January 30-February 3

February 10—Smokey Bear visits

February 14—Valentine’s Party

February 17 & 20 NO SCHOOL

February 22—progress reports go home

February 23  -–Conferences (4-7 is scheduled—mine will be from 12-430 or call and we will set up a different time.  That evening is when I have the dinner to receive the award from the Conservation group!)

February 23—possible sledding party?????

STUDENT OF THE WEEK:  Levi

Levi likes to ride his new bike.  He likes to go to the farm. He likes to play tractors.

Levi’s favorite movie is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  His favorite book is Batman and Avengers.  Levi wants to be a farmer and also wants to play basketball.

READING: 

This week we are reading An Orange in January.  It’s about how an orange grows in the south and how we get it to the store for us to buy even in January.

The pace in kindergarten is growing, starting this week—we now have 2 letters and 2 sight words and are doing more writing. 

LETTERS:  Ff & Rr

SIGHTWORDS:  he & with

VOCABULARY:  Fresh, delicious

CATEGORY WORDS:  fruits and vegetable words

WRITING: 

We have finished pattern books.  I am holding on to them for now as we are using the children’s writing in our staff development meetings.  Once they determine which we need to keep for their academic folders that stay at school, I will be putting the remainder in their scrapbooks that will go home at the end of the school year! 

This week we are moving on to small moments.  We will read books to show examples of a small moment, then writing a class book (ours will be about our Thanksgiving experiences we had in the classroom)

MATH:

We are soaring through counting by 1’s to 75, 2’s to 10, 5’s to 15 and 10’s to 100!  We are using Jack Hartman’s youtube videos to help us and we are having a ball doing it as Jack gets us up and moving!  I am working to try to get all the links and I will share them with you once I do—but if you Google JACK HARTMAN counting—they should pop up and I bet your child can recognize them!  We love him!!!  He’s been a part of my teaching for years—love even his rhyming videos!!

We are also learning about the equal and addition sign for solving simple  math problems.  And we are continuing our journey through the teen numbers—counting, reading and writing them!

SCIENCE & SOCIAL STUDIES:

We are still learning about winter and winter animals.  This week we are also learning about Punxsutawney Phil for Thursday!  We have read about Groundhog day and will be watching a few videos before Thursday!  We will also vote on Wednesday to see who thinks he will see his shadow and who thinks he will not!

I learned about an avocado boat this last week so I ordered one!  (Love Amazon sometimes!)  We now have an avocado seed floating in a dish and are patiently waiting for the roots to start growing!  I was also given an amaryllis bulb as a gift after Christmas so we are watching it start to take off!  Seems to grow a bit every day!  The leader of the day gets to give it a drink of water

I’m hoping we can find a day in the next week or 2 to get back down to the Butterfly garden and check out what is happening now that it’s winter!  We then come back and write/draw what we find and are adding it to our seasonal time line!

Which reminds me—we also do a child time line!  Please find a baby picture of your child and send it to me either in their folder (I will make a copy and return it) –or email it to me and I will print it off mthompson@mcbain.org.

We then have the children write what they can do when they were a baby, what they look like now and can do as a kindergartener and what they will be when they grow up—we learn about past, present and future by doing this.

If you want to subscribe to my blog go to it on www.mcbain.org, to to the teacher pages and on the right side --click follow by email and submit.  I try to get it done between Sunday and Monday—sometimes it’s Tuesday!  But then you get it when it’s done!

Please return all gym January calendars and all Book-it calendars.

Library books should all be back as we go to the library tomorrow.

VALENTINE”S DAY PARTY:

Our party will be on February 14.  We will begin at 12:45 with passing out our Valentines, reading some books and watching a Valentine movie.  Then we have recess from 1:35-2 –at that time the 2 parent volunteers will help dish up treats and we will eat our treats after we return from recess.

The following is what some signed up to bring.  If you cannot donate to the party please let me know soon so I can make arrangements to have the items ready for the party.

24 plates—Emelia

24 small cups Nathan

Apple juice—Natalia

Apple Juice—Payton

Veggies & Dip—Bailee

Crackers & Cheese—Sophie

Finger Jello—Kaitlyn

1 bag of conversation hearts—Natalia

Parent Volunteers—Jessica O & Katiane Myers

Here is the list of children’s names for Valentine’s-try to have them write their own name and if possible their friends names!

Easton                  Abby            Brian           Payton                  Ayden

         Case            Chloe           Marie          Caleb           Taylor        

Sophie         Lyndon         Nathan        Kaitlyn                 Levi           

Tanner         Natalia                 Miguel                  RaeLynn               

Dianna         Emelia                  Bailee          Ms. Thompson

Mrs. Goodrich        Mrs. Bronkema