Hello Parents,

On Tuesday, February 9th, we will celebrate our 100th day of school! Although we are on Zoom, we still want our students to experience this fun day! In Monday’s supply pick up, your child will receive some 100th day activities, but we also want students to have fun dressing up like a 100 year old person. I have included some pictures here. Feel free to search interesting ways to dress up your child for this exciting day! Please take a picture of them and send it to me! I can make a collage with everyone’s pictures. Can’t wait to see all my little 100 year olds!!!

How are we already talking about Valentine’s Day?!?! If you would have told me in September that we would still be virtual for Valentine’s Day I would not believe you! But here we are. 🙁

Covid has changed and has taken away so many experiences for us that I refuse to let Valentine’s Day be dismissed! Here is the plan.

We will have our Celebration on Thursday, February 11th because there is no school on Friday, February 12th. If you would like to ‘hand out’ Valentine’s Day cards (or some kind of treat) to the class, you can drop them off to me at Snow on Monday, February 8. I will put a box right outside of the KInder doors and you can drop them off. I will make up packages for each student that will be available for you to pick up on Tuesday, February 9th. I apologize that you will need to come to school twice. On Monday, February 8th, there will also be a supply pickup for (HOPEFULLY) the last round of supplies.

If you choose to do Valentine’s Day cards or some kind of treat for the class, we have 12 students. There are 4 girls and 8 boys. Please have your child sign his or her name on each card. This is a terrific handwriting activity! You do not need to address the “to” part of the card.

IMPORTANT DATES:

Friday, February 5 – NO SCHOOL for Y5/Kinder only. All other grades have school

Monday, February 8 – Supply pickup and Valentine’s Day treat drop off at Snow (1:00-4:00 at the Kinder Doors)

Tuesday, February 9 – Valentine’s Day package Pickup at Snow (1:00-4:00 at the Kinder Doors)

Thursday, February 11 – Valentine’s Day Celebration on Zoom in the am!

Friday, February 12 – NO SCHOOL for mid-winter break

Monday, February 15 – NO SCHOOL for mid-winter break

Tuesday, February 16 – I will see you at 8:55 on Zoom!

I hope you all enjoyed this beautiful sunny day!

I need your help! I am trying to make our online time together as smooth as possible but lately we have been having a few issues. I wanted to address these full group. If these issues continue, I will be contacting you individually to address my concerns.

1. There should be NO eating while we are on camera. This is happening daily and I remind them but it continues to happen. We are only on Zoom for a short amount of time. We have more than enough time off camera when they can eat a snack and/or lunch. If your child is eating, I will put them in the waiting and they can join us as soon as they are done. Food can be a huge distraction and if they are eating, they are not doing the work.
2. Students should not have ANY toys or stuffed animals while we are learning. I know that we are home and that there are toys everywhere, but we really need to cut down on the number of distractions. Try as I might, I cannot compete with LOL dolls and Captain America. They are more than welcome to bring them to share at the appropriate time.
3. Speaking of distractions, please do your best to limit the amount of distractions around your child during live instruction. Again, I know you are in your home and there are MANY things going on, but if your child is distracted by the TV, another child, or food, it makes learning hard. Please do your best to set your child up for success by giving them an area to work that has as few distractions as possible.
4. There is a page in the daily folder called “What do I need for today?” I list the materials that the students need everyday. PLEASE USE THIS PAGE TO HELP GET YOUR CHILD READY FOR THE DAY. There are some things that the students should have available everyday (For example: dry erase marker, dry erase pocket, eraser, pencil/crayons/markers, paper (white or notebook), reading and writing book for the current unit, math toolbox). On this page, I will list other things such are what worksheets we need, scissors, cubes, etc. We spend FAR TOO MUCH time waiting for everyone to find the materials that they need. I try to keep our time on Zoom short and meaningful. It is very frustrating to those students who are ready to go but need to wait for friends who are not. There will be times when I did not put something on the list and when that happens, I will tell the students as soon as I can so they can get those things ready before we need them. I suggest keeping a basket or a box near where your child works that holds everything they need for the day. If you help them get everything together before the lesson on zoom starts, they will be much more independent once we are working.
5. Please talk to your child about using the mic on/off button. Most of the students do a great job of staying on mute until it is their turn to talk. Unfortunately the microphones can give back a LOT of feedback and background noise so it is impossible to keep everyone’s mic on. If your child is repeatedly interrupting the activity I may need to place them in the waiting room until they fix that behavior. I try really hard to call on every student when they raise their hand. But sometimes I just don’t see them or it isn’t the time to share. I try to let the kids into the meetings a few minutes early so they can talk to each other. I leave my camera and mic off so they can have that time as friends! I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to these conversations! 🙂

If you have any questions regarding any of these, please let me know! While learning over Zoom is NOT ideal, we are all doing our best. I appreciate every one of you for getting your child on Zoom and helping them with their learning. I continue to be blown away by the amount of growth these kiddos are making!

If you did not pick up your child’s report card, they are available in the office. You can also access the report card by logging into the Parent Portal. If you need help logging into the Parent Portal, please call the office.

Good afternoon!

Report cards are available for pick up! Please stop by Snow today or tomorrow between the hours of 12 and 3 pick up your child’s Report Card. They will be in the lobby.

Hello there! So this week certainly did not start out the way I had hoped. I am glad that I am feeling better and back to school!

During the next 2 weeks I am going to be working on getting the winter assessments done so I can complete report cards. This is going to look much different than in the fall as I was able to do most of the assessments in person then. I will use the afternoon time to get these done.

So there will be change in the schedule for the next two weeks. We will have groups today and tomorrow as normal. We will begin testing on THURSDAY of this week. I have created a sign up genius for you to sign up for a time that works best for your schedule. Please pick a time that works best for you and a time where your child will be able to work in a quiet area. I HIGHLY suggest using headphones of some type during the testing. This not only cuts down on the distractions but makes it easier for your child to hear the directions. And as tempting as it may be, please remember this is an ASSESSMENT!! Please do not help your child in anyway. If the question is to be read, it will read it for them. If it is not read, then they MUST figure it out. This is a computer adaptive test. This means, the better they do, the harder the questions get! If you help, the questions will get so hard that they will not be able to do it on their own.

Here is the link to sign up: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60B0D4DAAAF2AA2F94-assessment1

Thank you and I will see you all at 8:55 tomorrow morning!

We will have a Supply Pickup on Thursday, January 7 from 1-4 pm. If the weather is nice, the items will be right outside of the Kindergarten doors and you can grab your child’s folder.

There will also be boxes for you to return some items we are done using. Please return: *all of the colored books from your child’s reading bag. (The black and white books are theirs to keep!)

*The blue geoboard and bag of rubber bands

*the small ziplock bag of laminated shapes

If you have any questions, please let me know. If the weather is bad, I will let you know where you can pick up the supplies.

I will be placing an order for Scholastic this month. If you are interested in ordering books, you can use this link https://clubs.scholastic.com/home to place your order!

Use the code GZTXF to connect to our classroom. You can even select to have the books shipped to you FOR FREE if you spend over $25. If you do not spend $25, you can have them shipped to the school for free and I will let you know when they are in!

Happy Reading!

I have a subscription to a website that I think the kiddos will really enjoy. I sent home the login information in the bag I dropped off on Sunday. I also made a video that walks you through how to log in and use BOOM cards.

The BOOM cards can be done at anytime. Sometimes I will assign a deck of cards for an assignment but feel free to do any of the decks at any time! I will add more decks as needed. If your child finishes all of the decks assigned to them and I do not assign more, let me know and I will fix it!

If you have any questions, please ask. Enjoy!