Ta-Ta For Now!

What a week, what a week!  We are plum-tuckered out from our delicious time spent as restaurateurs.  We learned so much, and had an absolute ball!  Enjoy your two weeks of time together and, over the holiday, ask your SKers to...



Language
- Word Families: make, hunt for, sort the ones they know (listed in your P-T conference packet)
- Star Words: read and hunt for them in book, signs, posters, magazines, brochures, you name it!
- Tools: picture clues, say the first sound, chunking, skip and come back, and stretching all help our friends to become well-rounded readers... practice at home, the library, the museum, by the pool, or on the beach!



Math
- Businesses: figure out who the producer is, who the consumers are, if they are selling/buying goods... or services, what the jobs are, what kind of employees they need, how they could improve sales.  Our kids are experts!
- Comparisons: asking, and telling, stories that compare quantities (use what's around you!  Dinosaur bones or butterflies, sculptures and paintings, seashells or sand dollars...)
- Number skills: conting forwards by 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's, and backwards from 15 or 20, will help strengthen the skills we're building!  Counting books on a library shelf, popcorn in a bag, pebbles on a sand castle...it all helps. 
- Coin naming/sorting: Spring cleaning?  Empty our your coin jar and let our SK business owners count, sort, and name the coins!



Science
- Project Groundhog: we've wrapped up and school, but wherever your family may be over break... ask your SKer if the groundhog was right, based on the temperature and weather where you are.  Did spring come early?  How can you tell?  What makes it spring?  What tells you it's still winter?



Reminders/Announcements
- Field Trip: We will begin our "A is for Art" unit when we return to school on April 1st!  We are thrilled to be heading to the Milwaukee Art Museum on Friday, April 5th from 12-2:30.  (There is a note, along with many other treasures, in your SKer's Friday Folder.)
- Spring Break Journals: Your SKer is bringing home a torquoise journal to write and illustrate over the holiday!  No matter what he or she is doing, or where your family may be, encourage your SKer to put pen to paper and take note of things, big and small, that they enjoyed doing over the break!
- Superstars: We can't wait to celebrate Parker's Superstar (on Thursday April 4th), and Krista's on Tuesday, April 30th!  (We will send home posters and details well in advance.)
- Healthy Picnics: We welcome our good friends Maya (Monday, April 8th) and Fiona (Monday April 15th) to bring a healthy picnic to school for 18 hungry SKers!  (Details listed inside the basket that will come home the Friday before.)
- Snow things: It's all coming home for a good wash!  Please send back snowpants only if there is still snow on the ground April 1st (fingers crossed for the opposite!)  All friends will need coats and boots, hats and mittens, returned to school.
- Photos: Enjoy even more beauuutiful photos, courtesy of our resident room mom extraordinaire (Melissa, we appreciate you!) at http://flic.kr/s/aHsjEkAJWT .... (Please note: We will be updating our photo album with even more Brunch Star photos later today, including shots of so many visiting family members today!  Our sincere thanks to many of you for squeezing a visit into your already packed full pre-break schedules.)
- Have a lovely time together!

Short but Sweet!

 It was a pixie of a week here in SK, but we still packed loads in!  Read on for more details about our days here at school...



Language

- New decodable: Hop In!  We learned more about a story's beginning/middle/end with this book, and also introduced the "-ed" family!

- New word work: We are continuing to practice medial vowels by playing good matching games (fish, map, pen... i, a, e), as well as our work with digraphs (ship, chocolate, whale, thirsy... sh, ch, wh, th)

- Beginning/Middle/End: We discussed what makes for a good story, and we all agreed that it needs a beginning (introduction), middle (problem), and ending (solution)!  Friends even created their own mini stories, using three small sketches first and then writing about each one to tell a B/M/E story.  Bravo!

- Journals: We practiced our recipe/direction writing with pancakes as our focus - a good skill, consiering we're starting a business!  Breaking a job down into steps and writing about it can be hard work, but it's so important for our brains to practice doing these good things... both for our reading, and our writing!

- Printing: Ww and Xx joined the ranks this week - so many pull down and push-up slants are tricky, but friends are mastering this diagonal letter with lots of good practice!

Math

- Economics: There have been loads of last minute tasks to complete with the opening of our restaurant coming up quickly (next week Thursday!)  We worked through job assigning, supply order taking, menu choice making, table cloth making, shop decor crafting, staff name tag writing, order notepad compiling, bill template designing... it's all coming together!

- SK Bank: We learned more about paychecks and money value, exchanging our hard-earned $0.15 paycheck for three nickels at the bank this week.  Now we each have three coins, one to spend at each of the other SK shops!  We also know that, to lighten our load, we could carry one dime and one nickel, or if we love clinking coins around, we could carry fifteen pennies! 
- Comparison Stories: We compared stories about pancakes, using "more, and less/fewer."  For example, "If Mrs. Duffey made four pancakes, and Ms. Schwartz made seven, how many more pancakes did Ms. Schwartz make than Mrs. Duffey?"  We also tried stories like "If Mrs. Duffey made four pancakes and Ms. Schwartz made three more than Mrs. Duffey... how many did Ms. Schwartz make?"  Friends LOVED figuring these stories out, drawing pictures and sharing answers.  Try telling stories to your SKer and giving them cheerios, blocks, or marker+paper to figure them out!

Announcements

- Pop surprise! Indeed!  We won the Popsicle party - hundreds of thanks to you all for clipping the winning number of box tops!  We owe our prize to you all - thank you!

- Art Bags and Sleeping Bags: We have them ready for you all to tote home from conferences on Wednesday and Thursday.  Please enjoy their work (encourage your SKer to our in an art show for you!), and send us back their sleeping bag after a good spring cleaning - thank you.

Reminders

- Conferences: We'll see you on Wednesday or Thursday for our short sit-downs!  We appreciate your time and look forward to talking with you all.
- No School: SK Friends will stay home on Thursday and Friday - happy snow-rolling, snow-building, snow-sledding, snow-skiing, snow everything!
- Spring Break: Just a friendly reminder that our USM Spring Break runs over the course of the last two weeks of March.  We are looking forward to talking tales-of-a-two-week holiday with your munchkins when we come back to school in April!

Snowy Surprise!

It was one for the books in SK, and we packed in LOADS of good fun and learning (despite the --surprise-- snowy four day week!)  Read on for more details...



Language
- Journaling: Instead of a typical journal page this week, we filled out job applications!  Friends listed their top three preferred prospects, and wrote reasons why they'd be a good match for the position.  They even solemenly interviewed for the jobs on Friday - so many well-qualified candidates make for some tough managerial decisions!
- Star words: We've added come to our word wall (and are still working hard to easily recognize what, look, and of (not "off") - hunt for them in books and signs with your SKer over the weekend!
- Word families: We love chanting our word family chant with our new addition, -ot.  "Ot, ot, ot!  Put on a "c" and you've got cot!  Cot cot cot, take off the "c" and you've got ot!"
- Reading tools: We are sssstttttrrrrettttcccchhhhhiiiinnnngggg our words, especially long tricky ones like "consumer" that we need for our writing!  (It helps us as readers too!)



Math
- Coins: We're adding, subtracting and trading pennies and nickels, and getting used to writing the cent symbol!  It's really fun to "total" receipts from restaurants.  5 cents for a bagel, 1 cent for a cream cheese, 5 cents for an orange juice and 5 cents for a muffin... ask your SKer to use your spare change to solve number stories like these!
- Home Links: We're finally sending along (in Friday Folders) some belated home links!  Feel free to use them as a catalyst of exploration or discussion (but do NOT feel the need to get through all three, or bring them back to school) - we continue to use valuable tallying and counting skills each day in SK.  Counting by 2's is the newest (and trickiest) for many friends - count pairs of things at home together this weekend!  (SKer's make great sock matcher-uppers, wink wink!)
- Economics: We've been exploring start up money, and learning that you need to spend money (on important supplies, like pans, flippers and flour) to make money (from hungry customers, or consumers!)  Words we've been using in our group discussions and individual writing about the brunch business: host, hostess, runner, cook, water, waitress, busboy, busgirl, server, manager, dishwasher, wallet, earnings, bank, goods, services, consumer, producer, wants, needs, expenses. 
*vocabulary



Reminders
- Superstar: Charlotte's celebration is coming up on Thurdsay March 14th - can't wait!
- Healthy Picnics: Thank you to Marco (Monday, March 4th) and Davis (Monday, April 22nd) for your kind flexibility!



Coming Up Next
- Building a Business: We have our signs and uniforms made, advertisements going around the halls, job applications in and interviews done... next we need to put it all together in our room!  After the long weekend we'll finally begin cooking up a storm - hurrah!
- Pillow Cases: Please help your child choose an extra/old pillow case to use as their apron here at school for the launch of our "Brunch Star" restaurant!  (It will come back home with them the Friday before spring break without any markings, aside from a little powdered sugar or pancake batter!)
- Conferences: We're looking forward to seeing you next week Wednesday and Thursday!  Please remember to read your report card to conferences, and bring it with you when we meet.  We are sending home a questionnaire for you to complete and send back Monday morning with your SKer so that we can make the most of our very short time together.  Thank you!
- No School: Thursday and Friday our SK friends will stay home while teachers and parents get to chat!