Super Bowl Party!

Well, today we finished up our friend Hot Rod.  We have now officially met ALL of the Superkids!  We will begin a new unit on Tuesday, but from here until the end of the year, we will have no new faces.  All of our stories will be about the adventures of the Superkids together!

Just a few reminders today:

Carnival T-Shirts and Donations:  An order form is coming home today allowing you to order a t-shirt for your child for our Spring Carnival.  The theme this year is "It's a Jungle in Here."  The t-shirts are orange with a super cute design that you can see on the order form.  The due date is Friday, February 7th.  Also, don't forget about the donations sheet that went home last week.  We have 2 themed baskets you can donate items for: FAMILY FUN and READY TO READ.  If you are able to donate anything for these baskets, send them in with your child.

Valentine's Day:  We will be having a Valentine's Day party on Friday, February 14, from 1-2pm in our classroom.  I am looking for a parent who would be willing to coordinate and plan the party.  If you are interested, please email me and I can help you get things started.  Also, if you are able to be a volunteer the day of the party, please email me that as well so I know how many helpers we will have.  On Monday, I will be sending home a paper that will have directions for exchanging Valentine's Day cards.  The paper will also list the names of the students in our class so YOUR CHILD can write out the cards!

High Ability Testing:  A letter came home recently explaining the High Ability identification process.  On Monday, all of our students will be taking part one of this test in our classroom.

Jump Rope for Heart:  These papers all came home on Monday.  If you are planning to raise money for this cause, the money will be due on Wednesday, February 12.  The kids will then be jump roping during their specials time on Friday, February 14.

Sight Words:  Please be sure you are continually working on sight words with your child.  Don't forget that the entire list of sight words is listed on the blog under the Kindergarten Sight Words link at the top of the page.  We are currently working our way through the Quarter 3 words.  This means that your child should have memorized or be close to memorizing the words listed under Quarters 1 and 2.

Classroom Calendar:  I have updated the Classroom Calendar with our events for February.  We are still doing well on snacks, so for now there is no snack calendar.

Super Bowl Party:  Even though our class did not win the Colts Homework challenge, Mrs. Dunn's class were such good sports and invited us to join them for their party!  How cool!  We had such a great time today.  There were 6 stations that we got to do:  Craft, math, language, puzzles, game, and snack.  Check out the fun pictures below!

Austin, Aubrey H, Aubrey S, Makinzi and John enjoying a snack of Gatorade and Popcorn

Zach and Logan working on some math, counting footballs based on the color

Makinzi and Austin making a football helmet craft

Snack time for Caleb, Zeek, Lane and Cash

Ethan

Titus, Grant, Ben

Logan and Cooper working on a language activity, filling in football words to mystery boxes

Titus

Zeek and Cooper

Ben

Lane

Jason

Ethan, Skyler, Annie, Keylee and Fletcher playing "hot potato" with a football

Grant

Caleb

Taylor and Crystal

Cash

Madison working on her puzzle book of mazes, dot-to-dot and coloring pages, all football themed

John

The Aubrey's... S and H

Makinzi and Austin

I hope you have a great weekend!  See you all Monday!

Happy 100th Day!

Even with the delay, today was a lot of fun!  We had a great time celebrating the 100th day of school!  Here are some pics of our day:

Making our 100 Piece Trail Mix

Crystal couldn't wait to eat hers!

Using markers to fill in our numbers from 1-100

Aubrey H working to fill in all her numbers

These girls had to roll dice, add them together, then color in the matching number of ice cream scoops

Ethan was really fast at this activity! 

This group had to use a 1, 0, and 0 to create something

Cash used his numbers to create a Monster Truck

Painting 100 dots using a Q-tip

Madison was counting very hard to make sure she had the right number

Writing about 100 things we could eat and 100 things we could not eat

Seeing what we could create with 100 plastic cups

Ethan, Jason, Ben, and Taylor made a really cool fort

What a great day!!  Hope to see you all tomorrow!

Antarctica!

Keeping with the theme of our weather lately, on Friday we went to Antarctica!  The kids were super excited, although I think most of it was because of my excitement and their knowing it's my favorite place to talk about!  We saw a lot of pictures of the beautiful scenery, along with lots of wildlife.  All this week we are watching clips of video footage that I took while there as well!  It is only our first day here this week, and already, I'm pumped!

First sighting of Antarctica after 2 days of sailing

The ship that I traveled aboard

We saw 3 different types of penguins.  This one is a chinstrap

A minke whale (35 feet long) swimming along side our raft

We saw 4 different kinds of seals.  These are crabeater seals

Iceberg Alley

Another seal.  This one is a leopard seal, the meanest of the seals

Elephant seals, weighing in at an astonishing 3.5 tons

One of several research stations.  This one is Vernadsky and is run by the Ukrainians. 

Homework:

Homework for this week was already printed and ready to go, prior to yesterday's snow day.  I have gone ahead and sent home the papers for yesterday anyway.  Feel free to do those if you would like, in addition to tonight's homework.

100th Day of School:

Because of the snow day, our 100th day of school is now pushed back to Monday, January 27.  Should we have any further snow days between now and then, that day will continue to get pushed back.

Specials:

Whenever we have a snow day, our specials classes do not get skipped.  This means that whatever special your child was supposed to have had yesterday, is the special they had today.  As you look at your child's calendar each night, you will need to adjust each day back one to make sure you are planning for the correct specials class.  If you get confused, just check with your child to see what they had today, and that should help you figure out what comes next.

PE Shoes:

All the specials classes will be meeting in the gym on Friday (January 24).  Please make sure your child is wearing tennis shoes on this day!  In addition, many kids are coming to school in snow boots, which is fine.  However, please make sure if it is a PE day that tennis shoes are also being sent in for them to change into to participate in the activities.

Bingo for Books:

On Thursday, January 30, our PTO will be sponsoring a free event called Bingo for Books.  This is a fun event for the whole family that is free of charge!  More information will be coming home about it soon!

Yearbook Money and Book Orders:

If you are planning to order either of these, the due dates are approaching.  Book order money needs to be sent in or ordered online by this Friday, January 24.  Yearbook money is due by next Friday, January 31.

Sight Words:

Posted at the top of this blog is a link to our Kindergarten Sight Words.  Please make sure you are working on these words with your child at home!  We are currently working on learning the words from Quarter 3. This means your child should be practicing and all ready memorizing the words from Quarters 1 and 2.  These words are very important as we begin to read harder leveled books, especially in connection with our DIBELS testing.

Enjoy the rest of your week and try to stay warm!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

There is a lot of info coming home with your child today!

100th Day of School Activity:  Your child has an activity in their green folder to do in preparation for the 100th day of school.  Please be sure to read the top portion of the paper before you begin.  As always, this is a project for your child to do.  You may help as needed, but please allow them to do most of the work.  This project can be turned in anytime next week.

Scholastic Book Order:  Our January order forms are coming home today.  Remember you can fill out the order forms given, or log in to Scholastic to order on-line.  The Parent Letter on top has our class ordering code.  Also, there is a special coupon for you to receive a free book with your order of $10 or more.  Cool!  Orders are due by next Friday, January 24.

Superkids:  We finished our last lesson for Ettabetta today.  Inside green folders you will find your child's workbook for Ettabetta.  On Tuesday we will take our next Progress Test, and then meet our last Superkid.  I will get the Parent Portal updated on Tuesday for your child to have access to any new games and the new books.

Math:  This week in math we have been hard at work.  Below is a list of skills we have been working on:

• Ordering daily events
• Creating and extending patterns that are not color based.  (For this activity we used craft sticks)
• Practiced describing objects by their attributes (size, shape, color, thickness)
• Played a "Guess My Number" Game to continue developing number awareness
• Played a game to help us find the missing number in a sequence

Also coming home today, is the next quarter's Everyday Math at Home book.  Remember, this book is just a sample of activities you can choose to do at home with your child, which extend what your child is learning here in the classroom.  Please take advantage of this great resource!

Writer's Workshop:  Everyday we take a portion of time in the afternoon to work on writing in our Writer's Workshop.  On Tuesday, your child will be coming home with their Journal that they have been using so far to do their writing and drawing.  This first half of the year we have spent our time working on the following:

• Page orientation (left, right, top, bottom, single page spread, double page spread, front and back cover)
• Date Writing (1-17-13)
• Who the Author and Illustrator are and what they do
• Finding how an author gets ideas for a book, and making a list of topics we can write about (We write about things that we know!)
• Detailed Drawings
• Drawing a picture that matches our words
• Using good size, shape, and color in our pictures (make it realistic!)
• Attention to detail (5 colors, 5 details)
• Labels
• What they are and why we need them
• Practice labeling the important parts of our pictures

As we continue in the next few weeks we are going to start working on full sentence constructions.  We will learn strategies to help us hear and write the sounds we hear, as well as learning about the parts of a sentence and how to write them completely.  Have your child try to write a complete sentence for you at home this weekend!

Enjoy this 3 day weekend, and see you back on Tuesday!

And We're Back!

Welcome back to 2014!  I hope you all had a great holiday and enjoyed the extra days off we had!  While the snow and the few extra days were nice, to be honest, I was ready to come back!!  We have hit the ground running and the countdown to the end of the year has begun.  The kids are anxiously awaiting our 100th day of school (which is next Friday by the way!).

Last week we began a new Super Kid character: Ettabetta.  She loves all things games and puzzles!  Please continue working with your child on the /e/ sound, as well as correct letter formation for capital and lowercase Ee.  *The Parent Portal has been updated.  There are now 5 games for your child to play, along with 2 new books to read!*

Yearbooks:  An order form came home on Friday for your child to order a yearbook.  If you choose to do so, your $14 payment is due by January 31.

Bottle Caps:  Mrs. Shearer (our art teacher) is collecting bottle caps and lids of all shapes, sizes, and colors for a very cool project the kids will get to do.  She will be collecting these through the end of January.  As you pitch items at home, consider saving the lids and sending them in to help her out!

Classroom Calendars:  The Classroom Calendar has been updated for the month of January.  Be sure to check it out to stay up to date on all our classroom happenings!  Also, as of right now, there is still no snack calendar.  We still have quite the snack supply.  Expect a new snack calendar to come out in February.

Homework:  The homework sheets for both this week and next week were created before break, and because we already printed and copied them, we are going to stick with them. So please disregard the dates on the sheets the next couple of weeks.

Snow Make-up Day:  You have probably heard by now that the state is giving schools a waiver for missing Monday and Tuesday of this past week due to the extreme cold so we will NOT have to make up those two days. However, we will be making up the day we missed Wednesday. That make-up day will be on March 14.