Week of Jan. 23-27

We’ve been very busy in kindergarten learning all about penguins.  Did you know that a group of baby penguins (chicks) is called a kindergarten?  Did you hear that the Mom penguin regurgitates her food for the chicks? 🙂  You gotta love that fact!  We’re going to do a cool science experiment this week to learn how the penguins’ oil and fat protects them from the cold!

Here’s what we have coming up and some more about what’s come home already:

Sight words-I sent a sight word update home last week.  Please continue to practice these daily at home.  They should know all 50 by the end of kindergarten.  Some have gone on to 1st grade words.  If they have, please pull out the K ones too once in awhile to review.

Royal Readers–We’re all out as of last Friday!  If you can spare 15 minutes on a Friday to come in and bring a couple of books to read to the kids, they really LOVE it!  Repeat readers are welcome! (I’m also happy to entertain a baby for 15 minutes so you can read! They’re welcome to join you!

Valentine boxes-a note went home about this as well.  I wanted to give the kids plenty of time to create.  Please don’t send boxes in until the 14th though.  I included a list of class names as well.  You’ll be hearing from room moms about the parties closer to that time.

100th day of school.  We’re SO close and they’re sure getting excited!  I am in need of help to pull it off though.  We have some fun rotations planned, but I do need parent help to run the rotations.  So far, I only have 1 in the am and 2 in the pm.  Am will be from 10-11:30 and pm from 1-2:30.  Please let me know if you can help.  They’re so excited and I want to be able to do all the things, but I do need help!  You can send in the 100 posters whenever they’re done, we’ve already hung a few in the hallway.

A reminder that we don’t have school Friday, Feb. 3rd as it’s a professional day.  Conferences will be the next week.  I will send conference notes home on Friday.  I tried to keep as close to the same time as the last conferences.  If you can’t make that time, let me know what might work for you, but don’t write in a time as I am scheduling 26 conferences.  I’ll work with you the best I can.  We do NOT get report cards at this conference as it’s a midterm time.  I look forward to meeting with you all and sharing your child’s progress!

Looking forward to another fun week of learning in Kindergarten!

Week of Jan. 9-13

Welcome back to school!  I meant to get this updated this weekend, but we had 4 family birthdays to celebrate and time got away from me.  Here’s what’s coming up:

Royal Readers:  I only have one person signed up in the am for next week.  Please check your calendar and see if you’re available for a Friday to come read to the class.  The kids LOVE it (especially when Dads come!).  We’d love to have you come in and bring a couple of books to share.  Please email me if you can.

Book orders will come home soon.  There’s several orders this month as I couldn’t decide what to take out, so I’m including all of them.  I am also including an upper level grade one for those that need some challenge.  Scholastic is a great resource for inexpensive good quality books and everytime someone orders, we earn books for our classroom.

Bentwood Bookworms need to be turned in by Wed. to get credit for them.  Please remember to keep track of those minutes read at home.  Reading to your child and having them read to you is the best way to help them become better readers.

Please be practicing those sight words at home! It’s going to be really important that they continue to work on those at home.  I am collecting reading folders today and will probably not send new books until next week.  I am retesting everyone as I know quite a few kids have made big leaps in their reading.  To insure that they’re all in the right group, I’m going to retest and reshuffle groups.  They should continue to work on the words until they get new books.

Please sign and return the grade card envelopes asap.  I just need the envelope back for 3rd quarter grade cards.  Signing them assures me that you’ve seen them.

Our 100th day celebration is quickly approaching and it’s going to be a very fun day.  I haven’t told the kids too much yet, but we’ll be doing lots of fun rotations and they are invited to come to school dressed as a 100 year old, so be thinking about that.  You will also get a 100 poster home soon for you to glue on 100 things, or you can draw 100 things too.  My only request is that it be light so that we can hang them in the hallway.  They will need to return those on the 100th day.  I will have lots more info. about that day soon.  Right now, if we don’t have snow days, it will be Feb. 2nd.  I am also in need of parent volunteers for that day.  Please be checking your calendar to see if you could come help on that day.

We are back to “normal” this week with our schedule and our work habits.  We will spend the week reviewing how we behave in class, just in case anyone forgot over break 🙂  We are also going to start doing a lot of writing.  Please encourage your kids to write at home and do not spell words for them.  Help them stretch out those words!  I’ve had several bring in books to share with the class that they’ve written.

That’s it for now.  Please email me if you can be a royal reader and what date works for you and if you can help on 100 day.  Have a great week!