Newsletter: Week 5

Friday, September 25, 2009
Miss Wagenaar
Reminders/Notices:
•I will not be at school on Monday, September 28th. Mrs. Fitzgerald will be here with the students and I will return on Tuesday.
•Thank you to the families who have returned their Goal Setting Conference scheduling forms. I look forward to having an opportunity to meet with each of you to discuss your children and answer questions about an overview of our school year.
•Water bottles that the students received for the Walk-A-Thon are a gift from Laurelwood’s “Go Green” team. Students are encouraged to use these water bottles and home and school. Students who choose to bring these bottles to school can store them inside the classroom throughout the day but are asked to take them home at the conclusion of each day to wash/refill.
•Reading Logs for August/September should be returned as the month draws to a close. New reading logs, to be used for October will be sent home in Thursday folders.
•The PTA is holding a fundraiser on Wednesday, September 30th at Sweet Tomatoes. See flyer in Thursday folders for more information.
•Next Wednesday is our first “Blue Day”. It is tradition that all students wear Blue spirit wear on that day to show school unity. This year, walk-a-thon t-shirts were printed on blue to give more students an opportunity to participate.

This Week:
In Writer’s Workshop this week we told our Falling Down stories orally to a partner, then put those stories into writing using pictures and words. We also drew and labeled pictures of our families, it was great to get to know the members of your family.
In Reader’s Workshop time, we learned home to read with a Partner. Students practiced holding the book between them and taking turns turning pages and ‘reading’ the stories.
We dove into more sorting activities using Attribute Blocks from our new math adoption. The children have discovered that the blocks can be sorted in different ways: by shape, color, and size.
Our animal family grew this week as we introduced two new guppies, to use in comparing out goldfish to. We have one male and one female (named Coraline and Sam). Students made observations and learned how to tell the two guppies apart.
Using our hands and fingers for stamping, we created an apple tree to lead into our unit on Apples which will continue next week.
We read Dr. Seuss’s Ten Apples Up on Top and created our own classroom version where each child created a drawing of themselves with apples on their head.
We began introducing some vocal music in the classroom, learning the “Hello Song”. This song allows the students to practice saying hello in a variety of languages. Some of the favorites are Spanish (hola), French (bonjour), Korean (ahn nyeong), Chinese (ni hoa), Japanese (konnichi wa), Hindi (namaste), Hawaiian (aloha), German (guten tag), and Pirate (ahoy).
We watched a presentation about Bus Safety featuring a large remote controlled bus named Buster. After students watched a video and listened to a presentation about rules on a bus they practice evacuating a bus out a side exit.
This week we worked for several days on our banner for the Walk-A-Thon. Kindergarten classes were assigned pigs to portray. We did a directed drawing where each student drew and colored a pig. We then finger-painted a large mud puddle as a class and glued on our pigs.
We walked a lap at the Walk-A-Thon with our buddies from Mr. Wichmann’s class.

Next Week:
We will continue studying apples. Johnny Appleseed’s birthday is on September 26th, so we will be talking about him as an example of people in history who were good citizens. We will be using the theme of apples over the next two weeks across many of our curriculum areas.
We will be concluding our study of goldfish and guppies and begin comparing another set of animals: land snails and sea snails.
We will be using the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See to jump into more math and literacy activities.
After sorting, tasting, and graphing the apples that you have brought in, we will use them to make apple muffins.

Questions to ask your child
1.How can you tell which guppy is a girl/boy? (girl: larger belly, boy: large, colorful tail)
2.What did you write about for your Falling Down story?
3.How did you sort your attribute blocks? (either by color, shape or size)
4.How many times can you ride the trikes around the track before you need to give someone else a turn? 3
5.Ask you child to sing you the “Hello Song”; If they don’t remember the tune ask them what other ways they know how to say hello.

A few items needed
I have received several donations for sorting containers, I am still looking for the following items, please send any that you can spare, even if it’s just a couple: Bread tags, Old keys and Buttons. ESPECIALLY BUTTONS!!