Hello Families and Happy New Year!
Hopefully everybody is healthy now and/or have had a great vacation! We have a full week and here is everything that will be happening - it's a lot...
FAMILY SING AND FIELD TRIP FRIDAY: This Friday we will have a Family Sing first thing in the morning. We will then be taking a "Shape Hunt" walk around the neighborhood to see what shapes we can find. This is supporting our new unit in Geometry! When we come back we will be doing a math/art project to create some of the things we saw using cut out shapes - a sort of mural of neighborhood scenes.
For our walk we can use as few as 3 grown ups but welcome as many as who want to join!! I'll put up a sign up sheet outside the classroom. Thank you!
WATER DISPENSER BROKEN? There seems to be a problem with our water dispenser. It is leaking a lot! Ugh. So, we may either require a new one or we can stop our water delivery and kids can use the water fountain in the hallway to collect water in their water bottles. I'll check in with our class parents to see what the verdict is.
LINCOLN CENTER INSTITUTE: Our school is in a partnership with the Lincoln Center Institute - a fabulous organization that brings the arts into our classrooms by focusing on one kind of artform and having a teaching artist come in to help guide our learning around that art. The kindergarten will be focusing on fine art created by Rachel Feinstein whose pieces are now showing in the Jewish Museum. We are going to be having lessons that center on transformation and a sort of fairy tale magic. Our first lesson is on the 9th, our last lesson is on Feb. 14th and we will be taking a trip to see the artworks we are focusing on on Wednesday, January 29th from 9:30 - 11:30. We will be taking a school bus that day and will have room for 8 chaperones.
BOOK BAGGIES: This week we are going to be learning about and preparing to take home Book Baggies! The baggies are used for kids to shop for instructional books at their level to take and read at home. Here's what you need to know:
Kids will learn how to use their own individual book baggie menu to shop for books to put into their book baggie.
Every Monday kids will exchange their books for new ones.
Kids will be reading and rereading their books for an entire week. "But they will memorize their books!" you say? Yes! That is a good thing and a solid strategy when learning how to read. When a child memorizes the text they are able to focus on one to one correspondence, reading with fluency, reading for meaning, reading with confidence. Good juicy stuff!
This won't be homework. Reading should be frustration free and joyful. If your child is pushing back because they want to play or snuggle or sleep, those things take precedence. Besides reading the books independently, they can read them to you, family members over the phone, neighbors, baby sitters, siblings - whoever will listen!
Your child's level will change and that will be reflected on their menu. Levels are shown with colored dots - not letters. We are trying to avoid comparisons as that should have no place in a budding reader's mind. That said, if there is ever a time when you notice that your child is breezing though a book the very first time they read it without any support - please let me know. Thank you!
Kids should put their book baggies back into their backpacks every evening so they can carry them to school every day, however, if your child forgets their bag at home it is ok!! The ultimate goal is to have them reading at home and to exchange books weekly - if that's happening then cool - the bringing the bag to school every day is less important.
The first day your child will bring their baggie home will be on Monday, Jan. 13th.
NO SCHOOL ON MONDAY, JAN. 20th: To celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.!!
WHAT WE ARE UP TO:
So much!! We are starting new units for reading, writing, math and social studies! Actually, all of our learning will be connected in some way to our Lincoln Center learning which will make things very rich and meaningful. We are going to be delving into a study of Fairy Tales since the artworks we will be focusing on have fairy tale elements of story and magic in them. And our new writing unit - Persuasive Writing fits in beautifully with this. We will be learning how to use writing to make a change. We will be starting off with writing signs and will end with writing letters. Our letter writing will have to do with persuading fairy tale characters to make a change in their behavior to possibly have a better outcome in their story!
In reading we are going to be building bigger reading muscles! We will be using all of our superpowers - under the umbrella of PERSISTENCE POWER to keep building on our reading skills. This week we will learn about book baggies but will also focus on using patterns to help us read almost every page of our instructional books.
In phonics we are starting a unit on word - part power. We will be starting to look at blends (ex. tr, sm - two letters that you blend together), and digraphs (th, ch, sh - two letters that make one sound). We will also continue to develop our snap word power.
In math we are starting a Geometry unit. This week we will be learning about the descriptive words we use to explain shapes, learn about specific shapes and create other things out of shapes. Fun!
Stacie will come this week to do her last lesson on Harmonize. And we will do some celebrating/learning about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Also, we are going to start our Fairy Tale study! We will begin by figuring out what we already know about fairy tales and read a whole bunch of them.
We are also working on "Keeping our power." When bummers happen (somebody calls you a name, gives you a funny look, says they don't like your structure etc.) we have a choice to make. We can get upset and cry and let it bring us down - losing our power of knowing who we are (not a ninny, a wonderful structure creator etc.) and giving it up to that person who is trying to bring us down OR we can keep our power and say, "What you just said is not kind but I know who I am." and walk away. Not easy but powerful nonetheless!
Have a wonderful week,
Love,
Lynn