April 9, 2010

Upcoming Dates

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

* Thursday, April 29th: All Kinders attend AM Session – Field Trip
We will be watching a play for our next field trip. Permission slips will be going home after vacation. We will also need just 1 or 2 chaperones. Please let me know if you are interested in attending.


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Dear Families,


We have finished 143 days of Kindergarten! Our last day of school on June 10th will be the 180th day of school. I can’t believe we are almost there! Don’t forget that last week a letter was sent home about yearbooks. If you would like to purchase one, they are $20 until May 1st, then the price goes up. Please turn in your payment to the office if you are interested in buying one.

I would like to congratulate Woojin for participating in the Science Fair two weeks ago. We accidentally missed his project and I apologize for leaving him out of last week’s newsletter as one of the other participants. Great job Woojin!

Here are some highlights for the week:
• Star of the Week: Yash
(On our website under “Curriculum” and “Star of the Week.”)

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

• Story of the Week: There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick

• Language Arts: Our theme for the week was plants and flowers. For our journals, we wrote a sentence together telling the major parts of a plant. We learned how to use a comma to separate a list of items in a sentence. Our new sharing papers went home this week. The biggest area to work on is participation. Some students raise their hands often and others not at all. Some students listen quietly and others have a hard time keeping comments to themselves. Some students sit still and others move frequently. These are all areas included in participation – controlling our bodies, respecting our peers, and getting involved.

• Math: This week we practiced estimating. Students learned how to look at a big group of items, and be able to make a good guess such as 10, 20, or 30. We also practiced tricks to counting, such as finding rows of 5, and then skip counting by 5’s instead of one by one. We are learning to think about numbers in a different way than just 1, 2, 3. Also, students practiced answering questions about calendars, days, and months. We learned how to find out if there are 30 or 31 days in a month (by using our knuckles!). In addition, our center today was practicing how to make and show different math sentences using eggs and nests.

• Computer Lab: We did not have computer lab this week. On Wednesday during our usual lab time, we had a special 5th grade musical presentation instead. The 5th graders had been practicing a play with songs, instruments, and acting. It was really fun to watch, especially since we had several older siblings performing!

• Science: Since we were learning about plants and flowers, we talked about what makes something a living thing. We talked about what plants need to survive such as soil, air, water, and sun. We also learned the parts of a plant such as roots, a stem, leaves, and petals. After reading many books about plants and seeds, we learned that seeds travel in many different ways, such as by wind, birds, bees, squirrels, etc. We spent part of the week making a book for our poem, Plant a Little Seed.

• Assembly: Our assembly today was called Dance Through Time. We watched the performers doing different dance styles from each decade!

• Art: On Tuesday, we had our last art class for the year with Ms. Abada. This week’s lesson was learning to draw different types of lines, such as zig-zag, wavy, vertical, horizontal, or diagonal lines. We used oil pastels to draw the lines, and then we got to use watercolors to paint the different spaces on our paper.

I will be staying around here during vacation since my husband still has to work. We are getting our small side yard paved (it is full of weeds currently!), so I will be home to make sure everything goes ok. Also, I will be spending time with my family to celebrate my sister’s birthday. Of course, spring cleaning will be part of the week as well! I hope your families have a wonderful week of vacation! For those of you going somewhere, have safe travels and have a great time!