Happy Holidays from SK!!

Wishing all of our SK Families a wonderful holiday and a very relaxing winter break.  No matter where the next few weeks take you, we wish you a safe holiday season.

We had a great last week of the year!  We worked hard wrapping up all kinds of loose ends as we prepared for our holiday preparations.

We made decorations for the room,  crafts for friends and family and shined up our songs for the Holiday Sing!  A big thanks to all of you for participating in one way or another for the Holiday Sing.  It was great to have you all visit our classroom!  (And a special thanks to our volunteers, who worked hard to bring things to share, and who set them all up so beautifully!)

Be sure to check out our pictured this week.....so much to share!!

Please remember to send back your child's sleeping bag on January 3rd!!

Also, please remember to send your child with snow pants and boots!  We need to be fully prepared with winter gear to enjoy all there is to enjoy outside at recess!  Thank you!

News from Connecticut

The devastating news has left all of us grieving.  If you are in need of a good tool for conversation, this is a valuable one:

http://www.ncdhhs.gov/mhddsas/services/disasterpreparedness/MisterRogersFINAL.pdf

Peace,

Jane and Tanya

More Traditions, and Jammies Too

Language Arts:

Journals
     In honor of our Pajama Day we read a story about all the places that are called "home" and then wrote about "If I could sleep anywhere, it would be__________".  Wow!  There are some creative SK'ers in our room!  Ask yours where they would sleep!  We did decide as a class however, that wherever they would sleep they would take their pillow with them!


   
Daily 5
     Besides bringing in some new word work to reinforce our word families, we worked really hard on star words this week!  We were "star word detectives" and listened for star words as we read a book and listened to sentences.  When we heard a star word we crossed it out and colored it!  It was almost like Star Word Bingo!  Keep reinforcing finding those star words at home while reading a story.  Practice writing and spelling the words out loud too.  It is a great way to learn the words as well as strengthen reading skills along the way!



Math and Science

     We continued our study of Gingerbread Cookies this week and added a lot of fun discovery with writing and math activities!  We started the week with "How I Eat My Gingerbread Man" and mapped out with color what we eat first, second, third and fourth.  We wrote about the order we eat our gingerbread in using "First", "Next" and "Then" sentences and then of course we got to taste our gingerbread!  Mmmmm!!!  We finished up with making gingerbread patterns and brainstorming describing words based on our research.  



     We also added some new math centers to our classroom and had some great practice this week rotating through them.  Ask your SK'er to tell you about the Train Game, Cover and Roll, Bank Check and Spin and Graph a Reindeer.  Our math centers are a fun way for us to practice and reinforce those great math skills that we learn throughout the week.



Reminders

     We have been enjoying quite a mild December so far, but please keep sending in those hats, mittens and scarves!!  We have been bundling up our friends everyday and reminding them to bring those things with them each day to school.



Coming Up

     Our Holiday Sing is next Wednesday!  The class has been working very hard and excited to share their hard work with you!  If your child will be staying after 11:00, please send them with a change of clothes.  We will be changing into our "comfy" clothes right before lunch.  As a reminder if you plan on taking your SK'er home with you afterwards, please make sure to let us know!

    Sleeping bags will go home next week Tuesday (on Petra's Superstar afternoon!)

***Our friends Petra and Sofia's show & shares were a great end of the day on Friday - we'll upload those photos in next week's batch!

Winter Traditions Week Begins!

We were thrilled to begin our wonderful week of Winter Traditions!  Read on to learn more about our week in SK P217...

Language

     Printing This week we practiced the letter Bb.  We worked on making our letter B the right way! For upper case B, start at the sky, pulling straight down to the grass, lift and back up to the sky for a curve to the red fence and then a curve to the grass.  For lower case b, start at the sky, pull straight down to the grass, push up to the red fence and circle down to the grass.  Practice writing words that start with B at home!
     Journals  For journals we wrote about gingerbread houses!  First we brainstormed as a whole class what kind of candy we would want on our gingerbread house and came up with all kinds of yummy ideas!  Then friends picked their favorite to write about.  Ask your SK'er what their gingerbread house is made of!
     Daily 5   Star Words this week :  "you" and "have"  Please add these to the list and have your SK'er be practicing them at home!  A great activity is to be "star word detectives", finding star words  in books they are already reading!  We have been busy doing that here at school!
                   Word Families:  We are working with and reviewing am, ap, at, it, and ig.   Continue making words at home and practicing rhyming with different word family words.  We will be introducing new word families soon.
                   Book Shopping:  We shopped for new books this week!  We also talked about and reviewed what to do when we come to a word we don't know.  Ask your SK'er what to do!  (Hint: stretch out the sounds, use the picture (read the picture) or skip the word.)  Practice these strategies at home when reading with your child.   
                  Writing: We have been working really hard within our Daily 5 lessons and independent work to become even better writers!  Our SK friends have been writing using more sentences and star words!  We even have had some wonderful poems and stories come out of our "work on writing" station this week!  Bravo friends!!  Keep up the good writing work!





Math
We covered a lot of math skills this week and played some fun games while doing it!  Friends graphed coins, practiced place value and played a fun game of spin and graph, using reindeer!  We also enjoyed the Train Game again this week (rolling dice in order to add or subtract train cars from our track!)
Another skill we worked on was addition using dice.  Friends worked in pairs with 2 and 3 dice.  Using unifix cubes and a game board, each child took turns rolling the dice, adding up the numbers and then covering the answer on their game board.  It was great fun and even had a wonderful snowman theme to go along with it!





Science
As a class, we have decided to save our Know/Wonder/Learn and study snow for our next unit of science study.  However, with our "snowless" season so far, our friends have chosen to continue their exploration of gingerbread!  We read books, wrote about gingerbread houses and even made decorated our imagination station to look like a gingerbread house!  Coming up next week we'll be incorporating taste into our theme too!  (And we are all hoping for snow soon so we can begin some great observations, including a visit to our SK sugar maple tree!)





Reminders:

    Please remember to send warm winter gear to school every day!  As we are getting ready for going outside we are asking our friends to put on their hats, mittens/gloves and scarves. We never know what the temperature will be at recess time and we want everyone prepared!
Thank you!

Coming Up Next

-Mitten Project:   We are collecting new hats and mittens, scarves and gloves, to give to Milwaukee friends without warm clothes.  Thank you for bringing in what you can share with our community!  

-Holiday Sing:  We are busily getting ready for our Holiday Sing coming up on December 19th.  There is a special note in Friday Folders this week with some important information regarding the sing.  We are looking forward to seeing all of you!

-PJ Day:  All of SK will be having a PJ Day next Friday, December 14th.  Please refer to the note in your child's Friday Folder for more information!


- Show and Share: We have completed our first week of our new show and share rotation.  Thank you to those friends who shared their winter traditions with us this week.   It has been quite delightful!  We are looking forward to next week's show and shares!  Please let us know if you have any questions.

- Ice Skating: Please see the letter in your SKer's Friday Folder regarding our upcoming, and very exciting, ice skating unit in P.E.!

Welcome Back, Friends!

We began our week with stories of Thanksgiving celebrations - what fun to share!  Here's what we've been doing to move into the Holiday Season this week in SK P217...



Language
Printing:
- Uu (U: start at the blue sky, pull down, curve back up, push up to the blue sky, pick up.  u: start at the red fence, pull down, curve back up, push up to the red fence, pick up.)
- Ss (S: start under the blue sky, rainbow back, slant right, curve back and up.  s: start under the red fence, rainback back, slant right, curve back and up.)
Journals: We brainstormed a new focus for our imagination station this month - gingerbread houses!  We even made a list of I Can Write words to help us write about gingerbread, and created a class book about our SK gingerbread village!  We incorporated star words, word family words and great word-stretching... see our work on display on our bulletin board next week!



Daily Five
- Star Words: still working hard to master and incorporate a, am, go, I , like, my, on, the, and we into our everday reading and writing!
- Word Families: we're up to am, at, ap, it and ig!  Ask your SKer to rhyme a word with your word family word - if you say "Sam" they say.... if you say "wig" they say....
- Word Family sorting:  we compared and contrasted am/at/ap/it/ig and sorted words into their word family homes!
- Skill Building: we've been reading with groups of friends to strengthen all different good-reader tools (skills) - how far everyone has come since we began at the start of the year!  We will continue to work closely with individual readers to build skills, gain confidence and tackle new books together.
- Book Shopping: we finished our last round of Daily Five with our current book bin books - we'll shop for new books on Tuesday!



Math
- Number Cards: we called numbers from 0-20 and friends had to find and hold up the matching card; we asked for them to hold up the number before or after the one we called; we asked them to hold up the number that __+___ make together... they even played these number card games with partners, incorporating finger counting and environmental print!
- Graphing: we graphed our favorite holiday activities on a bar graph - first we narrowed down the activities we love to five, and then made a bar graph (on the board, and even with our bodies)... it reminded us a little of voting!
- Train game: we worked with manipulatives as we rolled dice and added or subtracted "train cars" (unifix cubes), using towers of up to ten.  When we added train cars it was the "train game" and when we subtracted it was the "runaway train game!"

Science
- Snow: We are off and running on new studies in SK!  Our friends brainstormed what they'd like to explore this month, and we came to a big decision... we'll be learning about snow!  We'll be adding topical vocabulary to our I Can Write words, and adding a section to our class library for further snow study and good fun!












Reminders:
- Warm gear: all friends need hats, coats, mittens/gloves, everyday!  We encourage friends to add warm boots, and welcome the addition of snowpants to their winter wardrobe to stay warm.  ***Please let us know if you'd like boots and snowpants to travel back and forth each night, or if they will be staying at school.

- Birthday invitations: please remember that it is our policy to ask that invitations are sent through the mail.  Even when inviting the entire class, birthday invitations can be a bit of a distraction during our days here at school.  We want to encourage all friends to feel happy, and focused on good learning in SK!

Coming Up Next:
- Show and Share: Please see the note in your SKer's Friday Folder for more details about our Winter Traditions show and share, beginning next week!

- Mitten Project: Please find a note in Friday Folders about our SK service project!  We are collecting new hats and mittens, scarves and gloves, to give to Milwaukee friends without warm clothes.  Thank you for bringing in what you can share with our community!

We are Thankful for You!

We welcomed friends and family to our room on this short and sweet week, to showcase all that we do in SK P217, and to share our thanks with the special people in our lives!





Language

Shhhh Gifts - We created something extra special to share with moms and dads (it's wrapped and hiding in your SKer's Friday Folder for you to open on Thanksgiving!)  We hope our SK families like our gift, and can tell that we stretched loads of tricky words!
Journals - We are turkey experts!  We wrote a big idea ("I am a turkey expert!") and supported our big idea with evidence.  We used a "Turkeys Can - Turkeys Have - Turkeys Are" format for our details, and word-stretched lots of interesting turkey tid-bits that we've picked up in all of our research!





Math

Money Measuring - We used our coin collections of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters to measure our partner's feet, our thumbs, even the lenght of our names!  It was interesting to notice how measuring the same object with different coins changed the measurement!  Sometimes ten pennies made the same length as only eight nickels... those coins really are all different sizes!
Turkey Squeeze - Ask your SKer about how to play "Turkey Squeeze" - they think of a number between one and ten, or one and twenty, and place to turkeys on either side of a number line (they could draw them, use stickers, etc.)  They let you guess a number, and then say "My number's bigger/smaller than that!" and move the left or the right turkey to shrink the numbers you can select from.  Eventually, once you guess enough times and they narrow down the numbers, the two turkeys will "squeeze" only one number (the one they were thinking of!)





Science

Turkeys Can/Have/Are - We made a HUGE list of different turkey traits!  Ask your SKer about some turkey trivis they can share; what turkeys have on their bodies, what they're called (male, female, baby), where they live, how they travel, what they eat, and what eats them!





Extra!  Extra!  Announcements

Sleeping Bags - Thank you for remembering to bring back clean and cozy sleeping bags for our daily rest time!  We are trying to keep germs and bugs at bay.  Your help is appreciated, and our room smeels delightful lately!
Special Helpers/Show and Share - Trevor is our last special helper for this round, on the Monday we return.  We will take a short break from show and share, and gear up for sharing Holiday Traditions in December!
Special Days - Coming up soon... Fiona's Superstar Day on Thursday 11/29!





Coming Up Next

Mitten Tree - When we return from Thanksgiving break, we'll begin our special SK service project - we'll send home the song to help you practice singing our cause out to friends and family!
Holiday Sing - We'll be getting extra close to the big day (and creating special invitations for you, with all the details!)
Science Study - We'll be brainstorming good SK ideas for what to study next - there's so much to choose from, explor, and learn about together in December!
Family Traditions - We'll be sharing SK holidy celebration styles when we return and get into December.  We'll be sure to send lots of extra information when the time is right!

Feastgiving in SK!

*****After arriving at school this AM, we realized the blog never published!  So sorry if you were waiting patiently for Feast Photos!*****

Just like in our SK writing this week, we're going to write our big idea first, and then all the details after it!

Big idea: We were sharing and giving thanks in SK this week!
Details: read on...



Daily 5
Decodable Book: Our new book is in Friday Folders and ready to join your black book box library; it has -it family words and our new star word "on" so practice reading it to add those new additions to our SK brains!
Star Word: "on" joins our Word Wall and we used it over and over this week!  It's also great for rhyming...
Word Family: we have a new one!  "-it" joins our word family neighborhood, and can make great words like fit, sit, lit, kit, and loads more!  Practice going back and forth with your SKer, making new ones each time.



Language
Printing: Joyful, jubliant "J" and "j" joined our printing books this week!  J: "start at the blue sky, pull down straight, add a monkey tail, pick up!  Slide right on the blue sky."  j: "start at the red fence, pull down straight, add the monkey tail, pick up! Dot in between the red fence and blue sky."
Scrapbooking: Aside from working hard on the mechanics (Upper case!  Finger space!  Ending punctuation!) we are adding "big idea" and "details" to our 2+ sentence writing.  First we wrote "On Thursday we had  a feast!" (our big idea), and then wrote details afterward about the songs, the slideshow, the hats, the food!



Math
Coins: We worked in groups of three to sort our coin collections into pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.  We made a graph to show how many coins we had of each!
Number Posters: We worked with a partner to show all the different ways we can write a number: numeral, word, tally, coin, dice, domino, etc!  It was great fun to see all the ways a number can show itself.  Look around at your world at home to see how numbers show up.
Roll & Graph: We rolled dice and practiced reading the face without counting each dot.  It's tricky, but it really speeds up our work when we can see a number and know it quickly without counting!



Science
Labels: We labeled a non-fiction illustration of a turkey!  We identified different body parts (wattle!  caruncle!  spur!) and wrote labels for our illustration.  We even colored our turkeys the realistic colors we would find out in nature!



Extra!  Extra!  Announcements:
Sleeping Bags: they're headed your way for a good wash this weekend!  We'll welcome them back first thing Monday morning so that each friend has a fresh clean spot for rest.



Coming up:
- Where's the Teacher?!  Thank you all for your flexibility and support; Ms. Schwartz was out with a stomach bug Monday/Tuesday, and Mrs. Duffey succumbed to a sinus infection on Wednesday.  We surely missed being here with friends, and we look forward to making it a great, jampacked, mini week coming up!
- Short Week:
- Grandparents & Special Friends: Thank you for sending in your form to us, and communication with the Parents Association, to let us know your plans for the short day next Wednesday!  We look forward to our 8:30-9:30 celebration!
- Writing work: We'll give friends a chance to label lots of things, keep writing lists, and even begin to learn how to write a recipe!  These are great things for them to practice with you at home too, especially around the holidays (where lists and recipes can make all the difference between a feast and a flop!)

 

Rocking the Vote!

It was a short and sweet Election week in SK!  Read on to learn more...

Daily Five + Language:
- Rhyming: we keep working hard to master the tricky world of rhymes, completing, discriminating and generating our own.  Playing games and reading rhyming books are really helping SKers to become stronger rhymers (reading and writers too!)
- Writing samples: we wrote on our own, with our own ideas, doing our best SK writing (upper case, spaces, ending punctuation!)  We can't wait to share our first sample (on 9/7) and our new sample (on 11/7!) with you soon - we are great writers, growing stronger every day!
- Book 13: a new decodable book joins your SKer's library this weekend... it's chock full of start words for good reading practice!

Math:
- Tallying: we read and wrote tallies galore!  Reading them by fives really helps to speed up our counting to high numbers, and organizes our ideas about groups of numbers too.
- Counting by Fives/Ones: switching from fives to ones when counting tallies can be tricky!  Keep practicing this skill with your SK friend.
- Writing double digit numbers: after counting tallies by fives, switching to ones and finding the total, we wrote big double digit numbers... it's can be tough to know which number comes first!  "Twenty-seven - how do we write that?  Two first, then a seven... what would it be if we switched the numbers?"  Play these games with your SKer at home.
- Intro to coins: we began exploring coins and sorting by attribute.  Much more to come this year!

Science:
- Terrific Turkeys: we began our turkey study, sketching our idea of a turkey!  Then we read a good book to learn more about a turkey's body, and we sketched again!  It was exciting to see what good research can do for our work in SK.  Ask your friend what parts a turkey has, from head to toe!

Getting the Vote Out:
- We had a terrific time, exercising our right to vote this week!  After enjoying the primary process, we were ready to vote for our choice between the final two candidates for a new lunch item; waffles and cereal.  We checked in with our ID cards, entered our own voting stations, and took care of our business with good manners.  We were thrilled to find out the winning item at the end of the day!  We'll be welcoming waffles to our lunch menu rotation for the new two years!

Books We Loved:
- Cranberry Thanksgiving
- Coins
- Duck for President
- My Teacher for President
- Clifford for Presidents

Extra!  Extra!  Reminders:
- No school this Thursday or Friday - we'll see our SK friends on Monday for a full week!  Looking forward to seeings moms and dads at conferences (thank you all for scheduling!)
- The week of 11/19 is another short week; we'll have school as usual on Monday and Tuesday, and then enjoy a short morning on Wednesday for Grandparents and Special Friends Day.  (More information about this exciting day coming to you this week!)

Coming Up:
- Sleeping bags will head home with your SK friends on Friday 11/16 for a good wash - thanks for bringing them back on Monday 11/19!
- New Show and Share clues begin Monday 11/26... thank you for helping your SKer select things that rhyme with at/am/ap, or two things that rhyme together this round!  We'll send information your way before the new round begins in a few weeks.

Fun Run and A Fresh Month!

Hello!  Hope your November is humming right along.

We LOVED voting in our Lower School Election (electing a new lunch item to the menu this year and next!)  They crafted their own ID cards, waited in line, signed in at the desk, and voted in their own booths.
The choices, in this week's primary, were Chicken Nuggets, Waffles, Long Spaghetti, Cereal and Fruit, and Chicken Wings with Dipping Sauce.
Our friends helped to elect the final two menu choices that we'll vote for on November 6th!  The race is down to: Waffles, or Cereal with Fruit.  Yum!

Here's what's happening in SK P217 these days:



Language/Daily Five
- Rhyme Time: we are working hard (really hard!) to become professional rhymers - help your SKer by playing simple rhyming games, and choosing great rhyming books, together
- Tap Tap Tap: we are strengthening our Word Families, and read this new decodable (black and white) book, coming home this weekend to find a home in your SKer's black book box.
- Star Words: we're reading, unscrambling and writing our star words, so we know them inside and out!



Journals/Printing
- Conventions: targeting skills for each friend to help improve their good writing with upper/lowercase letters, spacing and ending punctuation
- Stretching: tricky words have lots of sounds.  We want to stretch them slowly, hear all the sounds, and write each one down.
- Ff: For an F: we start at the blue sky, pull down straight, pick up!  Back to the blue sky, slide right, pick up!  To the red fence, slide right, pick up!  For an "f" we: start under the blue sky, circle back, pull down straight, pick up!  Go to the red fence, slide right.  Tricky curves and placement this round!  Play pictionary with your SKer, drawing words that start with F and asking them to word stretch the word, writing it down.



Math
- Number stories: we are beginning to explore the wonderful world of number stories, listening closely and moving maniplatives to demonstrate our understanding.  "Mrs. Duffey had two kit kats.  Ms. Schwartz gave her two more.  How many does Mrs. Duffey have all together?"  We also listened to "take away" stories (even trickier!) and used counters to take apart groups and look for what was left.
- 50 Day: we celebrated being halfway to one hundred days of school on Friday!  We got together with the entire SK grade, and made tally hats to fifty, beaded necklaces of fifty, built with fifty objects, wrote "50" as many ways as we knew how, counted by tens during the bean bag toss, and sang a Nifty Fifty song together!



Science
- Wrap up: we said good-bye to pumpkins, packing up our theories and our life cycles (they journeyed home with your SK friend on Wednesday, Halloween.)  We learned loads about measurement, plant life cycles (sing that song, friends!), and observational sketching.



Books We've Loved
Scaredy Cat Splat by Rob Scotton
The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson
The Night Before Halloween by Natasha Wing
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie by Lucille Colandro
Baa-Choo! by Sarah Weeks
Dinosaurs' Halloween by Liza Donnelly
How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? by Jane Yolen



Extra!  Extra!  Reminders
- Brrrr: with an hour outside each day, everyone needs coats, hats and gloves/mittens.
- Food/cough drops/water bottles: please keep these things at home - we will have snacks, lunch and drink breaks throughout the day, and these items can be a distraction to friends ducking into the cubby room!
- Art Bags: please be sure yours returns to school soon - thank you kindly.
- Friday Folders: encourage your SK friend to pop theirs into the basket first thing each week.
Big dates coming up include:
- Superstar: Maya on Tuesday, November 6th (supplies came home this weekend!)
- Healthy Picnic: Parker Monday, November 12th (the basket/ideas go home next weekend!)



Piping Hot and Fresh Next Week
- Thankfulness: we kick off our learning about thankfulness, exploring ideas about what we like, what we want and what we need... and how we can show how thankful we are to have good things! 
- Turkeys: we can't wait to start exploring the terrific terrain of Turkeys!  We'll learn more about their bodies, their habitats, the food they eat, their family structures... everything we can!