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