Week of September 12-16

 Happy Friday, parents! We’ve had a fun week! If your child would like to participate in celebrating the color of the day with Kindergarten next week, here are the colors to wear each day.

Monday: Red

Tuesday: Blue

Wednesday: Yellow

Thursday: Green

Friday: Orange

5^th Grade T-shirt Selection

Next week Monday through Thursday, we will be collecting donations toward your favorite 5^thgrade t-shirt design. Please tell your child to bring in coins ONLY to vote for his/her favorite 5^thgrade t-shirt design. There will be 5 options, one from each class.

Celebration

I award stars to the kids for meeting expectations in the hallway, other common areas, good reports during related arts, and for general overall use of the 7 habits. Yesterday we earned our 20^th star! After 20 stars have been earned, I always allow the kids to give suggestions for some type of celebration and then vote on a favorite. Today’s vote was to make Oobleck one day next week! I think this was a great idea from one of our kiddos because not only is it fun, but it’s educational! So, expect your student to come home one evening next week with a small baggie of Oobleck, a fun, slimy substance!

Questions to ask your child about this week…

As a parent, I’m always curious about what goes on in school with my boys. It seems every time I ask about school I get, “It was good.” So each day, I ask them for a high and a low. As our kids get older sometimes they’re more worried about the social aspects of school. If you want to know more about what your child learned this week, here are a few questions to get them talking. J

What have you learned about the U.S. regions?

How do you use the thinking strategies to help you when you read?

What types of poems have you been writing in class?

What are your big rocks (priorities)?

Can you show me how to write a 7 digit number in various forms?

Next Week’s Learning Plan

7 Habits: We will continue to focus on habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind.

Reading: Thinking strategies will remain our focus for this week. Please encourage your child to use the thinking strategies such as questioning and inferring at home.

Writing: We will begin grammar lessons reviewing the parts of speech, learning about prefixes and suffixes, and we will also be co-authoring poetry for 2-3 voices. You can ask your child about this tonight as we began today.

Math: We will continue our unit on place value and operations with whole numbers.

Social Studies: Our study of geography will segue into a focus on map skills this coming week.

Have a wonderful weekend and please contact me with any questions! Later this weekend, I will update our class website with some great pictures from the week!