January 27th-31st

Happy Thursday!

We have really enjoyed this week! On Monday we celebrated our first day of doing a "real" science experiment. We made predictions about which ice tray would melt first. There was a tray with ice and water, another with ice and salt, another with ice and sugar and then a tray with just ice cubes! We really enjoyed making predictions and watching the ice melt. We found that the ice with salt melted the quickest in the end. At first, the ice with the water was melting the quickest but the final result was the ice with the salt melted a lot faster than the others. We talked about how we can use this information in the real world! We made connections to salting the roads before/after is snows/ices. 

Literacy:

This is the last week that we are writing about small moments! We have really grasped this topic and look forward to our next writing unit. 

We also started talking about CVC words. CVC words are consent, vowel, consent words. Some examples are dog, cat, rug, dad, bat, mom, gum, pup etc. We worked on reading these and generating these words on our own. We also tied this into our rhyming unit!

Math:

We continued to work on range cards and counting with higher numbers for 100's Day! We learned to count by tens and that counting that way gets us to 100 a lot quicker. We also worked with a hundreds chart and studied different types of number patterns. We continued working on sequencing numbers as well. 

We are still working on some mother and baby pictures from Mary Cassat and soap carvings from Michelangelo. We will be sketching the teachers and hopefully starting our next artist Monet soon! So far, it sounds like the favorite was painting under the table like Michelangelo. Cool!

Hope everyone enjoyed hearing about the 100's Day activities. We painted, made hats and of course...shared our collections! 

**Do not forget that next week we have a half day on Thursday and a full day off on Friday!

I hope everyone enjoyed the snow day and has a wonderful weekend!

Sign up genius for the week!
www.SignUpGenius.com/go/10C0C4FA5A82BA4FF2-feb36 

Don't forget to sign up for optional conferences if you wish to meet next week!

Hugs, 

Mrs. Schultz

January 21st-January 24th

Hello and happy Thursday!

It has been a chilly week, but a great one! We learned about a new artist this week and his name is Michelangelo. We learned that he was from Italy, he could paint, he could sculpt and he also painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We wanted to be just like Michelangelo, so we decided to lay on our backs and paint underneath the tables! We painted beautiful artwork and it will be hung at our Gallery Crawl in February for everyone to see. We are planning on sculpting soap carvings this week or next week as well.

Literacy:
We are still focussing on writing about small moments in writer's workshop. We made sure to include a title, author and dedication page! We also tried to remember to add puncutation at the end of our sentences. We learned a new site word this week and that word is to! Not to be confused with too. It was an interesting discovery that we made today that there are many ways to spell "to." Look for this word when you are reading at home! We also learned more about punctuation. We focussed on the same three punctuation marks as last week.

Math:
We practiced with our range cards again this week and also continued to work on putting numbers in order as well as looking on a number line at what numbers come before and after certain numbers. We worked with higher numbers this week and got to use a hundreds chart! 100 is a big number! Speaking of 100, 100's Day is right around the corner. We will be celebrating 100's Day on January 28th. Please send your child to school with a collection of 100 things. This can be stickers, crayons, pennies, buttons, toothpicks etc. Try to stay away from crunchy things (like cereal or gold fish) that might get smashed on the way to school! Please let me know if you need any help at all. I will be glad to add help come up with an idea!

100's Day: January 28th...Bring your collection off 100 things!

Gallery Crawl: Time is still TBA. We are working with 3 other classes to make sure everyone has a great time.

Book Bags: Please make sure you are sending your book bags in everyday! Remember, these books are for you to read to your child. :) It is so important that you are reading to your child every day! If you do not get to the book, please feel free to keep it for one extra night.

Laurel's: We will be heading back to the Laurels on February 11th.

Conferences: I promise, a sign up genius will be coming soon!

The Children's Theatre: Another field trip is happening in February! The kindergarten classes are taking a trip to the children's theatre. We will be going February 25th. A sign up genius will be coming out later for those of you who want to volunteer for that.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz

January 13th-17th

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a great week so far. We have been busy...as usual!

Literacy
We had a great writer's workshop on Tuesday. We continued to learn how to write about small moments and focussed on writing for a longer period of time! On Wednesday we learned a new site word...the! We see the word "the" everywhere. We created site word books, traced the word several times and used our bodies to spell out this new word. It was really easy to find this word in the books we are reading! We also started talking about the different types of punctuation that exists. The three we learned this week are: exclamation mark, period and question mark. We practiced using these different types of punctuation and found them while reading. Go on a punctuation hunt this weekend...it is loads of fun! :)

Math
We focussed only on range cards this week. Everyone is finally understanding that we are coming up with different combinations to get to the same number rather than just making patterns! Each child has their own review number, target number and challenge number. They can work at their own pace and move on to the next number when they are ready! They also have manipulatives to help make the idea more concrete. Next week we will start doing range cards only once a week. This week we chose to do them everyday to learn how they work.

Thematic Centers
We continued our Artist in Me unit for thematic centers this week. We moved to a different artist this week and her name is Mary Cassat. We learned that she is famous for painting pictures of mothers with babies. We made a mini book about her, painted over pictures with water colors and we are still in the process of painting our very own mother and babu pictures! I have enjoyed looking through all of the pictures. Doesn't it seem like yesterday that your kindergartners were babies? Wow! They have loved looking at the baby pictures as well. So special!

We also learned a little bit about Martin Luther King Jr. and the reason that Monday is a national holiday! We learned about his marches, his hardships and how he has helped create equality for all people! We hope everyone takes a moment on Monday (since we are not in school) to remember this great man and all he has done for our country!

Heads up!

1. We do not have school on Monday!
2. We will be going on another trip to the Laurel's Nursing Home February 11th.
3. CSD is holding optional conferences on February 6th and 7th. If you wish to meet with me again, there will be a sign up genius coming around soon where you can sign up.
4. February 20th is our Gallery Crawl! This will be held in our classroom where you will get to walk around and see all of our artwork that we have been working on. Time TBA.

If you have not sent in a mother/baby picture of your child, please do!

Look for a sign up genius coming soon!

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz

January 6th-10th

Welcome back!

It has been a month since our last newsletter. A lot has happened! I hope everyone had a wonderful break and enjoyed well deserved time off. I had a great break but missed my kindergarten babies! :)

This week we hit the ground running. We started a new math unit and a new thematic unit and continued steady with literacy.

Math:
We took a look at the number line and talked about numbers that come before and after certain numbers. We also started practicing story problems each morning! An example of a story problem is: Mrs. Schultz has 3 snowballs. Mrs. Skaggs has 2 snowballs. How many snowballs do they have all together? These are fun and the kids are doing simple addition and subtraction without even knowing it! We started a new routine in math as well. We started "range cards." Each child has three numbers that they are working on each week. They are trying to come up with different combinations to get the same sum for each number. This works on addition, subtraction, sequencing and much more!

Literacy:
We focussed on a new site word this week...."you"! We used this word in sentences, looked for this word while reading and we also learned how to spell it. We also started a new unit in writer's workshop. We started learning about how to write about "small moments". A small moment is one thing that happened during a small amount of time. We have been writing about moments that happen over several days, months or hours. Writing about a small moment is much different! We will continue to master this new concept throughout the month of January. We are also starting to discuss how to create couplets since Valentine's Day is right around the corner!! We are starting to focus on punctuation and capitalization while writing and reading as well.

Thematic Centers:
We started a new unit called....Artist in Me! This unit is so fun. This week we learned about the artist Kandinsky. We have even practiced his type of art. We learned that he uses bright colors, geometry and bold lines in his artwork. We have experimented with water colors, crayons and oil pastels to try to make art like his. We used stencils and tracers with all kinds of different shapes to try to create art like Kandinsky would! We are keeping most of our work at school for our gallery walk coming up later (date TBA). If you do not see artwork coming home every day, this is why!

Look for a sign up genius for next week soon!

Don't forget to start thinking about writing those Valentine's Day poems. If you need ANY help at all, please let me know! I sent a detailed email on Monday with more info.

**Important! We need each child to send in ONE picture of them as a baby with their mama! We will be sketching this at school next week as we study out next artist, Cassat. Again, just one picture of each child as a baby with their mom! Please send this in BY TUESDAY JANUARY 14TH. Thank you so much!

Stay warm!

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz