Newsletter: January 29

Room 4 News

Reminders/Notices:
•100s Day Collections should be placed in a ziplock bag and sent with your student on Monday February 2nd.
•Next week we will be learning how to tie a shoe since this is a skill that many Kinders are still struggling to grasp. As we will be practicing throughout the week, please send in a pair of shoes with your child on MONDAY that has laces. I will bring in several extras for students who forget/do not own shoes with ties. Thank you!
•In the coming weeks we will be celebrating Groundhog Day, the 100th Day of School, Valentines Day, Presidents Day, and Chinese New Year. Please make sure you read all home-school correspondence for more details about special projects and celebrations.
•New Reading Logs have been sent home, please send in complete January reading logs with your child next week.
•If you forgot to return your Picture Day Order Form they will be accepted until Monday.


This Week:
•Akshay was honored at our Blue Day assembly for this month’s lifeskill of perseverance.
•We attended and thoroughly enjoyed the 3rd grade concert, “Character Matters”!
•In Science we learned about and drew trees throughout the seasons. Ask your child the characteristics of trees in each season (Fall: falling and multicolored leaves, Winter: bare, Spring: blossoms, Summer: apples)
•This week students shopped for, and brought home leveled reading books. The level of these books was determined by assessments done in early January. Children will be working in these books and will progress through the levels as they learn new strategies for decoding and comprehension.
•In Writer’s Workshop students focused on adding details to their writing by using one topic to write about for the entire week. Each day we added one more sentence, or thought, to the writing and finally illustrated our stories on Friday.
•Children learned a poem about “5 Little Snowmen” and created puppets to use while reading it. This poem and puppets may remain at home, even though they came home in their book bag.
•We spent the week reading LOTS about penguins. We read fiction and non-fiction stories and discussed the difference between them. We drew scientific, labeled illustrations of a penguin and even waddled like penguins. Ask your child to share something that they learned about penguins this week.


Next Week:
*The students will use what they’ve learned about penguins to begin informational writing in Writer’s Workshop. They will each be creating our own book of penguin facts.
*We will celebrate Groundhog’s Day by discussing the shadow tradition and doing several related activities.
*We will celebrate the 100th day of Kindergarten with crafts, activities, and a walk through the other Kinder classes to enjoy everyone’s 100 collections.
*We will learn and practice tying shoes – wish us luck 