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