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.!