Friday, January 29, 2016

January 29, 2016

Dear Parents,

We had a wonderful Fish Day today!  The students enjoyed visiting all the different Kindergarten classrooms to complete various fish projects.  All the fish projects are now displayed in our hallway…making our own beautiful aquarium.  Make sure you check out my blog post to see some exciting pictures from this very exciting day!  We were very appreciative that Mrs. Arokiaraj, Mrs. Shannon, Mrs. Sargent, and Mrs. Barkley were able to join us as volunteers!

We met with our Fourth Grade Reading Buddies this afternoon to work on a special project.  We made snow people out of a Venn Diagram.  Using some of our sight words, we wrote about and compared things that we like!  The students had a great time getting to know their partners better and ended up doing a lot of writing too!

We have an exciting week coming up next week!  We will have a special Superfish Presentation on Monday from the Burlington Science Center.  We will learn a lot about the sea creatures we will see at the aquarium.

We are excited about our trip to the New England Aquarium on Tuesday!  More information will be going home on Monday but students will need a bagged lunch and drink.  Everything should be completely disposable.  We will eat snack before we leave.  Chaperones should be here by 8:35am and will be riding the bus with us.  Thanks in advance to Mrs. Joshi, Mrs. Sargent, and Mrs. Ohol for their willingness to join us as chaperones.

Friday will also be an exciting day.  Our school has been working on a school wide puzzle where classes can earn CARES coupons for positive behavior.  Our class contributed several pieces to the puzzle, which revealed a special prize...Pajama Day!  Our school will be having a Pajama Day this coming Friday, February 5th!

We will be going to the Library on Wednesday.  Please remember to send your child’s library book back before then so they can take out another book.  Also, please be sure to return all the class books as soon as you have read them at home so other students can borrow them.  These are the books with the class list on the back.

We have been working a lot with uppercase letters in Fundations as well as tapping out words.  I have also been teaching the students how to sign each letter with sign language.  We have learned letters A-J so far.  You will have to see if your child remembers any of the signs!

We have been spending a lot of time on writing this past week, especially writing persuasive/opinion pieces.  We have been focusing a lot on leaving spaces between words, using upper- and lowercase letters appropriately, and including ending punctuation.  We also have spent a lot of time encouraging students to go back and read what they have written to make sure they have all the words they are trying to write.

The students finished their House for Hermit Crab books this week and will start reading them to the class before taking them home next week.  We use the book to reinforce the months of the year and several sight words, including in, the, saw, and a.  Please have your child read his/her book to you when it comes home and frequently even after that, pointing to the words as he/she goes.

The list of students’ names for Valentine’s Day went home this week.  We will be celebrating Valentine’s Day on Friday, February 12th by opening our valentines and having an extra snack.  Students are invited to bring two snacks from home that day, one for the morning and one for the afternoon.

Our class will be participating in Wee Deliver, a schoolwide post office system from February 5-12.  Students can mail letters and pictures to students in other classrooms by addressing envelopes and putting a sticker in the corner for a stamp.  Students always enjoy writing to their siblings, friends, neighbors, and former teachers.  You can also participate if you would like.  You can write a letter to your child, address it, and put a sticker in the corner and drop it into the post box outside our main office.  Our classroom address is 115 Aquarium Drive, Burlington, MA 01803.

I hope you all enjoy the weekend and hope you are all looking forward to more snow next week!  Don’t forget that Winter Vacation will be February 15-19.

Melanie Duncan

PS...Please be sure to send lots of winter clothes with your child for recess (snowpants, boots, hats, mittens/gloves, jackets, sweatshirts, scarves, etc.).  We will go outside if the temperature is above 20 degrees.  It is also helpful if you can help your child practice putting everything on independently and taking it all off independently too.  You can probably imagine what it's like getting 14 Kindergarten students ready for recess in the winter time!  Please also label each piece of clothing with your child's name.  You may also want to leave a spare set of clothes in your child's backpack or at school in case anything gets wet while playing outside.

Also, don’t forget to keep practicing the sight words and addition fluency facts at home!  The more practice the better!

No comments:

Post a Comment