Have a great summer!

We wanted to share the pictures from our last week together! We started the week with our Awards and Field Day. We had a blast! The huge soccer ball was a favorite of the day. We spent the rest of the week dancing, singing, and playing together with our themed days. Enjoy the pictures! We hope that everyone is enjoying summer so far!

The end is near...

It is hard to believe that we are in the last week of the school year! We have had alot of fun together this year! We hope that our students have enjoyed this year as much as we have. We wanted to end the year with some fun activities. Here is the schedule of events for this week and some reminders for the last day:

Monday, June 1st: Field Day and Awards
We will be participating in a field day in the morning. At 2:15 we will have our final awards ceremony of the year! This is a day you don’t want to miss!

Tuesday, June 2nd: Movie and Crazy Sock Day
Bring your favorite RATED G movie to share! Make sure to wear a pair of crazy
socks!

Wednesday, June 3rd: Game Day
Bring your favorite game. Please make sure it is a game you know how to play so that you can teach it to your friends! Make sure the game is labeled with your name and any loose pieces are in a bag!

Thursday, June 4th: Clean Sweep and Favorite Music Day
Today we will be cleaning our classroom! Wear your cleaning clothes and get ready to clean to music! Students can bring their favorite CD!

Friday, June 5th: Last Day
Please make sure students bring planners and backpacks today! Report cards will not be handed to students! Report cards will not be given to students who still owe money for pictures. Dismissal begins at 11:45 a.m., please be prompt, all students need to be picked up by noon!

We are looking forward to a great week!

Happy Mother's Day

On Friday was our Mother's Day Breakfast! If you had to miss it, here is the video we showed! Enjoy! :)

Untitled from Julia Lewis on Vimeo.

End of the Year Expectations

It is hard to believe that there are only 28 days of school left this year! We have seen our students soar this year. Here are some of the things we expect Kindergarteners to be able to do at this point of the year:



Skills/Reading

-Students should be reading level B books independently

-Students should be able to answer questions about a story

-Students should be able to identify and write at least 30 sight words



Writing

-Students should be writing in complete sentences

-Students should be using the correct punctuation

-Students should be able to include a beginning, middle, and ending in their story

-Students should be able to write phonetically (write the sounds they hear in each word)

-Students should be able to correctly spell several sight words in their writing



Math

-Students should be able to identify, write, and correctly order numbers 0-30

-Students should be able to count by 5's and 10's

-Students should be able to represent a number 0-30 using tally marks or objects

-Students should know the days of the week in order, be able to identify each day on the

calendar, know how to use a calendar to find out what day of the week a particular date is on

and what day comes before/after.

How are you celebrating?

Today was full of celebrating! Not only was it Miss Thomson's Birthday...

but it is also Earth Day!

Our class decided to celebrate Earth Day by picking up the trash around our playground. The students were so serious about beautifying our playground, that they gave up their recess time to find more trash! We would love to hear some of the ways you are celebrating Earth Day!

CLICK HERE TO PLAY SOME FUN EARTH DAY GAMES!

Raising Money for Relay for Life

As you know, this year Chets Creek will be hosting the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life event on May 1st and 2nd! To get our kids involved in making a difference, we are holding a COIN COLLECTION DRIVE at our school. Starting this week we will be collecting coins in our classroom. Students can bring in spare change to donate to cancer. You can help them earn change by letting them do chores around the house, by doing extra reading, and more! Students will also have a chance to earn change to put in our jug through positive behavior in our classroom. The coin drive will go until Friday, April 24th. Last year, we raised almost $3,000, so let’s do it again!

We also want to invite families to come out to the event! Both of us (Miss Thomson and Miss Lewis) have been a part of the planning for this event all year long. We will both be there the entire 18 hours! We would love to see our students and families come walk with us and join in on the activities. The event begins at 6:00 on Friday, May 1st. You can come for an hour or bring your family to camp out for the night! Let us know if you are interested! As always, thank you for your support.

Spring Fever

We came back from Spring Break with a BANG! Our last couple of days have been full of "spring-ish" activities. On Wednesday, we went on our final field trip of the year to the Jacksonville Zoo. We got to see the new babies and even the new Komodo Dragon exhibit! Below are some pictures from our exciting day:

On Thursday, hundreds of colorful eggs were hidden around our playground. We hunted for eggs until we had each collected fifteen eggs. We spent the rest of the day participating in spring activities. Check out the photos from our Egg Hunt:

CATCH THAT LEPRECHAUN!

Our St. Patrick's Day was full of GREEN! We set up the creative Leprechaun traps the students made before we left our classroom for lunch (just in case any Leprechauns should come by). When we returned, our classroom was a MESS!!! The Leprechauns left some traces behind, but unfortunately, we were unable to catch any! We did, however, see one pass by our classroom window!

Book Talk

We are now a couple of weeks into our Eric Carle Author Study. Students have become familiar with his books and are making connections with them during their book talks and in their writing. Students have been focusing on two main connections: text-to-self (connecting a book with something that has happened to them) and text-to-text (making connections between two or more books). The writing sample above is an explanation of text-to-text connections written by a student : "I am writing about text-to-text connections. If you do not know what it means I will tell you. It means that your book has a connection with another book. My connection is about The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the book called The Very Lonely Firefly."
Connections help with students' comprehension of a story. We encourage students to make connections with stories they are reading at home as well. Below are some examples of questions that can be used to facilitate student connections at home:
Text-to-Self:
What does this book remind you of?
Has something like this ever happened to you before?
How did you feel when you read this book?
Text-to-Text:
Does this remind you of something that happened in another book?
How is this book different from other books you have read?
Does this character remind you of a character from another book you have read?

Will You Be My Valentine?

On Friday, our class participated in various Valentine-themed centers planned by parents. The kids had an amazing time. We even had a snowcone machine! The quote of the day was from Lily: "I never had a best day in my whole life like this!" Thank you to all the parents who donated food, items, and/or their time to make this such a great day for the students! Enjoy the pictures from our fun day!

SHAPES

Last week we looked at 2-D Shapes: triangle, circle, oval, square, rectangle, rhombus, trapezoid, and hexagons. We made a Shape Mural, made pattern block pictures, and even made our own "Book of Shapes" by turning 2-D shapes into people, animals, and/or things.

Table 3 Sharing their Shape Mural of the Ocean

This week we are identifying 3-D shapes: cube, rectangular prism, sphere, cone, triangular prism, and cylinder. Tomorrow we will take a Shape Hunt around our classroom to look for 3-D shapes. Students will be given a Shape Hunt paper to take home. They will look around their house for 3-D Shapes.

Examples:

• cylinder - soda can, trash can, mustard bottle, etc.
• cube - microwave, box, ice cube, etc.
• sphere - orange, basketball, etc.
• rectangular prism - refridgerator, cereal box, etc.
• cone - ice cream cone, party hat, etc.
• triangular prism - tent, piece of cake, etc.

HAPPY HUNTING!

Alex's Lemonade Stand

Kindergarten has continued the Alex's Lemonade Stand tradition to raise money to fight childhood cancer. One or two of the Kindergarten classes will be at the various after school events handing out lemonade. There will be a donation box for any donations to the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation. Our class, along with Mrs. Meissner's, had the privilage of running Alex's Lemonade Stand at the PTA Family Night last Tuesday. We are proud to say that we collected $116 for the fight against childhood cancer! Thank you to all those who came out to help and those who donated to this great cause!!

Letter Combinations and Digraphs

We have started letter combinations and digraphs in Skills Block. Consonant digraphs are two consonants that join together to make one sound, such as ch, sh, th, wh, and ph. Letter combinations are two or three certain letters that make one sound when they come together. Here are the rhymes to help us remember letter combinations:
ay ay - see kids play
er ir ur - see the church
ar ar - drive the car
ow ow - one brown cow
st st - you must stop
ing ing - watch me swing
oy oi - see the boy
ea ee - let's go to the beach
oo oo - the ghost says boo
ue ew - find the clue
oo oo - read the book
au aw - I can draw
or or - shut the door
eigh eigh - this is eight
ou ou - see the mouse
ow ow - see the snow
all all - catch the ball

This week we are working on digraphs: th, ch, and sh. We are also working on the -ar letter combination and reviewing the -ay letter combination. Watch to see if your child recognizes digraphs and letter combinations in their reading and also uses them in their writing!