News from the Jungle

I cannot believe it is already December! This month is going to go by quickly with all the fun and exciting events we have planned!

This week we started our “Star of the Week” activity. This will run through the end of the year.  I have assigned each child at random to a week throughout the rest of the year. When it is your child’s turn to be the “star,” I will send home a poster on Friday to be completed and returned on Monday. The “star” gets to do special jobs for me and sit with “Gary the Gorilla” in our Reading Hut under the jungle leaves, during Daily 5 and snack time.

Upcoming Events

12/5 Pajama Day! Wear your favorite pajamas, but please no slippers!

12/6 K-2 Family Workshop Night (The first 50 families to turn in participation slips)

12/9 Haigh Spirit Day! Wear your Haigh Shirt or something with an owl

12/12 Scholastic Book Order Due

12/12 – 12/16 Popcorn Sale (Popcorn money due by Thursday. Popcorn delivered on Friday)

12/13 Ugly Sweater Bingo for Books 6 – 7pm in the cafeteria – Hosted by the PTA

12/15 3-5 Family Workshop Night (The first 50 families to turn in participation slips)

12/16 Kindergarten Goods and Services Activity

12/19 – 12/21 Candy Gram Sales ($1 per candy gram)

12/21 Late Start – 9:40am

12/22 PBIS Party – Movie Theater (in school)

12/22 Holiday Party (more information coming home soon)

12/23 Pancake Breakfast & Polar Express Day – Wear Pajamas (more information coming home soon)

12/23 – 1/8 Winter Break

1/9 BACK TO SCHOOL!

Agenda for the Week

Letters: This week we focused on the letters Ll and Pp. We talked about the sounds they make, brainstormed things that begin with each letter, and spent time practicing the proper formation of each letter. These letters will show up on next week’s homework for a handwriting review.

Reading/Writing: We wrote about a melted snowman and had to come up with reasons why he melted. Many of the children thought of funny answers such as, the snowman melted because he was in a hot tub, or the snowman melted because he had a fever. I love seeing the kids get creative with our assignments.

We also worked on another R.A.N strategy about Penguins. We really focused on our informational writing and tried to include facts about penguins as well as providing a sentence to wrap up the paper (summary sentence). The children enjoyed sharing what they think they knew about penguins and then researching as a whole class to find out new information and also to confirm the facts we thought we knew.

We also wrote about the “Star of the Week” and created a book for the star to take home! This week Logan was the “star!” We learned that he likes to golf and play with trains. We also learned that he loves to color and his favorite colors are red, orange, green, blue, and purple (all the colors of the rainbow). When Logan grows up he wants to be a scientist.

Please continue to have your child practice writing at home. Here is what I am looking for in class:

Uppercase to start the sentence

End punctuation (. ! ?)

Finger spaces between words

Does the sentence make sense? Are the words in the correct order?

Does the picture match the words?

Did you stretch your sentence? (Is there a noun, adjective, and verb?)

Math: This week for math we reviewed sequencing numbers as well as reviewing addition. This week we focused more on how to add using counters and our fingers.  The children played a fun game with a partner where they had to roll two dice and add the numbers together, look for the number on a gingerbread man and cross it off. The person with the most numbers crossed off, wins the game. The children loved this. This game is very similar to the dice math game they played in October called Monster Mash.

Please continue to practice counting by 1’s, 5’s, and 10’s to 100 with your child at home. Also practice counting to 30 by 2’s (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20…..).  Other activities you can practice at home are using tally marks to count objects, identifying 2D/3D shapes around the house of community, and really making sure your child has good one-to-one correspondence when counting (this means that they touch each object as they are counting and count all objects correctly).

Social Studies: We continued learning about the concept of needs and wants. This week we did a cut and paste activity where the children had to identify what the picture was and if it was showing a need or a want. Then they had to glue the picture in the correct column on a t-chart.

Science: We continue to learn about push and pull. The children completed a cut and paste T-chart activity, where they had to cut out pictures of objects being pushed and pulled and sort them on the T-chart under the words “push” and “pull.”

Housekeeping Items:

Please make sure reading books are placed back in the green book pouches each night and returned to school every morning.

Please make sure to record the reading that you do with your child each night on the reading log in the homework. Reading every night is a very important part of your child’s learning.

The easiest way to get a hold of me during the day is through my email at dimitrm@dearbornschools.org. If the children are working independently on a task, I can easily check my email and send a quick reply.

Please make sure to empty the green folders each night! It is very difficult and time consuming to locate homework or important notes when the folder is full of papers from the day before.