Friday, January 29, 2016

Week of February 1-5, 2016

Hello Room 4 families! I apologize for taking a few weeks off from our newsletters. January has been a super month with lots of hard work from your smart, sweet kiddos. Thanks to all of the parents and grandparents who have helped in so many ways this month! Room 4 is awesome because of our amazing families.

February is always an exciting, fun-filled month in kindergarten. Here is what we have coming up:

Friday, 2/5: super hero spirit day. Everyone is encouraged to dress as a super hero! Of course, kids need to be able to move around and work in their outfits. We will be working hard as always in class that day!

Friday, 2/12: Room 4 Valentine celebration. On this day we will exchange Valentines and have a small celebration at the end of the day. If your child chooses to bring Valentines for the class, please take note of the following:
-we have 28 students in our class
-Valentines can be hand-made or store-bought
-Please do not fill in any "to" area on the cards. They should just say who they are from. This will help us avoid lots of unnecessary chaos!
After lunch that day we will celebrate with a treat, a craft, and a Valentine activity. If you'd like to volunteer from 12-1pm, please let me know.

Wednesday, 2/17: The 100th day of school. The class is so excited about this! We will be celebrating our learning and all things 100 on this day. We will be making a snack with 100 pieces during our centers time. We would love some donations of ingredients for this. There will be a sign-up sheet in room 4 starting today.
For the 100th day, kids will have two homework assignments: the first will be for the week of February 8th. Look for a ziploc baggie with your child's name with their homework folders. Their assignment with this will be to fill it with a collection of 100 items. They can do pennies, cereal, crayons, cotton balls, etc., as long as there are 100 pieces. We will be comparing the collections during our math lessons.
The second assignment is to make a display that has to do with the number 100. Kids are encouraged to get creative with this! I will be going over some examples in class, but some ideas that kids have done in the past are to make a lego tower with 100 legos, make a poster with 100 stickers, or print out a large photograph and cut it into 100 pieces like a puzzle. These will be due on the 16th of February, and we will display them for the week in room 4.

Language Arts
We are continuing to work very hard on blending sounds to read words. This week we will review previously taught sounds and I will introduce the short i sound.
We are writing an opinion paragraph about which we would rather do: go ice skating or sledding.

Math
We will finish our unit on decomposing numbers to 10 today and take our test on Monday.
Our next chapter will focus on composing numbers to 20.

Thanks for reading, everyone!
Please let me know if you have questions or concerns.
carrie.relles@gmail.com


Friday, January 8, 2016

Week of January 11-15, 2016

happy new year, everyone!
I hope you all had a restful holiday. We are back in full swing in room 4. January is a busy month with lots of transitions with curriculum. We will be doing a lot more reading and writing, and I will be encouraging the kids to work more and more independently as we head toward spring.

Here is what we have coming up:

Important dates

Tuesdays 1/12 through 2/9, 9:00: Phoebe Hearst school tours. If you know anyone with children who are entering kindergarten or looking to transfer schools next year, please encourage them to attend one of our tours.

Friday January 15: field trip to see the Sacramento Theater Company production of James and the Giant Peach. Our bus will leave at 9:45 am and we will return at about 12:45pm. Because we will miss our usual lunchtime, I am asking parents to send a big snack for kids to eat before we leave. I will provide a small snack during intermission. If your child goes to 4th R after school, please send a lunch for him or her to eat after school.

Monday 1/18: MLK holiday; no school

Friday, 1/29: free dress

Language arts
Letter/sound focus:/n/, /s/
New sight words: not
After this week we will have practiced all of the kinder sight words. I will test kids on these words and for those who are ready I will send home the list of 1st grade words. We will practice these in class, and I encourage kids to practice them at home as well.
This week we will begin "board blending": This is explicit instruction in sounding out words on the board. We will begin with simple words and move to more complex words as the year progresses. It is now more important than ever to have your child read to you nightly. Please let me know if you have questions about this.

This week we are finishing up writing paragraphs about our New Year's resolutions. Be sure to come check them out early next week!

Math
We will finish topic 8 on subtraction and take our test on Friday morning before our field trip.


Thanks for reading, everyone! Have a fantastic weekend.