Happy Holidays! ⛄ I hope that you all have a great winter break and holiday season! This will be my last blog of 2017 and I look forward to all that is to come in 2018! I will not be here next Monday and Tuesday and will miss seeing all of you at the Gingerbread House party! My family has always dreamed of going to New York City at Christmas time (I have never been to NYC at all) and my parents surprised me, my husband, and my sisters and they are taking us on Saturday! I will miss you all but I know you will have fun on Tuesday in our classroom.
December 19th at 1:00 PM Gingerbread Houses in our classroom: Parents are invited to come and make a gingerbread house with your child. Siblings are fine to come but we will not have enough supplies for them to make a gingerbread house. This would be a great time for you to have special one-on-one time with your kindergartener but we understand getting babysitters can be hard at times.
January 3rd: School resumes after winter break
Over the past three weeks, we studied Sinterklaas, Las Posadas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Christmas. We have had so much fun learning about each country and the holiday that they celebrate. We compared and contrasted to see what was similar and different about each holiday. Today we had our Polar Express day to celebrate Christmas! We drank hot chocolate and read The Polar Express, we colored and read a mini-book, we talked about the steps to make homemade crockpot hot chocolate, we made reindeer food, and we did a science experiment that involved ice and trains! Ask your child about it to find out more. :)
Have a wonderful winter break! I am so thankful for all of you and your sweet children!
Love,
Mrs. James
Friday, December 15, 2017
Friday, December 1, 2017
Week Sixteen: November 27th-December 1st
Happy December! We had a fun week in the classroom starting our "Holidays Around the World" unit! This week we studied Christmas in the Netherlands (Sinterklaas). We compared and contrasted their Christmas traditions to our Christmas in the United States.
We also had our first trip to the Laurel's Nursing Home and both the residents and students loved it! Our students were amazing with the residents and definitely brightened up their day! We started off by singing Christmas/Holiday songs and the residents joined in with us. Students then rotated through different stations where they interacted with the residents. The stations were holiday painting, Christmas card making, holiday pattern block puzzles, holiday coloring pages, and holiday poke art. It was so much fun watching the students interact with the residents and they are excited and ready to go back! We will go back February 13th and April 10th.
***Please send in a baby picture of your child by next Tuesday (Dec 5th). We are going to use it for our holiday door decoration. We will not cut it and will return it safely when we are done.
***Please save and send in your quart sized half & half cartons or any other cartons similar to this size for our gingerbread houses. We need 21 by December 19th! 😁 See picture below.
December 5th: PAJAMA DAY! We have been learning about Sinterklaas and Christmas in the Netherlands this week and Sinterklaas visits children on December 5th. We are going to put our shoes in the hallway with carrots and hay in them (what the children in The Netherlands do) and hope that Sinterklaas leaves us a treat! 😉 We thought it would be fun to have a pajama day paired with this. Your child may wear their pajamas to school but please have them still wear their tennis shoes. No stuffed animals (I have already had kids ask so I am sure they will ask you too haha)
December 19th 1:00 PM Gingerbread Houses: Come and decorate a gingerbread house with your child! We will ask for supplies as we get closer to the date.
We also had our first trip to the Laurel's Nursing Home and both the residents and students loved it! Our students were amazing with the residents and definitely brightened up their day! We started off by singing Christmas/Holiday songs and the residents joined in with us. Students then rotated through different stations where they interacted with the residents. The stations were holiday painting, Christmas card making, holiday pattern block puzzles, holiday coloring pages, and holiday poke art. It was so much fun watching the students interact with the residents and they are excited and ready to go back! We will go back February 13th and April 10th.
***Please send in a baby picture of your child by next Tuesday (Dec 5th). We are going to use it for our holiday door decoration. We will not cut it and will return it safely when we are done.
***Please save and send in your quart sized half & half cartons or any other cartons similar to this size for our gingerbread houses. We need 21 by December 19th! 😁 See picture below.
December 5th: PAJAMA DAY! We have been learning about Sinterklaas and Christmas in the Netherlands this week and Sinterklaas visits children on December 5th. We are going to put our shoes in the hallway with carrots and hay in them (what the children in The Netherlands do) and hope that Sinterklaas leaves us a treat! 😉 We thought it would be fun to have a pajama day paired with this. Your child may wear their pajamas to school but please have them still wear their tennis shoes. No stuffed animals (I have already had kids ask so I am sure they will ask you too haha)
December 19th 1:00 PM Gingerbread Houses: Come and decorate a gingerbread house with your child! We will ask for supplies as we get closer to the date.
Math:
The main math concepts we worked on this week are "one more, one less", basic addition, and counting on. We added a few new centers to our math workshop this week with two being "Race to 20" and "Race to 50." These games have started circulating home this week in our "take home math game bags." These games work on counting on and addition. Your child should be able to explain to you how to play. :) We are also really working on number writing! Reversals are still very common developmentally at this point but we are working as hard as we can in the classroom on this. Whenever you see reversals at home, just ask them to flip it around and fix it. I have also been completing the state based mid-year math assessments to see where we students are and what we need to focus on for the second half of the year.
Literacy:
We have seen so much progress with the students and their knowledge of their letters, sounds, sight words, and phonetic spelling! They are continuing to rotate through their reader's workshop centers that practice all of these things. After the holiday break, we will start focusing heavily on sight words. We will learn a few sight words a week and they will start receiving mini-books for each sight word to bring home to practice reading. These books really help students who haven't begun reading yet and help build confidence for those who are already reading. Look for these in the weeks to come! ***Please have your child make a book box to keep all of these in if they haven't already. This is a great box to pull from when they need to read a book on their own!
Thematic:
This week during thematic centers we learned about Christmas in the Netherlands! We learned all about Sinterklaas and talked about the differences between Christmas in the Netherlands and Christmas in the USA. The students rotated through three different stations to learn more about Sinterklaas and The Netherlands. They made a headband and had to match up Christmas pictures to the correct word, they illustrated a book with facts, and they used their creative side to make their own "klompen." You can see these hung in the hallway. :)
Science:
During our science time, we are focusing on the scientific method and introducing all of the steps to the students. Today, our Sci-Fri experiment was making snowflake crystals using Borax! Each table got to make one snowflake as a team out of pipe cleaners and then we put the snowflake in a mixture of boiling water and Borax. We will observe them today and when we come back to school on Monday to see if the crystal has formed on the pipe cleaners!
Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)