Hello Families!
This is our last week before December vacation! We had so much fun on our Friday Field Trip Day taking a trip in our imaginations! Albert Einstein said, "Creativity is intelligence having fun." and Maya Angelou said "You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." I'm sure you've seen what your child created out of "discarded" things, making a truly unique piece. The kids were so into it, so busy, and so independent. It was a very amazing afternoon! Here is the news for this week...
NO SCHOOL 12/21 - 1/1/20: We come back on Jan. 2nd. Happy Holidays/Vacation to you!
WEDNESDAY, 12/18: We will have a Community Pot Luck Breakfast first thing in the morning. This is just a time to enjoy each others company and another chance to mingle with other K515 families.
NEW STUDENT JOINING US MONDAY: Your kids may have told you that Eli Kastens from Gerri and Lindsey's class will now be joining our class for the rest of the year. Most of the kids already know him and we are ready to welcome him into our very loving classroom community!
SMALLISH CLASSROOM CLEAN UP: I have a some finished works that are ready to go home and kids have some overstuffed worktrays to be cleaned out before the vacation. Please bring in any kind of bag to fill with these things this week. There is actually a pile of work that needs to be sorted/sifted through and I will be leaving that up to you so thank you in advance! Also please be sure to take home waterbottles on Friday or whenever your child's last day this week will be. Thanks!
WHAT WE ARE UP TO:
We continue to work on snap words this week. We now have special boxes filled with words and snap word mats to use to sort them on. We will be playing "Guess My Rule" with snap words and will search through books to find snap words too.
In writing we are still working on small moment true stories and will both focus on using all the tools we have to help us as well as giving special focus to our personal word walls (snap words again!) We are also using our narrative writing check list to make sure that our stories are readable for ourselves and our audience.
In reading we are finishing up our Superpowers unit and will spend this week using all we've learned so far to help us with our reading. I will also be working with groups and assessing reading levels in order to get ready for sending kids home with book baggies in January! More info to come after break on that!
In math we are continuing our work on comparing. We will be doing work with balances using the words heavier than and lighter than. We will also be playing our ECAM games and recording mathematical thinking in our math journals.
Stacie will come on Tuesday to continue her lessons based on her song Harmonize. Last week the kids made musical shakers using different colored/shaped beans (a lovely parallel to mirror the diversity of people) to use during the chorus of the song. And during Worktime we are focusing on turn taking. What do we do when more than one person wants to use a certain thing? Of course there are different options and taking turns is a good one (though not always an easy one thus the focus.)
I hope you all have an excellent vacation, happy holidays and a wonderful new year! Love, Lynn