News From the Jungle

**** No School for Kindergarten students Friday, February 2nd.

Due to no school next Friday, we will take our spelling test and math facts quiz on Thursday, February 1st. ****

We have completed this round of NWEA testing. We will take the test again in the spring. Please do some NWEA practice with your child over the next few months. Not only is it good practice for the test, but these are skills that they will need to know for First grade. This website can help reinforce skills we are learning each day at school. Please find the Prepdog link below:

https://www.prepdog.org/

Homework has changed a bit. If you need help on how to support your child in completing the packet, please refer to the homework packet instruction video. You can find this video at the top of our blog under the new tab called “How-To Videos.” This is where I will put any videos I have made for the class in order to make it easier to find the videos.

PLEASE PUT YOUR CHILD ON READING EGGS AND MATH SEEDS EACH NIGHT!!!! This is a great way to supplement and support their learning!

If you misplaced your child’s login and need the information again, please email me at dimitrm@dearbornschools.org

Upcoming Events

1/29 PBIS Celebration – Winter Carnival

1/31 PTA – Magical Wonders of Michigan Assembly

2/1  Spelling Test – like, see, my, if, and, fun, run, bun, sun, spun

2/1  +5 Math Facts Quiz

2/2 No School for Kindergarten students only

Agenda for the Week

Spelling Words for our next spelling test on 2/1: 

like, see, my, if, and, fun, run, bun, sun,

Plus a bonus word which will be one of the following words: spun, gun, stun

The purpose of the bonus word is to assess whether the children understand the word family pattern of each word ending in the same two letters -un.

These words will be in the homework which will come home on Monday!

Please remember the spelling booklet will come home on the Monday after the children take the test and will be expected to be reviewed, signed, and returned to school on Tuesday. This will be the protocol for the test booklets each week. At the end of the year, the test booklets will be sent home for you to keep.

Reading and Writing: This week we used an informational writing “blueprint” to write about polar bears. The children will be using similar “blueprint” templates throughout all the grades at Haigh. The blueprint teaches them about the topic of the paper, topic sentence, three facts, and a summary sentence. We came up with the sentences together and completed this activity whole group. The children did well and are beginning to understand what makes a good piece of informational writing and what the purpose of informational writing is (to explain something real).

Math: The children took their +4 math test today! Next week, we will focus on learning +5 math facts. Our test will be on Thursday,February 1st.

The scope of our math curriculum for the rest of the year will be addition, subtraction, and greater than or less than concepts.

This week the children learned about base 10 blocks and how to count tens and ones to make a number. For example one bunch of 10 and 2 ones makes 12.

Here are some addition, subtraction, and greater than/less than videos to support your child’s learning:

Here are some addition videos:

Science: We continued learning about polar habitats! We wrote informational pieces of writing about polar bears and learned how arctic animals stay warm in the cold climate.

If you missed the post about how arctic animals stay warm, here is the link to the post with pictures of our experiment using the blubber glove:

https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/dimitriou/2018/01/24/how-do-arctic-animals-stay-warm/

Social Studies: This month our focus is history. The children presented their timeline projects to the class and were able to learn about themselves and others through this project. Thank you for helping your child complete this activity.

If you missed the post about our timeline photos, please see the link below:

Timeline Projects

Housekeeping Items:

Snack Time

**** Due to a peanut allergy in our room, please do not send in any snacks that contain nuts.*****

Folders

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. Remember to initial the communication log and feel free to add any notes to me!