Weekly Update

News to Know

• Thursday is a noon dismissal day. It is also FTE count day!! Please be sure that your little darling is at school. They may wear crazy hats and/or socks. We will eat lunch prior to dismissal.
• Saturday, March 6 will be the school's Lunar New Year celebration. Check the school's website for further information.
• Beginning next week, the girls will not need resting towels or blankets. As we prepare for first grade we have a decreased need for them.
• Trimester II report cards will come home on Monday, March 8.
• Parent/Teacher conferences will be held on Wednesday, March 10. There will be no school for students. Please contact me if you need to schedule.
• This past week the girls checked out library books from the school library. If they chose to do so, they could bring them home. Please be sure they are returned each week on Tuesday, our media day.

Academic Preview

This upcoming week we will take our learning of communities to the farm! We will learn about the variety of farms, their products, how those products are transported, and end our week with a farm fest!! We will celebrate Dr. Seuss with his birthday on March 2. In math, we will use calculators to practice skip counting, discuss further dividing groups in half, build our map skills, and continue our patterning. It should be a fun and exciting week!

Weekly Update

Info to Know

• We are glad to be back in our classroom! Thank you so much for all of your support during our transition time. Thanks for all of the donations and your time! We couldn't have overcome it all with out all of the support!!
• Please return all family surveys by Tuesday. Thanks to all that have already returned them.
• Next week is Winter Break. No school on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.
• I'm Going On a Bear Hunt at-home projects are due on Monday and Tuesday.
• There will be no sight word testing this upcoming week. Testing will resume on Friday, March 5.
• Poetry folders will come home on Tuesday.

Academic Update

• With our shortened four day week, we accomplished a lot! We began our new IB unit, It Takes a Village, on communities. We began discussions about what is a community, what and who are in a community, and what we would like to learn about communities. Hopefully the girls are continuing these discussions at home with questions and inquiries. In math, we talked about even and odd numbers and practiced counting by 2s, used clues to identify blocks in the "Read My Mind" game, divided groups in half and compared numbers to find the larger and identify how much larger. Ask your little darling what a half is? We also read about President's Day, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington. Our literacy for the week focused on the oo, ee and ea combinations, homonyms and homophones, and completing the class book.
• Next Monday and Tuesday, we will continue our learning from this week and focus on presenting our projects.

Weekly Update

News To Know

• Friday, February 12th we will have our Pal-entine's Day celebration. Our focus will be friendship, partner activities, and cooperation. The kiddos may bring pal-entine cards (unaddressed please for ease in distribution) and a decorated container to collect their pal-entine cards. We will need a few donations. Please check the writeboard. Thanks in advance.
• We are almost ready to move!! Tentatively, we are scheduled to move back into building B beginning on Friday with class resuming there on Tuesday, February 16th. If you are able to help us move on Friday afternoon or Monday, please let me know.
• No school for students on Monday, February 15th, President's Day
• No school February 24,25,26--Winter Break
• Please return the Family Surveys that were sent home this week by Friday, February 12th. They can be returned to the front office or in the clear folders.
• The Chinese New Year celebration has been postponed to Saturday, March 6.

Academic Update

This week we explored the grasslands of the world through stories, pictures, books, drawings, and a "safari". We learned about the grasslands around the world such as North America's Great Plains, Africa's Savannah, Serengeti and Kapiti Plain, the Steppes of Asia and the Pampas of South America. We listed grassland animals and then decided which region we could find them in, created a great grassland mural, talked about camouflage, and explored the predator/prey relationship. We also inspected the penny and nickel, began making exchanges between those 2 coins, looked at 3D shapes around the school, discussed the difference between 2D and 3D shapes and played several games with the number grid. For our literacy learning, we continued alphabetizing, analyzed words for the ch and th sounds and worked hard on our sight words. We also worked in reading groups on various skills such as short vowel sounds, alphabetical order, story recall and use of apostrophes.
Next week we will wrap up our "Going on a Bear Hunt" unit with a review of the biomes we studied and 2 assessments that will ask students to match animals to habitats and to create a food chain for a chosen habitat. We will also measure time, create individual graphs from surveys, look at the dime, continue our comparison of 2D and 3D shapes and exchange pennies, nickels and dimes. Our themes of compassion and creativity will continue through an exploration of friendship and discussions of pivotal African Americans.