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 :-)