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