January 7th, 2011

Dear Families,

Happy New Year! It was a nice sunny week to return to school this week. I hope all of you had a great vacation filled with family time and happy memories. I did not go anywhere this year because my husband had to work (even Christmas and New Years!), but it was still nice to be able to relax and run errands in the middle of the day.

I’d like to welcome a new AM student to our class. Her name is Aishwarya and she has a twin sister named Aditi in Mrs. VanDick’s class. They both were at John Muir for the beginning of Kindergarten and started at Eaton on Monday. Please say hello to her family!

Here are some highlights for the week:
• Star of the Week: Mia
You can read about our Star of the Week on our website under “Curriculum” and “Star of the Week.”

• Story of the Week: Snowballs
For listening center, now students have to describe who the main character is and the setting of the story, in addition to writing about their favorite part. At this point of the year, it is important that students are able to use inventive spelling (saying a word slowly and writing down the sounds/letters they hear) to express their thoughts. Remember, it is ok if the spelling is not correct! The purpose is to be able to share their own thinking (not copying words from the book) and be unafraid of writing. Every week in homework, the library book and journal serves as practice for inventive spelling. Use this opportunity to help your child practice writing on his/her own (guide them, but help them to become independent in the process).

• Letter of the Week: C
In literacy center on Wednesday, we tried to all get 4 stars in each category. Please encourage your child to finish all their work on time each week! You can see our computer center drawings for the letter C in the “Classwork” section of our website.

• Sharing: Next week’s topic is Something Blue. Remember to prepare at least four complete sentences about each sharing topic, not including any introductions. Also, I would like to see the children holding their sharing while they talk and keeping their body still. Other than that, sharing is going very well and is a pleasure to listen to! Thank you for helping your child present each week!

• Social Studies: This week we talked about New Year Resolutions. We discussed what resolutions are: goals, or areas for us to improve or get better in the upcoming year. We wrote four resolutions for ourselves in 2010. Then we made a flip up project to showcase our goals.

• Writing: Our journal entry on Monday was to write about our vacation. We started with the sentence, On vacation, I ______., and students wrote about what they did during vacation. They illustrated their pictures and had the option of writing as much as they wanted. This allowed me to hear about some of the fun activities that your families did over vacation!

• Math: We have been reviewing the terms, addition, or adding. This week, we practiced saying math addition stories using animals and different hands-on manipulatives. We learned that in addition, the magic word is “in all” or “altogether.” It is important that students not only know how to compute numbers, but also how to explain their thinking.

• Science: We are learning about weather and seasons, especially Winter. We have been reading stories from Jan Brett, including The Mitten and The Hat. We learned about different clothing we wear for different seasons, and completed two mitten activities this week. One of the activities was the Mitten story that the students brought home on Thursday. I asked the kids to keep them in their Keep Book shoeboxes to read and re-read. Your child should be able to orally retell the whole story to you, from the beginning with the characters (Nikki asking Baba for mittens), the middle (all the animals entering the mitten), and the end (Nikki finding the mitten and going home). They really enjoyed this activity!

• Computer Lab: We illustrated our January poem this week called, The Snowman. It was about a snowman that somebody made and it specified certain things to put on the snowman. We used Kidpix and added extra details to make our snowman special. We will continue these pictures next week.

• Assembly: Today we had an assembly by the Silicon Valley Brass. They performed a Jazz music set. It was a good opportunity for the kids to see different types of instruments!

• Music: This week was a little tough on the students as far as remembering the classroom and school rules. Unfortunately, our behavior was not good in music and we ended up losing some music time. Please continue to speak to your child about being a good listener (not talking) and keeping their bodies to themselves. Thank you!