March 19, 2010

Upcoming Dates

* Thursday, April 1st: March Monthly Homework Due
I will send home the April monthly homework next week in our homework envelopes.

* Monday, April 12th to Friday, April 16th: No School – Spring Recess
Enjoy your week of vacation!


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Dear Families,

What a beautiful week! The sun is out, the weather is warm, and spring is finally here! We had a short week this week, but we were still very busy!

Here are some highlights for the week:


• Star of the Week: We picked our Star during overlap today (Friday) so I will announce the Star next week!
(On our website under “Curriculum” and “Star of the Week.”)

• Letter of the Week: I
(You can see our computer center drawings in the “Classwork” section of our website.)

• Story of the Week: What is the Sun?

• Language Arts: In our journals this week, we talked about different objects that are always green, such as grass, leaves, or bushes. Students had to write a sentence about something that is green and illustrate a picture to match their sentence. Also, we read the story, Rosie’s Walk, on Tuesday to learn about different positional words such as over, under, through, across, past, and around. We brainstormed different examples of objects that we could walk over versus what we can’t walk over, or things we walk around, versus through or across. This was a preparation for our buddy activity.

• Buddies: Our buddies came over on Tuesday during overlap, and we made a mini-book called Looking for Gold together. This book was about a leprechaun looking for gold, and buddies had to think of different places the leprechaun would look. We used the positional words from Rosie’s Walk to help us with this activity. Students worked on the book with their buddies, and brought it home on Tuesday.

• Math: This week’s focus has been on time. We learned how to read a digital and analog clock by the hour, and we practiced identifying the hour hand versus the minute hand. We talked about how long a minute is (60 seconds, amount of time to wash your hands) versus an hour (60 minutes, amount of time to do 2 centers in our class). We also talked about the difference between time and time of day, such as morning, afternoon, and evening. Finally, we practiced finding out the duration of an activity (i.e. the soccer game was from 3pm to 5pm, or 2 hours long). This concept was difficult for some students to understand. Please work with your child on finding the duration by using real-life examples (i.e. We go to school at 9am and leave at 12pm. How long are we at school? 3 hours).

• Computer Lab: To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on Wednesday, we learned a short song and illustrated it in Kidpix. We made a rainbow and a pot of gold. Then we added shamrocks to decorate our pictures. You can see these pictures in the “Classwork” section of our website!

• Science: We have continued to talk about weather this week, focusing more on rainbows. We learned that rainbows form after it rains, and we reviewed the colors in a rainbow. We read some stories about rainbow. We also continued to talk about other weather such as foggy or cloudy weather. In a different science theme, since the letter of the week was I, we also learned facts about insects and how they are different from spiders. Ask your child what the difference is between a spider and an insect!

• Social Studies: This week was all about St. Patrick’s Day. We read many stories about leprechauns, Ireland, and other St. Patrick’s Day traditions. One activity we did today was a graphing activity with the Lucky Charms cereal. Thank you to Colleen’s family who donated 2 boxes for our classroom to do this activity. We sorted out the marshmallows in the cereal and made a bar graph of the different pieces. Then we answered some questions about our bar graph. Also in Friday centers, we made a leprechaun box for us to put things inside.

• Music: We saw Ms. Disney on Thursday. We sang some songs from last time such as Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone? and played the hot and cold game to search for our doggy. We also danced our partner dance called Bow Wow Wow. Afterwards we did some rhythm clapping, and learned a new song called Ten Little Rabbits. We acted like rabbits and had to hop around or wiggle our ears and nose!

Thank you for those of you who filled out the Eaton Survey. We reached about 80% participation, so great job! Also, thank you for those of you who have donated to the Their Future in Now campaign. It is pretty amazing how the community has stepped up to support all the teacher jobs that have been affected through the budget cuts. If you want more information, the website for the campaign is: http://www.savecupertinoschools.org/

Today the report cards are coming home. Remember that our goal is to try and get a 4 in all areas of the report card. If your child is not reaching a 4 in some area or if there is an extra area he/she needs to work on, I try to directly address it in the comment section. Please read the comments carefully for specific areas you can work on with your child. I am proud of all my students and I think they are all doing a great job in Kindergarten. Keep praising and encouraging your child to work hard and try their best in everything they do! Most importantly, Kindergarten is a time for children to learn how to control their bodies, how to follow rules, how to share with others, how to communicate clearly, and how to be respectful to peers or adults. Please continue to work with me to teach them these important life skills such as responsibility and work ethic. It has been a great year so far, and I am very proud of each one of them.

Have a wonderful sunny weekend everyone!