Weekly News: January 11-15

Electives and Success Academy will begin again THIS WEEK! 

There is no school next Monday, January 18th due to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Enjoy the three day weekend with your families!

Students have been doing such a wonderful job on writing last names! If your child is still struggling with this, please practice at home!

Our January Book Order went home last week, - order now and receive great books before Valentine's Day! Book orders are due Friday, January 22nd. 

Our "banks" have been a big hit in the classroom! Students are excited to "earn money" for staying on yellow and green, for making good use of classroom time, and for good behavior and hard work throughout the day. On Friday, we will have first visit to the classroom store. Students have the opportunity to trade out their money for larger coins (5 pennies for a nickel, etc) and choose to spend money on a prize or save it for a larger prize later. Please continue to count money received everyday and reinforce the responsibility of taking care of banks. Also, if you are able, we'd love more prizes for our "class store"!!! Thank you for your continued support!

Our next kindergarten field trip is scheduled for Friday, February 5th. We will be going to the Lewis Family Playhouse Theater in Rancho Cucamonga to see "Fairy Tales Unscripted". Students will get to be a share their ideas for show and the actors will improvise their ideas and act them out! It should be a very fun time! We will leave the school by bus first thing in the morning and returning by dismissal. For this field trip, we are asking for a donation of $15 per student to be made into our Dollar a Day fund. This donation will help cover the cost of the tickets and bus. Here is the link: Dollar A Day. Thank you so much for your support so that we can continue to go on fun field trips as a class! 

We are in need of LOTS of empty Capri Sun boxes!!!! If you have any please send them to school with your child! Thank you very much!!! Note: if you could please open the boxes at the side (not in the middle around the edges) that would really help us out! Thank you!

Upcoming Events:  
Monday, January 18: NO SCHOOL
Friday, January 29: 100th DAY OF SCHOOL CELEBRATION (more info coming soon)
Friday, February 5: Theater Field Trip to the Lewis Family Playhouse
Monday, February 8: NO SCHOOL 
Friday, February 12: Valentine's Day Centers (more info coming soon)
Monday, February 15: NO SCHOOL 


If you are at the store and happen to think of us, we'd love.... 
Gluesticks  
Any sort of small {or big} prizes for our class store


What Are We Learning This Week?:

Sight Words: OF, BACK, SAY, SAYS, PLEASE.

Letter Team:  CK (We are learning that CK makes the K sound and helps the vowel to say it's short sound, like in BACK, NECK, PICK, LOCK, DUCK).

Reading: This week we are studying and doing projects with "The Mitten" by Jan Brett. We will discuss and record story elements such as author, illustrator, setting, and characters. We will read books about winter and other stories by the author, Jan Brett. In our fluency passages, we are learning how to be "reading detectives" and answering comprehension questions by going back to find evidence in the text to support our answer. 

Writing:  We are learning how to write a five sentence paragraph. I have been modeling a structure for paragraph writing called, "Step Up to Writing" for the students. Kindergarten Step Up to Writing is writing a paragraph with a topic sentence, three sentences about that topic, and a conclusion sentence. For example, "We had a great day at school today. First, we learned about measurement in math. Next, we colored snowmen at centers. Last, we read a lot of books about winter. As you can see, we had a fun time at school." 

Math: Last week, each student took a pre-test for our measurement unit. I will use those results this week for some fun measurement lessons. We will learn different ways things can be measured, including length, height, width, weight, and capacity. We will have fun measuring various items around the classroom. A big part of this unit is also sorting and graphing. You can help by discussing measurement, sorting, and graphing at home. Tell your child to sort different things around the house and ask how they sorted those things. 

Leadership: Our leadership theme for the second trimester is SELF-CONTROL. We will be discussing ways that we can use self-control at home and at school.