Jan 2-5

Happy 2018!!!  I cherished every moment spent and memory made with my family this break and hope you did the same!  January is one of my favorite months for teaching...there are few distractions and the kids seem to grow in unbelievable ways!  Here's to a "new" year of more fun and learning together!

Here is our January Newsletter.
Here is the January lunch menu.

Important Dates and Reminders:
Jan. 5th: Super Hero Day in Kindergarten
Jan. 19th:        ½ Day, 11:30 Dismissal              
Jan. 22nd:        NO SCHOOL          
Jan. 23rd-26th: Celebrate New Directions Week             
Jan. 23rd:        Family Night         
Jan. 23rd:        Game Day Wear (Characters, Twister, Mario, Etc.)         
Jan. 24th:        Backwards Wear Day         
Jan. 25th:        Gym Night             
Jan. 25th:        Active Wear Day           
Jan. 26th:        Camping Wear Day      

Here is a peek at our week:

Math: In math our main focus continues to be teen numbers and addition and subtraction fluency within 5.  We will also work to identify partners of numbers 2-6 by subitizing smaller quantities that work together.  We will work to see these partners automatically when using math tools or when looking at math drawings or pictures.  Our work with partners will contribute to our fluency as we can our knowledge of partners to solve equations quickly.

Reading: This week we will continue to focus on rereading, thinking and talking about the books we read during reader's workshop.  We will have a fun day celebrating everything we know as readers at Super Reader day on Friday!
I will also be formally assessing students' reading levels in the next few weeks; keep your eyes peeled for next "dot colors" in your child's book bag.

Writing: We said farewell to true story writing before we left for break and will welcome procedural or how-to writing this week. We will explore this type of writing by first reading and discussing many different how-to books and then we'll work together to write a class piece that teaches others, step by step, how to do something we do each day in our class (like making a lunch choice). Then the children will be off to brainstorm teachable topics and write their own teaching books. I know they will just love this type of writing! You can encourage idea generating at home by discussing things they do each day and then listing the steps involved in those tasks. Talking these things through will help them to easily transition to this type of writing.


Science: This week we will start a new unit on Plants and Animals.  The goal of this science unit will be to learn about the similarities of plants and animals as living things and to study closely the needs of each.  Later in the unit we will even have the chance to grow and observe living plants and animals.

Snap Words:

Here are the words we have worked on so far this school year. Please continue to practice these! Invite your child to try to spell these words in lots of ways: write them using a variety of tools, spell orally in the car, magnetic letters, or on a drawing app. Our new focus words the next 2 weeks will be:  did, do, play, make, for.