Author: Melissa Dimitriou

These weeks are going so fast! We had a wonderful week together and we are so grateful for all the help we had in the room on Thursday to make our Body Part/Skeleton centers run smoothly! Thank you to all the moms that came in and helped run a center!

Don’t worry if you missed out on helping with these centers. There will be plenty of opportunities to help out in our classroom throughout the year! I like to get every parent in to volunteer that is interested! If you are interested in helping out in the classroom, please email me at dimitrm@dearbornschools.org.

Upcoming Events

10/20 Scholastic Reading Club orders due (These are online only)

10/21 Halloween Harvest Magic Show Assembly

10/17-10/28 Savory Foods Sale

10/26 Kindergarten Parent Meeting at 8:00am (more details coming home soon)

10/27 Toss or Turn? Assembly

10/28 Costume Parade/Class Party (more details to come)

10/31 PBIS Party  – Fall Fest

Agenda for the Week

Letters: This week we focused on the letters Ee and Vv. 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: This week we continued practicing components of our Daily 5 curriculum. The children are building stamina during our rotation for “Read to Self” and “word work.”   Wednesday the children did EXCELLENT during our Daily 5 rotation. I am so proud of the growth they are making! We focused on reading comprehension this week and how to retell the story. The children worked on retelling stories using the beginning, middle, and end of the story. We also discussed the problem and solutions in the stories we read and made our own predictions about how we thought the main characters were going to try to fix the problem in the story.

Math: We continue to work with numbers 0 – 20 using different manipulatives during Math Workshop/Center time. The children are having fun putting the numbers in order, comparing numbers (larger/smaller), and counting out correct quantities.

During our skeleton centers on Thursday, the children were able to work with numbers 1 – 30 to count sequentially and follow the dot-to-dots in order to reveal the picture. The children also sorted and graphed Bag of Bones Cheetos Puffs. After they were done with sorting and graphing they were able to eat the Cheetos! The children did great with graphing the Cheetos and seem to be understanding how to read a graph as well.

Social Studies: We continue to read books about being a good friend and following the rules.  We review our classroom rules daily and I always remind the children of what my expectations are for every activity throughout the day. Some of the children are quite strict about the rules and are trying to take over my job as teacher! I try to remind the children to worry about themselves, and I will look after everyone else!

Science: We learned more about our five senses. This week we learned about our sense of touch and taste.  We made a Mr. Potato Head and labeled the parts to show the five senses. The kids loved this activity. Here is a picture of all the crafts hanging in the hallway:

The children had a wonderful time during our body part/skeleton centers where they learned more about our body and were able to engage in many cross-curricular activities through graphing, counting, and sorting during the centers. I have posted pictures from our skeleton centers on the blog for you to enjoy!

We had “Fun Friday” today with all of the kindergarten classes and focused on the five senses. We had a “feely box,” where children had to blindly reach inside and feel items, then guess what each item was. We had a few different scents for the children to smell and try to guess what scent they smelled. We had different sounds we played for the children to listen to and try to identify. We went on a nature walk to see what we could observe with our sense of sight, and we also had salty, sweet, and sour food for the children to taste! These pictures have also been posted on the blog for you to enjoy.

Housekeeping Items:

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.

Just a reminder –

Tomorrow is a half day. Dismissal is at 11:45am. Children do not need a lunch, but please send them with a snack.

See you in the morning!

We had a wonderful time at the orchard today! The weather was beautiful and the kids were all happy! We learned about how apples grow on trees, then we hopped onto a wagon and picked apples from straight off the trees. Again we got on the wagons and rode to the pumpkin patch where the children picked a pumpkin. Next we had lunch, complete with cider and doughnuts! Then the children were able to play and pet a few farm animals before heading back to school. When we got back to school, the children were tired, so we watched The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and had snack. Then we went outside for recess and the kids convinced me to play freeze tag with them!

Here are a few pictures from the day:

Thank you to all the parents that were able to join us today and helped to care for the children with carrying pumpkins, passing out cider, passing out lunches, and watching the children.

DON’T FORGET!

FIELD TRIP TOMORROW

Please send a completely disposable sack lunch and drink in a brown bag with your child’s name on it to school tomorrow. All items will be thrown away after lunch.

Please send some sort of bag for your child to carry their pumpkin and apple in. The children will collect these during the morning and it will be much easier for the children to carry them if they have a bag to put them in. I am going to raid my pantry and bring as many grocery bags as I can. The cloth reusable bags would work well too!

Please check the weather and have your child dress appropriately. We will be outside most of the day!

We do not have room on the bus for any parents. If you are attending the field trip, please plan to meet at the orchard around 9:30. If you are driving your child, please notify me asap.

If you would like to take your child home after the field trip is over, I will have a sign out sheet from the office that you can sign in order to take your child home early.

Please contact me via email if you have any questions or concerns.

My email address is dimitrm@dearbornschools.org

Thank you!

Reminder Check List:

1. Disposable lunch and drink

2.bag to carry pumpkin and apple

3. sweatshirt or light coat, pants, boots or gym shoes (dress for the weather)!

We are all excited to FINALLY go to the orchard!!!! 🙂

Picture day went very smoothly! All of the children looked so cute and were very excited to show of their clothes, shoes, and hair! All the children were amazed at the size of the photographer’s camera. They also thought it was cool that I was getting my picture taken too!

We finished the NWEA testing! All of the children completed their tests for reading and math. The scores they received are a base line score. That means that it tells us at what level the children are achieving right now and it allows me to better understand what skills I need to be working on with the children when we meet in small groups.

Upcoming Events

10/11 Apple Orchard Field Trip (Please remember to dress for the weather, send a brown bag sack lunch, send a bag for your child to put their apple/pumpkin in)

10/11 Bingo for Books (Information came home Thursday about this)

10/14 Refugee Resource Drive (Last day to donate items)

10/14 Half Day – dismissal 11:45am (Please make sure to send a healthy snack for your child)

10/20 Scholastic Reading Club orders due (These are online only)

10/21 Halloween Harvest Magic Show Assembly

10/17-10/28 Savory Foods Sale

10/28 Costume Parade/Class Party (more details to come)

Agenda for the Week

Letters: This week we focused on the letters Dd and Ww. 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: This week we continued practicing components of our Daily 5 curriculum. The children are building stamina during our rotation for “Read to Self” and “word work.”  We also worked a lot with stretching out our words and listening for the sounds while writing during our Writer’s Workshop time. The children are learning that sentences begin with an uppercase (capital) letter, have finger spaces between words, and end with a period.

This week we participated in our first R.A.N strategy. R.A.N stands for Reading and Analyzing Non-fiction Texts. First, we discussed facts we thought we knew about bats. Then we read two stories about bats. While reading, we confirmed any facts that were correct and wrote down any new facts we learned. We also learned about the parts of a bat and did a small labeling craft. Here is a picture of our hallway with all of our bat information and projects:

Math: We continue to work on representing quantities with dots inside a ten frame. We learned how to properly form the number 8, 9, and 10. We reviewed our procedures for math workshop and our number talks.

We continue to work with numbers 0 – 20 using different manipulatives during Math Workshop/Center time. The children are having fun putting the numbers in order, comparing numbers (larger/smaller), and counting out correct quantities.

I introduced the children to tally marks this week. Many of the children are drawing five tally marks and crossing the sixth one. We will continue to practice tally marks throughout the year.

We also spent time graphing this week in class. We not only did a few paper graphs that were sent home, but we also made graphs in class by voting on our favorite colors, favorite animals, etc.

Social Studies: We continue to read books about being a good friend and following the rules.  We review our classroom rules daily and I always remind the children of what my expectations are for every activity throughout the day. Some of the children are quite strict about the rules and are trying to take over my job as teacher! I try to remind the children to worry about themselves, and I will look after everyone else!

Science: We learned a lot about bats this week as you read about our R.A.N strategy we worked through for reading. We also took time to begin learning about body parts and our five senses. This week we focused on our sense of hearing and our sense of smell.

Housekeeping Items:

We have gym class every Monday and Friday. Please be sure to send your child to school in their gym shoes on these days.

Please send a healthy snack to school with your child.

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.

When sending money to school, please be sure to put it in an envelope or baggie with your child’s name on the front.

The last two summers I have gone to Greece and I have seen many of the refugees coming through trying to travel to safer places with their families.  The Greek government set up campsites for all of the refugees to have a place to sleep until they could take a ferry off of the island. In just ONE day I saw over 200 families walking on the side of the road from one side of the island to the other trying to catch a ferry to the mainland in order to provide a better life for their families.

Haigh, Howard, and Howe Elementary schools are joining together to collect items for these refugees. We are collecting baby items, personal hygiene items, medical supplies, and food. We are collecting these items until October 14th.  If you are interested in donating any items or want to learn more information about our refugee drive, you can check out the flier on the Haigh school blog.

Here is a link to the flier for your convenience:

https://haigh.dearbornschools.org/2016/10/05/haigh-howard-and-howe-refugee-resource-drive/

REMINDER:

Picture day is TOMORROW! Please make sure to send in your money with the envelope already filled out. The photography company will not make change, so please enclose EXACT payment or pay with a check.

Kindergarten usually is called first thing in the morning in order to avoid any outfit mishaps! 🙂

Remember — we have gym tomorrow, so feel free to send a change of clothes with your child in order for them to play in gym class!

Dear Parents,

If you need any translation assistance you may contact:

https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/translation/

We had a great week and got to do some fun projects! We made jack o’ lanterns and handprint bats!

Upcoming Events

10/3 – 10/6 Popcorn Sale

10/7 Picture Day

10/7 Outdoor Movie Night

10/11 Apple Orchard Field Trip

10/11 Bingo for Books

10/14 Half Day – dismissal 11:45am

10/20 Scholastic Reading Club orders due

10/17-10/28 Savory Foods Sale

10/28 Costume Parade/Class Party (more details to come)

Agenda for the Week

Letters: This week we focused on the letters Cc and Xx. 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: This week we practiced components of our Daily 5 curriculum. The children are learning how to do the rotation for “Read to Self.” We also began practicing “word work.”  The children are doing great at adopting all the procedures for each rotation of our Daily 5 reading curriculum.

Math: We continue to work on representing quantities with dots inside a ten frame. We learned how to properly form the number 7. We reviewed our procedures for math workshop and our number talks.

We continued learning about shapes.  We made jack o’ lanterns using different shapes to create the face. When the children were done building their face, they had to count how many of each shape they used. The children loved this project. Here is a picture of the completed jack o’ lanterns:

Social Studies: We continue to read books about being a good friend and following the rules. The children are really starting to get a handle on our routines and procedures.

Science: We talked about apples this week and met with the other kindergarten classes to have a “Fun Friday” activity. We all got together and made apple sauce with the apples that were sent to school. We also used some of the apples to paint pictures. The children also got to do some investigating with pumpkins. We learned if they sink of float, we measured how tall and round our pumpkin was, and we played a game called “roll-a-pumpkin.” I will post pictures of our Fun Friday soon!

Housekeeping Items:

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.

When sending money to school, please be sure to put it in an envelope or baggie with your child’s name on the front.

Dear Families –

Due to the flash flooding, we had to cancel the field trip to the orchard. The transportation department allowed us to get another bus in order to go to the orchard another day. We were able to reschedule our  trip to the orchard for October 11^th. We are sorry for any inconvenience, but unfortunately Mother Nature decided to rain on our day! Thank you for your patience while we worked with the orchard and the transportation department to arrange another day for the children to enjoy the orchard.