Happy New Year! It is hard to believe that we are now in the second half of the school year. This week has been a great one as students have returned from the break ready to greet friends and settle back into our community of learning. I am so pleased with the tremendous progress of the children as reflected in the second quarter report cards and their performance this past week. Please take the time to tell your child how proud you are of his accomplishments!
Over the rainbow. . . Each student is progressing at his own rate with the Kindergarten sight words. We celebrate mastery of each color (set of 10 words) on the rainbow in our classroom; however, as students master all 60 rainbow words, they will be recognized on the GM morning news by Mr. Giesler and Dr. Stasiak. I will be checking rainbow words each week as students work to master all 60 words. Thank you in advance for helping your child review at home.
This week our classroom was invaded by snowmen! We read many winter books and created snowmen with everything from torn paper to foam letters to marshmallows. Students used their snowman creations as prompts for descriptive writing and name building frames in language arts and number combinations in math. We learned about the stages of water (solid, liquid,and gas) and discovered that snow is a frozen solid. Our word sort for the week focused on the /c/ and /h/ sounds. We were reminded that the letter Cc has both the hard c sound (cake) and the soft c sound (circle). Handwriting practice was done with the letter Cc. We concluded our week learning about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dream for peace and fairness in our world.
Happy birthday to Andrew, who celebrated his big day during the winter break. Our class enjoyed sharing chocolate cupcakes with him.
Happy birthday to Kaitlyn--her special day was also during the break. The honeybees enjoyed the cookies she brought to share.
Important items to note:
- Congratulations to the honeybees for earning ice cream sundaes at Cafe GM! Our class was recognized for their outstanding cafeteria behavior during the first semester of the school year.
- Just a reminder that your child needs a nutritious snack, a rest towel, and appropriate outerwear each day.
- The new sight words for next week will be to and we. These are the last of the yellow rainbow words.
- Specials next Friday will be Art.
- There is no school on Monday, 1/16 in observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.
Enjoy the long weekend!
Janie Hutcherson
