First Lutheran Kindergarten Friday Letter
March 16, 2012
For your information…
Thank You: WOW!!!! I cannot believe my birthday celebration last Friday!!! Just thinking about it right now makes me so emotional! Your generosity and thoughtfulness amaze me. I loved the personal poster and personal mug, the beautiful vase and flowers, the gorgeous glassy baby and gift cards and the YUMMY cupcakes with the balloons and party hats!! You all make me feel so loved and appreciated! You are all truly a very loving, special class this year. I feel incredibly blessed for such a supportive parent body! So…thank you from the bottom of my heart! You made my year!
Mary’s Place: During February and March we will be collecting loose change in a jar to share with Mary’s Place for them to use as bus passes or motel vouchers. Our jar is now 3/4 full!
Scrips Order Dates: Mar. 16 and Mar. 30
Book Order: Due March 22nd
My picks this time are:
Honeybee:
Animal Magnetic Pattern Blocks Set: Every primary classroom has pattern blocks in their stash of manipulatives to help teach geometry in the classroom!
Eric Carle Pack: I love Eric Carle and he is our author of the month in a couple months! I especially like the book, The Grouchy Ladybug, which helps teach children how to tell time to the nearest hour!
Firefly:
Spelling Bee Game: Although I do not have this specific game, I have one very similar to it! This is a great game to help mix it up a bit while reviewing and learning new reading skills. This would also be a handy game to have during the summer and play just 10-15 minutes a day to keep your child’s sight word skills sharp!
Reading Logs: Please return completed log April 2nd for a small prize!
Zoo Reports: See enclosed flyer. Sorry! Last week the smaller flyer did not make it in the Friday envelope!! This week I am sending another info sheet that is in smaller font on one page! It is the same information, just easier to read!
Zoo Field Trip: Please let me know if you would like to chaperone on the zoo field trip! We will meet at the church at 9am, drive to the zoo in private cars and then return to the church at 1pm. ***We will be returning one hour later than the usual Kindergarten dismissal***
Zoo Passes: If you have a zoo pass, please bring a copy of it to me and a copy of your drivers license and we can use it for our field trip on April 2nd. If we have enough zoo passes, we may not have to pay any $$ for our trip to the zoo! Otherwise, the discounted rate for us is $7.25 per student.
Inventors Table: We would love it if you could send in any clean recyclables for our Inventors Table that we will have as a station every Friday at Free Choice! Please no styrofoam. THANKS!
Important upcoming dates:
March 19th: No School-Teacher In-Service Day
March 28th: Zoo index cards and diorama due
March 29th: Art Walk at 6:30pm and Basket Raffle (Blake’s mom, Debbie, is in charge of our basket!) Great job selling your tickets!!
April 2nd: Field Trip to the Woodland Park Zoo-9am to 1pm
April 17th: Kinder Coffee Chat-Spread the word for any families that are interested in attending Kindergarten at First Lutheran next year!
April 23-27th: Spring Break!
April 30: Class Pictures
May 6th: Singing performance at 11am church service
May 10th: Mother’s Day Tea
May 11th: Field Trip to Seattle Childrens Theatre-The Hungry Caterpillar
May 16th: Kindergarten Bake Sale
Dear Kindergarten Families,
We are in full swing for preparing for our Art Walk night! This is an event you will not want to miss! I’m not going to tell you what we are doing so it is a fun surprise, but know that the students are so excited to have you come see all of their hard work on the 29th!
Literacy: We had fun this week reading and writing days of the week! Knowing specialized words in categories lets children use these words when writing and recognize them quickly when reading. We talked about how days of the week have names and are always in the same order. Students then cut out the words of days of the week and matched them on a piece of paper. We also introduced a new word family, the –op family! We had fun brainstorming –op words and then writing them for handwriting practice. We started working on poems about our zoo animals, too. Lastly, we started our next Little Reader about the zoo!
Writers Workshop: This week we talked about planning detailed stories by saying detailed stories aloud before writing them. Students paired up with their writing partner and explained what they were going to write and then worked on their own to write detailed stories. We talked about how details make our stories more focused and interesting.
Math: This week we reviewed graphing, skip counting, addition and subtraction. Students had a blast skip counting in different styles…robot style, mouse style, etc. See if your child can skip count by 5s in a silly voice!
Chapel: See enclosed flyer
Big Cheese: How can it be? Our last Big Cheese!!! It was so fun to have Sadie as our last Big Cheese…Hobie the cat came to visit, her mom visited and Sadie brought in some special toys to share with the class. Thank you everyone for all of your hard work to make your child’s week special. Your boards, activities and visitors were incredible. Your children will never forget their special week!!!
Have a wonderful, three day weekend! We will see you on Tuesday! Ms. Heidi and Ms. Hart