Hi Families, 

Just a friendly reminder to sign up for conferences at https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090a44abad2ea20-mreubanks2

Conferences are over Zoom and are about 20 minutes long. Your family will have to sign up for a time slot at sign up genius. 

Stone Soup

Last week’s theme was diversity, and next week’s theme will be Stone Soup. We will read the different versions and make the soup on Wednesday morning. If you are able, please send in any soup ingredients on Wednesday.  

Stone Soup is a European folk story in which hungry strangers convince the people of a town to share a small amount of their food to make a meal that everyone enjoys and exists as a moral regarding the value of sharing.

Permission Slip

Also, please send in your child’s permission slip and the $8. We have our four chaperones; thank you for volunteering. If you cannot make this field trip, we will have more opportunities to come and help the classroom. 

Assessment and Report Cards

Next week we will begin testing sight words, letters sounds, numbers, reading, and writing. These results will be on the report card and shared with you at conferences. I am very proud of the students and the progress that they made.

Winter

We care about your children and want them to be happy and comfortable playing outside every day. But, as we know, Michigan weather can change very quickly. As we move into late fall and early winter, we have many children without the proper clothing for cold weather. 

Please remember we will be outside every day. Over the years, we have found it is easiest for parents to leave a set of clothing (see below) at school.

Make sure extra clothes in their backpacks are ready for winter.

1). Please supply a set or two mittens (one knit and one waterproof). Even in sunny weather, the playground is often cold and damp. 

2). Please supply a warm hat. Most children find them more comfortable than hoods with better visibility.

3). Please bring a pair of snow pants and a coat to school. Would you please teach your child how to put them on themselves? We can help start zippers and snaps, but independence is our motto.

4). Please bring a pair of snow boots to be left at school. Then, please have your child practice so they can get them on and off themselves.

Label Everything!!!! (Everyone has a black or pink jacket, and things can easily get misplaced. 

Phonics

We are learning letter sounds and stretching out words to spell them phonetically. This is a challenging task for all kindergarteners, but it is necessary to know all the sounds and place the correct letter sounds in words. 

Reading

We are learning how to decode words, and we focused on cross-checking this week. Cross-checking requires a person to think and monitor meaning constantly. It is a strategy for ensuring the words and pictures read to make sense and match the letters on a page.

Math

This week in math, we focused a lot on writing our numbers 0-20. We practiced by playing different games during centers. We even made a human number line! We also played games that helped us show different ways to make numbers and see when a number is greater than or less than another number. 

Writing

This week in writing, we continued writing pattern books. We focused on see-saw patterns and publishing our own books. On Thursday, we read our published books to the class! On Friday, we wrote books about any topic; these did not have to be patterns!

Social Studies

We learned about what culture means and how we are alike and different. We took a survey with a friend, and we discovered that even though we might look different on the outside, we are the same on the inside.