April 30th - May 4th

Good evening parents!  It was so good to see all of you at the Commotion in the Ocean play last Thursday!  Thank you all for taking the time out of your day to come to our play.  Your kiddos were all amazing!  They make me proud every single day. I cannot believe we only have 15 days of school left.  Where has this year gone?! I am sure some of you have heard about our "10 day countdown" we do every year in my classroom to celebrate the last days of school.  I fill up 10 balloons and inside is a small piece of paper that has a fun activity written on it.  We pop a balloon at the end of each day and we will do that activity the next day.  I will send home an email if it requires the kids to bring in or wear something (PJ day or bring your stuffed animal to school day). 😊 

Below are important dates and reminders as we near the end of the school year.

May 15th: QU Wedding (students only) Have your child wear "dressier" clothes to school for our wedding celebration of these two letters! *more info below
May 18th: No school (CSD Staff Retreat)

May 23rd: Bare Book Sharing 1:00 PM (parent event)
Come celebrate your child and their hard work on their bare book!  

May 25th: No school (Kindergarten Screening)

May 28th: No school (Memorial Day)

May 29th: Water Day! 8:30 AM-12:00 PM (we will need lots of volunteers! sign up coming soon)

May 30th: Final Day of School!

Throughout the school year, we have learned lots of letter sounds, blends, and digraphs that exist in our names and words.  Some of these include -sh, -ch, -th, -ow, and -ou.  Next year in first grade we will learn all of the phonograms during our word study program! On May 15th, we are going to celebrate the letters Q and U to celebrate the sound /qu/.  Usually in our language, the letter Q is always followed by the letter U so we "marry them" so the kids remember this rule.  We will have a fun ceremony led by Michael Colvard (Joshua's dad) and will have wedding cake afterwards!  It will be a fun day for the students.  Please have them wear dressier clothes for the celebration.  They can bring a change of clothes for afterwards if they would like. 

Mrs. Rumburg and I began our end-of-year assessments on your child last week.  Many of these assessments are done one on one, and take a great deal of time.  I will not be sending home guided reading books over the next few weeks due to this.  Please keep reading with your child at home every night.  A great idea it to visit your local library and allow your child to get their own library card.  The library summer reading program will start soon, and it is an excellent program and a great way to keep your child reading this summer.  I will also be sending out some ideas of things to do with your child over the summer later in May, so be on the look out!  

Due to our upcoming Kindergarten Screening (screening of new incoming kindergarten students) there are not specific dates for us to conference on the calendar.  However, I am more than happy to conference with you if you would like.  We just need to know how many of you would like a conference so that we can request a sub and set up a conference day if needed.  End of year conferences are optional, but if you would like one we are happy to meet with you.  Please email me and let me know so that we can set up a day for this later in May. 

Have a great week!

Love,

Mrs. James

April 23rd-37th

Happy Friday! Can you believe we only have 20 days of school left?! This year has flown by!  I am so thankful I get another year with your sweet kiddos. 😊

Although our field trip got rained out and we had to alter our Earth Day celebration plans, we had a great week in kindergarten!  We practiced our play, learned more about the ocean and ocean animals, learned all about Earth Day and what we can do to help protect nature, celebrated Poem in Your Pocket Day, completed more range cards, did "in-class" book buddies, and much more!  We are excited to see you all next Thursday for our Commotion in the Ocean play!

***Please send in your child's costume this Monday (April 30th) so that we can have it ready for our dress rehearsal on Tuesday.  Thank you!!!

***If you would still like to contribute $5 to Mrs. Rumburg's birthday gift, Monday will be the last day.  We are going to celebrate her birthday on Friday in our classroom with the kiddos. 😊  

***Here is the link to the Poem in Your Pocket song by Emily Arrow that we listened to and learned the motions to.  Emily Arrow makes kids music and we love to listen to it in our classroom! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxF0nB8ZzXQ

Upcoming Dates:

May 3rd: Ocean Commotion Play 10:00 in MS Black Box (parent event)

May 6th: Mrs. Rumburg's Birthday 

May 18th: No school (CSD Staff Retreat)

May 23rd: Bare Book Sharing 1:00 PM (parent event) *note date change
Come celebrate your child and their hard work on their bare book!  

May 25th: No school (Kindergarten Screening)

May 28th: No school (Memorial Day)

May 29th: Water Day! 8:30 AM-12:00 PM (volunteers needed...sign up coming soon)

May 30th: Final Day of School!

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James

April 9th - 13th

Happy Saturday! I hope you are all enjoying the beautiful weather today.  It is hard to believe that we are quickly approaching the end of the school year.  We had a wonderful week back in the classroom after spring break. 😊 The next few weeks will be full of many fun activities in the classroom and at school.  Be sure to mark your calendars for all of the dates below.

April 24th: Earth Day Celebration 9-11 AM (parent volunteer sign up sent out)

  ***you may want to put some sunscreen on your child that morning if it's going to be sunny

April 25th: Walking Tour of Davidson (chaperones needed...sign up coming soon)

April 26th: Poem in Your Pocket Day (more info to come)

May 3rd: Ocean Commotion Play 10:00 in MS Black Box (parent event)

May 6th: Mrs. Rumburg's Birthday 

May 18th: No school (CSD Staff Retreat)

May 23rd: Bare Book Sharing 1:00 PM (parent event) *note date change

May 25th: No school (Kindergarten Screening)

May 28th: No school (Memorial Day)

May 29th: Water Day! 8:30 AM-12:00 PM (volunteers needed...sign up coming soon)

May 30th: Final Day of School!

Thank you for practicing your child's play lines with them every night!  They play will be here before we know it.  Make sure to also start brainstorming about your child's costume.  This does not have to be complicated at all! Simple is always best. 😉 If you need ideas, feel free to reach out to me!

Math

This week in math we completed our April calendar which students always love.  This is great number writing practice.  We also continued with our math workshop centers with a heavy focus on range cards.  The students can choose to use beans, jewels, or cubes to complete their range cards.  Some students are writing the equations and I am having other students verbalize the equation to me.  This is great practice for addition as we move more into that for first grade prep.

Literacy

Our literacy time each week has been consistent for the past few months.  Tuesday is guided reading groups and sight word books, Wednesday is word sorts, and Thursday is writer's workshop with a different topic each month.  This is a perfect transition as we move toward first grade.  In first grade, we do "Daily 5" during our reader's workshop time.  The 5 things that the children get to rotate through are:

1. Read to self

2. Read to a partner

3. Work on writing

4. Word work

5. Listen to reading

Thematic

We had so much fun starting our ocean unit this week!  This is one of my favorite units.  We started off by studying sand and animals that live or start their life in the sand (crabs and sea turtles).  Next week we will begin to move into the water and go deeper each week.  We mainly study all of the different ocean animals but we explore many other important topics and questions.  Some of these include layers of the ocean, the density of the ocean, how fish breathe, etc.  Students rotated through four stations this week.
1. We studied sea turtles through a fun activity and learned how we can help more sea turtles survive. We learned about natural causes vs. man-made causes of sea turtles death and our role in helping them.
2. Students learned how to do "sand art" using glue and colored sand.  They got to make their own designs!
3. Students created their own sand paint using sand, shaving cream, and glue and got to draw and paint their own sand castle. 
4. Students illustrated a mini-book called "Sand, Sand, Sand!"

Science
We did our science experiment as a whole group on Monday so that we could observe it as the week went on.  We put four different kinds and sizes of sea shells in a cup of vinegar to see if they would dissolve.  The craziest thing happened and two of the sea shells dissolved!  We learned that shells are made up of calcium carbonate which is a base and when added to an acid like vinegar, they disintegrate.

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James 

March 12th-16th

Happy Friday! We had another great week in kindergarten. 😊 The kids had so much fun today setting up their traps to try and catch the leprechaun!  We will see if he decides to stop by the room this weekend. 😉 🍀 Read below for some announcements and a review of our week! We have had fun studying Dr. Seuss and Mem Fox the past two weeks in our author study.

March 30th-April 8th: SPRING BREAK!

April 10th: Field trip to the Laurel's Nursing Home.  Ride the bus with us or meet us there.  We load the bus at 10:00 AM and the program starts at the nursing home at 10:30 AM and lasts till 11:30 AM.

April 25th: Walking tour of Davidson.  We will need lots of chaperones for this field trip.  We walk from CSD to downtown Davidson and go on a tour of the police department, fire department, post office, and possible the library.  This is a really fun field trip to come on with your child! We will leave in the morning around 8:30-8:45ish and it will last most of the day.  More details to come!

Math:
Over the course of last week and this week, students have learned two new ways to do range cards!  I introduced how to use unifix cubes and jewels for range cards.  The kids of course LOVED the jewels because they are pretty and fun. 😊 You can find your child's range card sheets in their blue communication folder and you can have them explain to you what they do.  We do our normal eight station math workshop and the range cards are in 2-3 of the bins for them to choose to go to.  These tables are always full because they love them!  As mentioned a few weeks ago, range cards work on many different foundational math skills such as number sense, addition, subtraction, equation writing, and math facts.

Literacy:
In literacy the past two weeks, we have continued our sight word books, guided reading books, word sorts, and writer's workshop!  Thank you for reading your child's guided reading book with them at home every night and helping them remember to bring it back on Friday.  This is so important in their journey of becoming a better reader!  Remind your child to use Eagle Eye, Stretchy Snake, Chunky Monkey, and Lips the Fish as they read. 👍

Thematic:
This week we studied the author "Mem Fox" who wrote many great children's books!  Our student's favorite books of hers were Koala Lou, Possum Magic, Tough Boris, and Whoever You Are.  We did an activity for each of these books throughout the week.
Koala Lou: Students illustrated a non-fiction book about koalas.
Possum Magic: Students watercolor painted on a white sheet of card stock that had someone's name written on it in white crayon.  It was "magic" when the name appeared.  They had to write that person's name, draw a picture of them, and write a sentence about that person telling them what they love about them.
Tough Boris: Students created a parrot that can sit on their wrist!  We always love to incorporate art into our thematic centers.
Whoever You Are: Students got to use tissue paper to tear and decoupage the "world" and then glued a peace sign on top.  This was a great fine motor skill activity!

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James

February 26th - March 2nd

Happy Friday! It was so good to see a lot of you at math night on Wednesday! Thank you to everyone who came out to learn more about how we run math workshop in our classroom.  It was fun watching the students teach all of you how to play the games.  Below are some announcements for the weeks ahead and then a review of our week!

March 5th-9th Dr. Seuss Spirit Week! Today is Dr. Seuss' birthday and we are studying him next week during our "Author in Me" unit.  We will celebrate a different Dr. Seuss book each day and will dress accordingly to make it fun! Below is the schedule:
            Monday: Fox in Socks Day...wear silly or mismatched socks
            Tuesday: Green Eggs and ham Day...wear the color green
           Wednesday: Wacky Wednesday...wear your wackiest hairdo and/or outfit to school
            Thursday: The Cat in the Hat Day...wear your favorite hat to school
            Friday: Read My Shirt Day...wear a shirt that others can read
March 16th: We will celebrate St. Patrick's Day on the 16th in class (since we will not be at school on the 17th) and we are going to try and catch the leprechaun! The kids are already SO excited to make their leprechaun traps! They can use any box (cereal, shoe, amazon, etc.) to use as the base for their trap and they can decorate it however they want!  Anything green, gold, and rainbow would be awesome!  Please have your child bring this is on Friday, March 16th. 😉
March 30th-April 8th: Spring break!

***Please write your child's name in their jackets that come to school.  It will help us with keeping them all straight and in the event they lost it or leave it on the playground. Thank you!

Math

As most of you saw at math night, the main concepts that we are focusing on now are counting on, one more vs one less, addition, number writing, and equation writing.  We are doing a mixture of math tubs some days and other days doing range cards.

Literacy

During reader's workshop this week, we learned two new Beanie Baby Strategies! The first one is "Stretchy Snake" and he tells us to "s-t-r-e-t-c-h" out the word slowly and say each little sound that we hear.  Once you stretch it out, you put the sounds back together and say it fast to see if you can figure out the word.  We also learned about "Chunky Monkey"who tells us to "chunk the word."  Look for a chunk that you already know such as  -ing, -and, -an, -old, etc.  You also look for a word part that you may know such as -an, -at, -ed, -be-, -er, etc.  The students did wonderful using these strategies during our guided reading groups!  We also did another week of word sorts.  Your child is in one of four groups and they did one of the following word sorts:
1. matching pictures to words for the -at word family
2. sorting based on short e, i, o, u
3. sorting wh vs. th
4. short o vs. long o

Thematic

We began our Author in Me thematic unit this week and started with Eric Carle!  We read many different Eric Carle books and discussed what makes his books special and the common themes that they have.  The students rotated through four centers:
1. Mister Seahorse: shaving cream seahorses
2. The Tiny Seed: fruit and veggie seed investigations
3. Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me: learning about the phases of the moon and art craft
4. A House for Hermit Crab: sand art activity

Science

Because we are studying Eric Carle currently, we read the book The Tiny Seed and did a seed investigation!  We cut open apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, and cucumbers and studied the different sizes and amounts of seeds.  We used a recording sheet and practiced spelling the names phonetically.

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James

February 19th - 23rd

Happy Friday! 😊 We had a wonderful and busy week in the classroom!  We started many new things this week such as guided reading groups and sight word rings that I will talk about more in depth below.  The students are doing wonderful with all of our new activities in the classroom.  Please look at the upcoming dates below and be sure to mark them on your calendar.

Important Dates:

Wednesday, February 28th 6:30-7:30 PM Parent/Student Math Night: We would love to have every family in attendance at this event!  This is an event that you bring your child with you to.  We will have our math workshop stations set up and your child teaches you how to play each game! This is a great way for you to see how we run math workshop and what we are learning currently.  Can't wait to see you there! This is a drop-in event.  Come and leave whenever you need to! 😁
March 15th and 16th: Makeup snow days

Love and Logic Parenting Classes: These classes are led by Marianne Coale, one of the principals at CSD, and are AMAZING! I recommend this beneficial course to all parents.  Below is a tidbit of information about the class.  There are morning sessions and night sessions to accommodate all parents.  Below are also the link to the Sign Up Geniuses for them. They begin next week so sign up now!
Morning: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0f49a4ac2a1-parenting6
Evening: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0f49a4ac2a1-parenting5

The Love and Logic approach is fun!  This parenting curriculum will provide you with skills so you can feel more relaxed, hopeful and positive about raising your children. We will discover that parenting really can be enjoyable while also teaching personal responsibility and respect.

Parents will learn how to:

• Avoid un-winnable power-struggles and arguments

• Stay calm when their kids do incredibly upsetting things

• Set enforceable limits

• Avoid enabling and begin empowering

• Help their kids learn from mistakes rather than repeating them

• Raise kids who are family members rather than dictators

• And much more!

There are a total of 6 sessions.  Please only sign-up if you can attend all 6 session dates. There is a $10 workbook that we will use during these sessions.  We will have them available at our first class.

Math:

The students are doing an AMAZING job with range cards!  Those of you who conferenced with me got to either see an example of these or hear an explanation of what they are and what skills they work on.  When you come to parent math night, you will get to see these in action and watch your child complete them!  Range cards are an awesome math activity that work on many different skills and concepts.  The main purpose of range cards is for the student to learn their math facts.  Other concepts that they work on are subitizing, addition, subtraction, number writing, and equation writing.  We will continue to do these during math workshop and will occasionally do our normal math tubs.  We are using beans right now for range cards but I will introduce how to use cubes for these next week!

Literacy:

In literacy this week we started two new activities that include guided reading groups and sight word rings.  All of the students did wonderful in their first week of guided reading groups!  Students are grouped in a reading group based on their reading level.  We take a picture walk of the book, talk about any sight words they see, decode unknown words, practice reading strategies they could use, read the book, and I ask comprehension questions at the end.  These books will come home on Tuesday and need to be returned every Friday morning.  Please read this book with your child every night that it is home to practice all of these skills and to develop fluency and confidence.  Students also received their sight word rings this week and a list of fun activities that they can do to practice the sight words.  This is not mandatory at all (because we believe in the value of playing outside and spending time with family after school) but this would really benefit your child and their ability to read.  The point is to make it fun so they enjoy practicing and learning their sight words!

Thematic:

Since we finished our Artist in Me unit last week, we began our Author in Me unit this week!  We had the students help us prep different things to get ready for our Eric Care stations next week.  The four authors we will study are Eric Carle, Dr. Seuss, Leo Lionni, and Mom Fox.  We will study the author, read the books the wrote, compare the different styles of books, and talk about the similarities/differences of all of the books.  We will begin with Eric Carle!

Have a wonderful weekend!  See you all next Wednesday for parent math night! 😊
Love,
Mrs. James

Week Twenty Three: January 29th-February 2nd

Happy Friday! It is hard to believe we have already had 100 days of kindergarten!  We had such a fun day yesterday dressing up and celebrating the 100th day of school.  Most of our day revolved around activities that involved counting by 1's, 5's, and 10's to 100!  We are having a blast with our Artist in Me unit and cannot wait to share all of our artwork with you in two weeks. Read below to find out what we are learning now in kindergarten!  We have started many new things in the past two weeks. 🙂

IMPORTANT DATES:

February 7th 10:30-11:00 AM: Scholastic Book Fair! Come with our class to the book fair and help us look at and buy books! Please send in money with your child (in a ziplock bag labeled with their name) if you would like them to buy some books.  We will help them if you cannot come!
February 13th 10:30-11:30 AM: Field Trip to the Laurel's Nursing Home.  You can ride the bus with us at CSD at 10:00 AM or meet us there at 10:30 AM. The Laurel's Nursing Home is in the neighborhood Highland Creek in Charlotte. 
February 14th 1:00 PM: Valentine's Reading Party.  Parent's welcome!
February 15th 10:00 AM: Artist in Me Gallery Crawl...come and see your child's artwork displayed around our classroom!  They will also sing a song about all 5 artists that we learned about.  You can take your child home with you when we are done!
February 16th: Optional Parent Conferences
February 28th 6:30-7:30 PM: Parent Math Night. Be sure to put this date on your calendar! This is an event that you bring your child with you to.  We will have our math workshop stations set up and your child teaches you how to play each game! This is a great way for you to see how we run math workshop and what we are learning currently.  Can't wait to see you there! This is a drop-in event.  Come and leave whenever you need to! 😁

Math:
We are finishing up our geometry unit of 2-D and 3-D shapes! We have worked hard on learning the vocabulary needed to identity and describe the shapes.  We have continued to work on the concept of "one more, one less."  We also studied the "hundreds chart" this week since it was the 100th day of school.  We talked about how it is similar to a number line and helps up with our counting to 100.  On Monday we are starting something new that I LOVE called "range cards."  I assessed the students this week to determine what number they need to start on.  At math night on the 28th, you will be able to see these in action and how they work!  The concept that range cards work on are addition, subtraction, combinations of a number, number writing, and equation writing.  These are such a great math tool for the foundation of addition and subtraction!  We can also differentiate these easily which is great because we have students on all different levels.  Look for more on this in the blog next week!

Literacy:
We have started having more of a set routine and schedule during our literacy time.   On Tuesdays we learn our new sight word for the week and read/color our sight word book.  I also pull some students for guided reading groups on this day.  On Wednesdays we complete a word sort that is either sorting pictures by their initial consonant or by different phonograms.  The type of sort will continue to change each week based on the students progress.  This week I began differentiating this activity and different students were doing different sorts based on their need.  On Thursdays we have writer's workshop and work on the "topic of writing" for the month.  We also started learning our "Beanie Baby Strategies" this week!  I use Beanie Babies to help the students learn different reading strategies for decoding words, comprehension, inferencing, and retelling.  Our first one we learned this week was "Eagle Eye."  Eagle Eye tells us to look at the pictures on the page if there if an unknown word that we need to decode.  We sometimes can figure out the word based on the picture and looking at the first letter in the word.  They did great practicing this strategy!

Thematic:
We began studying the artist Mary Cassatt this week and the main thing that she painted was babies and their moms!  Mrs. Rumburg sketched the pictures that you all sent in and the children got to watercolor the picture.  They are precious! We can't wait for you to see them. :) Mary Cassatt also did imprint paintings! The students painted with tempura paint on a pizza pan and then pressed a piece of construction paper down onto the painting.  They smoothed it out and then peeled back the paper to see their imprint that was made! 

Have a wonderful weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James