on the tips of every single branch! We are excited to see what will happen to the sprouts and buds this spring!
Upcoming Important Dates:
Wednesday, January 27: Quarter 2 Report Cards Available on Skyward (Please let me know if you need help logging on to skyward. A paper copy will not be coming home this marking period or for the rest of the school year).
Sunday, February 27: PTA 6th Annual Crop Day - come support an awesome PTA day of scrapbooking or doing a craft of your choice... All three meals, snacks and contests with prizes make this a must attend day at Dublin. Besides, you'll get to see me! :-) Please keep an eye in the Dublin Times for more info.
