Weekly News Dec 19-23

Whew!  This cold weather has frozen us out of recess, but we are still keeping warm and busy INSIDE the classroom.  We are entering a very fun, exciting and magical week with the kids before they head off to a much deserved holiday break!!

Important Dates and Reminders:
December 22: Super Hero Day in Kindergarten
December 23-January 2: No SCHOOL

On Thursday children should dress as super heroes!  They can use existing costumes or create one from materials at home.  We will be making capes as a class project.
We are still in need of plastic table clothes and foam letter stickers for this project!  If you are willing to donate please send these items to school with your child!

Here's a peek at our learning!

Reading:  This week we will be putting our reading skills to the test as we celebrate our super powers and do some non-fiction reading of animal books to wrap up our body coverings unit.  We will also take some time to enjoy listening and discussing many different gingerbread stories.  We will compare the plots and characters and may even have a glass debate on which one has the best ending!

Writing: We will be wrapping up our true stories unit this week.  We will learn to revise and edit so our writing is readable to others.  We will also take some time to do some informational writing about animal body coverings.

Math: Those tricky teen numbers will continue to be one thing we focus on this week, as we look for groups of ten ones and then add on any extra ones to determine quantity.  We are learning it is easy to see a group of ten when it is organized in two groups of 5 or a long group of 10, but tricky when we are looking at a random group of objects (see picture below).


 We will also work hard this week to show, recognize, understand and name the partners of numbers 2-6. Please see this note for an explanation of partners and how we use this term in math.
The centers we will work in this week will be:

• listening to story problems on the iPad and then using pictures and equations to solve them
• creating a book using break apart strips to show partners of numbers 2-6
• using equations and math tools to solve both addition and subtraction problems within 5
• using marbles to show partners and writing equations to match

Science:  As a fun way to wrap up our Fur, Feather, Skin ans Scales unit we will be having science morning on Tuesday.  We will work through some different centers where we will sort animals, by their body coverings, create our own animals using art materials to show the correct body coverings, reading and 'post-iting' in animal books to show our learning about body coverings and using picture cards to classify types of animals.

Word Work: We will be reviewing and practicing all of the sight words we have learned this far.  It is important that students can not only read and write them in isolation, but can also read and write them automatically in books they are reading or creating.  Here is a list of sight words we have covered so far this year (the highlighted ones).  You may practice these at home my writing them in and out of sentences and going on word hunts in books!!