News for week of 5-18-08

We had another great week! These kids are ending this year with as much enthusiasm as they began it, and it’s been wonderful to be part of. We started new centers this week and will continue them through next week. We continued with our vowel books in the ABC center, this would be a great summer activity to continue with your student. All you need is magazines, scissors, glue sticks and their books. They add pictures that correlate to the appropriate vowel sounds. It’s wonderful for reinforcing the short and long vowel sounds in words. It also clarifies the sounds for the words and the correct way to spell them if you work together with them on it. We have taken ours on vacation for a little easy down time activity that isn’t hard to pack or take-up lots of room. In the writing center we did “comic strip sequencing”, thanks to all of you who sent in your strips. We read the comics in order then cut them up. The kids then had to put them in the correct sequence from memory and write about it. It was a great activity and extended their thinking in more ways than one. In science we worked on position words. Initially, Leah and I were worried this center may be too easy…it wasn’t! They had to really think about where the animal in the picture was before gluing it. In math the kids played a fun game that was about going to a fair and buying the object on the card they picked. It was great because they got to play and have fun, but also had to buy objects with real change. It was great to watch them help each other during their games. We also played an adding game in the pocket chart area. The kids rolled dice and played an adding game with a partner. They had to say their dice in an adding sentence and use the total to color in the fish on the sheet, each student got to color in a different color on their fish.
We’re finishing our silly sounds books this week and next, so they can take them home at the end of the year.
In writing we are focusing on poetry. I’m not teaching a specific type of poetry, my goal is to get them thinking deeply about topics and use “pretty words” to develop those thoughts. They came-up with some amazing ideas, and it challenged me as a teacher, it was great! They wanted to develop a poetry book to publish also. We wrote poetry about the book we read last week The Relatives Came and decided to adapt it to poems about our relatives visiting. An interesting conversation came-up Friday morning during circle time. We started talking about Memorial Day and what we were celebrating, the kids turned it into a discussion about our freedoms and then connected it to the National Anthem. They realized that when the Star Spangle Banner was written it was the same thing that we experience today, realizing our freedom was a gift. I asked if they’d like to write poetry about it and they all got so excited, it was wonderful. I decided to teach them the technique of Haiku, to narrow their focus. The results were amazing, they loved the writing and it made the holiday so much more meaningful. I’ll be sending home their poetry in the next couple of weeks. We’re sharing them at our carpet time!
We flew planes to celebrate Lag B'Omear and I've put those photos with the shutterfly photos!
Enjoy the long weekend and beautiful weather!! Shabbat Shalom

News for the week of 5-12-08

This week was so much fun! We were so busy with everything, but it was really great. We got back into our center routine, which I think the kids really appreciated.
Our ABC center was a vowel book we’ve been working on and adding to, the kids cut out pictures from magazines and put them into their vowel book, it was so fun and a creative way to get them involved in listening to the vowel sounds. The writing center was creating sentences with magnets, they got very creative. In the science center the kids worked with magnets and different objects. They had to not only determine which objects worked with the magnet, but why. In the math center this week the kids worked with telling time; digital and analog. They have really done a great job with telling time and all seem to grasp the concept to the half hour. In the listening center they listened to a book called Feast For Ten it talks about planning a menu for a meal along with number words. In the overhead center the kids got to use clear tiles with words in them to create sentences again.
We worked on writing through our senses this week. I introduced the 5 W’s of listening to a story and then writing about them. It’s in the very early stages and we will continue to expand on this skill. To really get the kids involved we did a writing involving something we all love…eating ice cream! They had to write what it tasted, smelled, looked, felt and even sounded like. It was so creative and even a little tough. I think this is so important for kids to be able to stop and really “listen” to themselves and what they are sensing. It is so useful for so many other things, not just writing.
We read a great book called The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant. It’s a beautiful book about relatives coming to visit and just being together as a family. It’s old fashioned and led to a wonderful discussion about the importance of being with family. We also talked about the fact that in the book there were no TV’s or computers and that the family just sat together and enjoyed each other’s company. One of my favorite lines from the book is: “we were to busy hugging and eating and breathing together”. The writing is posted in the hall of the lower school, please read your child’s “house” if you come by. I highly recommend the book, as you can probably tell.
Our end of year celebration is June 5th, at 6pm in the classroom. We have changed the name from “graduation” to follow the other grades use of the term “end of year celebration” we feel like this is more descriptive of what we’re really here to enjoy; all of their successes this year!
We’ll start new centers next week before our year comes to an end. We’re also going to be doing projects like more mosaic art!
We really need comic strips for centers next week, if you take the paper please save them for us and send them in, THANKS!!

Dear parents,
This week we went back to our routine and the children are better then ever.
They are very comfortable with speaking simple Hebrew phrases and pick up on new words much faster.
We finished the letter “Raish” that means we only have two more letters and we will finish with the whole Alfa Bet.
The Israeli project was very nice, I hope you all got to see the exhibit, I am waiting for the combined presentation from Israel and then I will forward it to you all.
New Hebrew wards
gadol/gdolah – big (boy/girl)

tov /tovah – good (boy/girl)

sefer/sfarim – book/books

racavet- train

rosh- head

Shabbat Shalom
Morah Leah

News for week of 5-9-08

What a busy week we had! The school was buzzing with activities all week and we had lots of projects in the classroom as well.
The highlight of the week was definitely the Mother’s Day Tea, and we want to thank you all for coming, the kids worked so hard preparing and it was wonderful to share with you.

We will begin next week with the fun centers we started this week, our Science center is about magnets…should be very interesting to see what the kids come up with. We are continuing to work on time; both analog and digital. We’re making sentences independently in the writing and overhead centers.
These kids have grown so much this year and they continue to ask thought provoking questions and just absorb any information they are given.

News for the week of 3-31-08

We were so busy this week! We started new centers with lots of fun ideas for Pesach, like a frog jumping game that reinforced taking measurements. We continue to work on the rules for reading, I’m targeting the long vowels. It’s so nice to see the kids apply the rules they know and problem solve when they’re reading. I’ve also introduced using the apostrophe sign in a very minimal way. We talk about it in our morning message writing time and the kids are really catching on. We are writing about the butterfly lifecycle which has been so wonderful because the kids have seen it first hand in our classroom. We set our butterflies free and loved seeing them go. It was wonderful to watch the miracle happen right in our classroom and then complete our task of letting them go. A real shechyanu moment!

We had a fun science project learning about the frog life cycle and made models of frogs that actually change from a tadpole to a froglet to an adult frog. The kids loved this activity and we wrote about it also. They quickly understood that it’s truly a “circle of life” when looking at the frog diagrams. It was a fun project.

We completed a book using the old nursery rhyme “Over in The Meadow”, it was a great way to incorporate number writing, rhyming, and even addition! We talked a lot about estimating this week, I told them an easier way to think about it was to use the terms “guess then check”. We used estimating stations for math and they really enjoyed it. I had materials out and they had to switch stations and estimate how many they could hold in one hand, then they had to grab a handful and count them to check. One of the stations was tiny pebbles, this was very interesting. It was taking literally hundreds of pebbles to fill their little hands. This led me to teaching them how to make groups of something easier to count, like 5’s or 10’s, (we call this counting by nickels or dimes). I showed them that by grouping them separately they could then count their groups much easier, and count on if they had an incomplete group.
We will continue to work on estimating and move into number operations like simple addition and subtraction after Pesach break. I will begin with concrete examples and then move to using numbers.

We’re continuing with the same centers through Pesach and have so many fun things planned for next week, we can’t wait!

Shabbat Shalom!
Miss Christie and Morah Leah

News for week of March 24th

The kids are already getting excited about Pesach which we will be starting on Tuesday, April 1st. We finished last weeks centers so we could start something new for the next two weeks. We started writing about the changes we are seeing in our butterflies, they have gone into their cocoons and are just “hanging” around-ha,ha! We’re waiting for them to emerge into Painted Lady butterflies around Pesach, when we set them free.

We have continued our writing about spring and the changes we’re seeing in the weather, not only the temperature and wind but also the sights and sounds that are all part of spring. We talked lots about the birthdays we’ve had lately and how the kids were also once spring babies. They thought that was so funny, I don’t think they ever imagined themselves as being babies like all the babies we’re now seeing.

In math we’re working on money which is sometimes very abstract and hard to grasp. I decided to use other parts of their world to talk about parts of a whole (fractions) to help them understand this concept at a more personal level. We took a pizza picture and I cut it into 10 parts, and we discussed how, though it was cut into 10 pieces it made a whole pizza. We then counted the pieces in different ways, by 1’s, 5’s and then by starting with 5 pieces and “counting on” by 1’s, to get to the 10. They seemed to enjoy this because it looked like a puzzle and so I’ll make this into a center for additional practice.

We also did a fun math activity involving chocolate, even better! I brought up the idea of measuring with our hand to introduce estimation. This was a huge discussion and there were lots of ideas (for several days), some of the ideas were: use tape to keep the objects in place, only use things that wouldn’t fall off your hand, count one by one but never get the whole amount, keep the things in your pocket, but what if you don’t have pockets…the list continues. It was so interesting to hear their thoughts. I let them think about it for a day and we came back together to discuss what they came up with.
Then for a math activity, I read the book The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn, and we decided to measure by drawing our hand and then putting the objects into the drawing, problem solved, nothing can fall off! The kids then got to measure their hand using Hershey Kisses, first making a guess and then checking their work.

You may be asked some questions about recipes because we started working on a special project for Mother’s Day which is right around the corner, it’s supposed to be a surprise so don’t ask too many questions…also, save the date for the morning of May 9th, we want to have a visiting day for mom, I’ll get you more information as it gets closer.

• Chag Sameach!!
  
  Wow! What fun we had this week preparing for Purim. The kids were really into the spirit of celebrating, and it was such fun to turn this into writing and math activities. We did things like graphing our Purim favorites to writing about spring changes we saw.

• We actually took a spring walk to note the signs of spring then turned that into art work as well as explanation of their work. We walked through campus with our journals and really looked, listened and smelled the signs of spring. I told the kids to use all of their senses to note changes they saw that showed them spring was on the way. They loved this activity. We were all over writing about the new green grass, the new purple flowers on the trees and even how the wind sounded. It was great to see the kids stopping right where they were, sit and write their thoughts. It made the writing such a creative process. They then turned it into art and put their writing with it!
• The kids also wrote their favorite things about Purim then they drew on a small card to make into a graph. We graphed them on our bulletin board in the room, of course, Hamentashen won by 4!! We talked about the “difference” in the numbers and the kids really understood what was being asked. They don’t know they are learning all about adding and subtracting, but by using language like “what is the difference in the two numbers” they are really understanding it on a deeper level. I think by presenting them with this language it helps them for later when they are asked to use higher level thinking skills to problem solve. We'll continue this process and use numbers in the equations so they can transfer the learning from concrete examples to using numbers in sentences.
  
• Our “Ester’s Banquet” was so wonderful. We decorated the room to look like a palace and the kids throught it was so cool to sit under "tents" and eat with their hands. The kids loved the food and kept coming back for more, even the veggies and fruit! Lots of them said that the rice was their favorite. We kept it authentic and didn’t give them utensils, they actually ate it with their fingers. It was such a treat to see them enjoy a leisurely lunch while sitting on pillows with friends.
• A special thank you to Leah for making it so special, from doing most of the preparation and cooking to decorating to make it so much more fun!!
  
• Leah came up with some great ideas this week, she created a scene with two children and the kids got to paint them. She cut the faces out and the kids loved posing behind the scenes to have their pictures taken. She also created a bean bag toss with a picture of Haman’s face! The kids tossed the bean bags into his mouth and had a great time. She turned the Purim story into a play and the kids got to choose the character they wanted to be and we acted it out, they had a blast and really got into their parts.
  

The Purim festivities were great! The kids sat and listened to the Megillah and had lots of fun when Rabbi Silver said “Haman”. We got to have games with the 4th grade and everyone had a great time!

Enjoy the weekend and beautiful weather!!

News for the week of 3-10-08

We had a great week planning for Purim and experiencing all the great things that come with Adar and spring. The foggy day on Tuesday really gave us some great brainstorming ideas. We first took a walk through the fog and let them experience it first-hand. They thought it was so cool! The kids had great questions and comments about the fog, we then used their curiosity to create some beautiful art and writing. I asked them to tell me how they would “represent” fog if they were doing artwork based on it. They told me all the materials they needed, which included tissues, paper, paint, fabric, and “see-through stuff”.
I gathered all the materials and brought them back and they quickly got to work. I told them part of creating something is thinking about it first. What do you want your final project to portray? It was wonderful to watch, the got their materials and made a plan and then finally glued the materials to the boards. I then asked them open-ended questions about their work and attached their quotes to the work. It was an amazing process and really was so meaningful to them, because it was something they experienced first hand. We then wrote about it and they got so creative! It is so nice to have the time to dedicate to this kind of work. I am able to incorporate all of the Kindergarten skills while letting them work on something personal to them.
The kids wrote wonderfully about Purim and what it means to them, they’re starting to make stories with multiple sentences. They then drew pictures about their one favorite part, and we graphed them. They decided how to group the pictures in order to graph them.
We continued with centers that focused on skills such as, time, opposites, writing sentences, story order and creating sentences with separate words. The kids worked hard and enjoyed our added Purim fun too, making hamentashen, creating masks and decorating our room!

With the season’s starting to change and our spring unit starting, I started talking to the kids about sun safety this week. We have outside time EVERYDAY unless it’s raining. We talked a little about how to be safe in the sun and warm weather. One way is to wear a hat, not only to keep you from getting sunburn, but to keep your skin safe and to keep your body cooler. Please send a sun hat with your child to wear outside. Our playground is shaded but they’re not always under the canopies. It’s important to get them into the habit of practicing sun safety early!!

Dear parents,
This week we immersed ourselves in Purim. I told the story with the help of my Purim spoon puppets. The heroine, beautiful queen Ester fighting to save her people against mean and wicked man, a silly king and a wise Jewish uncle all living in a royal palace… Are these pieces of fairy tale? The children were fascinated and brain stormed ideas how to help queen Ester to solve the problem since she was not allowed to go before the king unless she was asked to. I liked Gabi’s idea, she said that Ester should create a problem so the king will come to her.
We pretended to be kings and queens, sang songs, played games with Purim symbols learned the movement for the song La kovah sheli shalosh pinot (my hat has three corners) and danced the dance of Latzan Katan (little clown). The children came up with the movements for this dance so ask them to show it to you.
The children are preparing little puppet theatre so they could act out their own Purim story.

Vocabulary

Queen - Malkah
King - Melech
Mask- masechah
Grogger- (noisemaker) Rahshan
Gift basket – Mishloach manot
Hamantashan—Ozen Haman.

Have a great weekend
Morah Leah

News for week of March 3rd—

First, we want to thank you for the conferences. I hope you all know how much Leah and I care for your children and how much it has meant for us to be able to be a part of their lives this year. We've watched them mature and grow in so many ways and we feel truly blessed to be part of it. We're so excited to see what is to come through the end of the year and can't wait for the adventure to continue.

For a week with a day off, we sure were busy! We started the week celebrating Michael’s birthday with cupcakes they frosted themselves. We worked at centers this week, changing some and keeping some that the kids seemed to really like. We’re getting ready to add new centers for next week in preparation for Purim! Should be a week filled with fun!

We will dress in costume for Purim, Friday, March 21st, which is a half-day.

We finally finished our silly newsletter, the kids were very proud of their paper and enjoyed hearing the stories they made-up. They chose everything, from the layout of the paper to the collaboration of the stories. Their writing has come so far this year, we’re so proud of their growth. They seem to really enjoy writing these days, the light bulb has definitely turned on!

In math this week I combined journaling with graphing. We took our shoes off and put them in the middle of the carpet, then they got their journals and “noted” their observations about the shoes. We got so much writing from just letting them chart their thoughts. We then took their information and made a graph with the results. The next morning we taped-off the floor and graphed our shoes again to see if there were differences in the information from one day to the next.
We continue to work with money and are connecting the combinations of the coins with a puzzle I introduced this week. For example, they are starting to understand that a nickel is made of 5 pennies and a dime is 2 nickels. To continue our work on time we charted the time and weather throughout the day, it was particularly interesting Thursday and it changed from rain to snow and the temperature dropped about every 15 minutes--they loved it!!
Friday was lots of fun and we watched “American Legends”, which is from our generation. It’s narrated by James Earl Jones and shows little stories about American Legends; John Henry, Johnny Appleseed, Babe and his Blue Ox, Paul Bunyan, and Kasey Jones.

We’re going to start our Spring unit next week and all the things that go along with the season.

News for week of 2-18-08

What a great week we had! For some reason on Tuesday the class was extremely loud, not out of control “coo-coo crazy” but the noise level was HIGH…we then got back to business and having fun and had a great week.

We worked on money books that involved starting the idea of change and how many cents make a coin amount, it was a fun creative project and the kids seemed to enjoy making them. We also had a great center activity about time, transferring digital time to analog clocks. Lots of thinking happening at that center.
We worked more on short vowel sounds and making sentences with words.

Our literacy focus has been determining pretend from real information. We ask ourselves “could this really happen?”. We are also continuing to work on being a good reading detectives…looking for information without even reading the words, then we’re making predictions based on the text. We will continue this along with building on other skills.
We worked on learning the “ay” family and the “y” rule at the end of a word.

We started a “Silly Newsletter” that the kids really got into. We looked at real newspapers and decided on the layout then put some silly stories together. The kids were put into groups then given the objective to make a story of silly ideas, they each had to give input. The only perimeters were that it had to have the basic story elements, characters, setting, problem and solution. The ideas generated were amazing and it’s going to be wonderful when it’s complete. Hopefully we’ll complete the stories and our newsletter can go out by the end of the week. We’re going to begin planning for Purim---YEA!! Can’t wait, we have so much fun stuff in mind, should be lots of fun.

We have really enjoyed the parent conferences so far and are looking forward to the rest, the extra time has given us more time to share wonderful information about the year we’ve had!

Dear parents

The last few weeks we added few more words to our vocabulary. The children can say now more complex sentences in different combinations. We still have to repeat over and over again the old phrases that we learned because if we don’t use them on a daily basis the children tend to forget.
We learned the verbs ochel/ochelet (eat) omer/omeret (say) and the names of different kind of foods.
I use pictures of foods that their names sounds a lot like English so the children look at the pictures and can say it with out difficulties. For example: macaroni, melon, yogurt, pizza, pancake and so on. We also learned the word beteavon (have a good appetite).
We are up to the letter Ayin in our Alef Bet song, which mean we only have six more letters and we will know all the Hebrew letters, the children are so excited about that.
Here are the parts of the Alef Bet song for the letters Samech and Ayin

Samech--- chag sukkot

Ayin--- aytz yarok

Leah

News for week of 2-11-08

Happy President’s Day! We worked this week on learning new information about why we celebrate President’s Day, and the kids really enjoyed the learning. We talked about why these president’s were important and what it means to be patriotic. They remembered so much from our Veteran’s Day trip to the Veranda!

We continued the centers from last week and will begin start new ones next week. We’re continuing to work on vowel sounds and the “rules” of reading. Our targeted reading skill for the week was making predictions. We talked about what a “good reader” does, prior to and during reading to make predictions. I tell them to use all of their “tools” to find information about the text, pictures, known words, and familiar phrases. We’re also summarizing what we’ve read, I tell them it’s like saying it in your own words.

Two weeks ago we put some new writing tools into place: Monday journals, “theme” journals (Tues-Fri.) and Center journals. Leah and I can see a difference in their writing already. These provide the kids a time to “just write”, without teacher help and correction. The use their Monday and theme journals each morning to free write, this is writing they choose, with a little help. Monday journals help give them some framework to write about their weekend. The theme journals help guide them about writing something related to what we’re doing, this is just something to help them formulate ideas. The center journals are another way to infuse writing into their daily experiences. They write about what they did in each center, not just what it was but how they experienced it. I see a difference in their writing during our defined writing time, they are taking more risks and really hearing sounds that they turn into text. Their ideas are becoming more sophisticated also, they are extending their thoughts. It is a wonderful progression to be a part of!

In math we’ve continued working on time and money. They are starting to understand the concept of counting by fives, which is tough when you are “seeing” different numbers on the clock! This is what is deceiving, when children rote count we think they can easily apply the counting, it’s a different level of understanding to be able to rote count numbers and then apply them to something you are using. They’re getting there though!!

The kids were in the best mood this week! The excitement of our 100th day and the Torah celebration just made the week so special.
We had great Centers this week with lots of focus on writing and using short vowel sounds. We also learned a new song to the tune of Old MacDonald about the vowels, the kids loved it.
We did some amazing writing for our 100th day, I’ll have them for you during our conferences. They also made beautiful cards for the senior citizens at Veranda and the JCC. They really understood they were making someone’s day better by something as simple as writing a card. We also got the first and second grades involved and had so many cards that need to be delivered. The kids loved delivering the cards and did such a beautiful job! The faces lit up when they saw us walk in with our gifts filled with joy. It was a wonderful experience for the children.
We successfully collected almost 200 cans of food for the JFS food bank. We’ll plan a time to deliver them, we’ll need 4 parents who can drive. If someone can coordinate the drivers, JFS will gladly have us drop off when we can. I’m also getting a “mitzvah central” list to talk to the kids about more opportunities for volunteering in the community.
We had a rare experience speaking to and learning from Rabbi Levin, the sofer that was here for the Torah dedication. He gave us so much information about tefillin, and mezuzot, we got to touch the cow skins and learned so much information about the process and skill involved in his work.
Our 100th day celebration was a huge success, we had crafts and activities in both rooms and the kids got to go into both classrooms to enjoy the activities. Their “counting by 10’s” has really improved, we practice it so much!
In Math, we started learning about time. Each student got a small analog clock, we had some “discovery” time prior to the learning. It’s so important for kids to really see, touch and sometimes even smell things before real learning begins. We have to give them an opportunity to experience something before asking them questions or answering questions about it.

News from our week of Qq!
This week was short for us and we had tribes on Tuesday for
Tu B’Shevat! The kids ate the fruits of the trees and planted parsley, we also had a Tu B’Shevat Seder in the classroom, eating and learning the brachot for each food. Again, there were many brave tasters, especially with the olives!

This week I gave our assessment for reading. I will be sending home information about your child’s particular level and the skills I will be working on. The kids have really grown in their problem solving and reading skills, it was great to see their progress!

In centers we worked on “ing” and weather books. We also had a cool science experiment that involved salt and ice cubes. These kids really love science! We worked on putting sentences together and will continue building on these skills. They really transfer into the kid’s writing.

Please continue working on the sight words with your children. It helps build their confidence so much and we use them in games in the classroom and makes them feel very proud when they know the words. When reading with your child, stop to ask them questions about the reading. What happened first? What happened in the middle? What happened last? What was your favorite part and why? These build their comprehension skills and help them understand, they’re not just reading to read words, a good reader reads to gain meaning from what the text. If you can go to the library and let them choose books that interest them, this let’s them read to you but also let’s them truly enjoy the task of reading itself.
Also, continue on working on the vowel sounds with them, some students are still confusing them, ask your child what sounds they make, /a/e/i/o/u.
In addition to reviewing the silent “e” rule, we introduced the rule about two vowels. Ask them to sing you the song about when two vowels go walking…this is a great remembering technique to help them in their independent problem solving. We will continue to reinforce these rules daily.

In science, we made crystals! The kids loved this. They made predictions about what the outcome would be and graphed our ideas, then we went back looked at our graph again to find out how close we were to the true outcomes. The crystal designs are on our classroom bulletin board, come in and see them, they’re beautiful!

I attended a state wide Kindergarten conference Thursday and Friday and got some wonderful ideas. I’ll be implementing them in the classroom this semester and I know the kids will get as excited about them as I already am!

We’ll be continuing to talk about weather through the next two weeks, what a perfect time to do it with all the crazy changes we’ve had…

Have a great week!

Yea for the letter K !!! We had a fun-filled week with activities that involved our new theme about weather and our letter of the week “Kk”. We worked daily on our sight words, which I encourage you to do at home as well, it’s really showing in their reading. They recognize familiar words and feel confident using them in the classroom.
We started using the “rules of reading” this week was the silent “e” rule. I taught the children that the “e” is silent but it makes the first vowel say its name. You can practice this with them at home. There are also changes in some of the words “ce” says “s”, as in nice, and “ge” says “j” as in cage. They caught on quickly and we’ll continue adding rules for reading and working on the ones we’ve already covered.
As you saw in the Friday bags, we did lots of “Kk” books and the kids liked finding the familiar words and letters they knew.
We ended the week with a morning of tribes in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. We learned about his work and life and did some wonderful writing on him. It’s on the bulletin board outside the classrooms, please come in and enjoy our work!

We celebrated Ethan Wainman’s birthday on Thursday with funfetti cupcakes that the class made!! Thank you Ethan for letting me share my birthday with you, it made me feel a little bit younger…J

In math we are really working on different types of graphs. We want the children to seek information in different ways and be able to analyze it. We’re not only using picture graphs, but graphing the letters in our names, and using rulers for line graphs.

I’ve been asked to remind those who purchase hot lunch to be specific on the menus you turn in. If your child doesn’t like the entrée, please specify the alternative or bagel/baked potato if you think they would like it better. Like you, they don’t want the kids to go without eating what they’re provided.

Please remember, we eat at 11:45 am daily. If you plan on bringing lunch, it’s important to bring it before that time, as we are very busy and it “throws off” our day if your kinder is waiting on his/her lunch. Plus, they tend to get worried when they go their backpack and find nothing L

As you know, there is no school on Monday. We will have tribes on Tuesday morning for TuB’Shevat. Our letter next week is the letter “Qq” and we have lots of fun planned! I will be in a Kindergarten training Thursday and Friday learning great new “tricks” to bring back to the classroom.