Week of January 7-11, 2013

Hello Room 4 Families!
It's hard to believe 2013 is almost here. Here's what we have going on in our classroom:

Important dates:
January 7: first day back at school
Wednesday, January 9: Open enrollment tour. If you know anyone interested in having their kids attend Phoebe Hearst next year, please encourage them to attend a tour!
January 21: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day; no school
Friday, January 25: Free dress day
Friday February 8: PTO family dance, 6-8 pm

Language Arts: We are continuing our unit on the wind this week. We have been turning over our classroom phonics cards and working on identifying orally, reading, and writing words with our target sound/letter for the day. This week we will work on d, m, s, p, and short a. The kids are doing a really good job with this. I am able to challenge them frequently with these lessons.
New sight word: at
At the end of this week we will begin working with verbs.
Our writing this week will be about new year's resolutions/goals for 2013.

Math: This week we will begin a chapter on numbers 11-20.
The kids will learn to recognize, count objects up to, and write numbers to 20. We will continue to review past concepts during Board Math.

Science: This week we will begin a life science unit on animals.

Centers time note: Beginning this week our centers time is going to be 40 minutes long rather than an hour as it has been since September. The kids will complete 3 centers each day Monday through Thursday, and we will not have centers time on Fridays. This will give us more time to work on our phonics and writing lessons, which are beginning to be very involved! A HUGE thank you to the parents who have volunteered their time since September during our centers time. If you would like to start volunteering during centers from 8:10-8:50, please let me know. I do have a few spots I would like to fill on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

THANK YOU, families for the generous Christmas gift you gave me! I appreciate your thoughtfulness, and I'm looking forward to doing some shopping during break. :)
Thank you, also, to those parents who helped out at our holiday party today. It would not have been possible without you! A special thank you to Carolyn Stallings and Jacqui DeBoo for organizing.

Enjoy your holiday everyone! See you in 2013!