K-C News
December 16, 2016
What you really need to know
I have temporarily changed the background art for our news to cappuccino and newspaper, in honor of the ten upcoming days between December 24 and January 2 because they didn't have one with a blender and sunscreen. But for real, THANK YOU to each of you and your wonderful children for making this year really, truly, ridiculously enjoyable. I am looking forward to many more adventures together in 2017!
You should have received a word ring and Sight Word homework in your child's folder on Friday. The homework is optional, but highly recommended. The more sight words we know, the easier it is to find them in books and spell them when we write, and really build our confidence as readers and writers! Assignments and new word cards will come home approximately every two weeks (with room for vacations in there). Please KEEP THE WORD RING AT HOME and attach new cards as they accumulate over time. Feel free to add your own cards if your child is really into it :) And if your child forgets what to do for rainbow writing, just choose 3 colors (crayons or whatever) and write the letter 3 times, layering one on top of the other. No bubble writing allowed!!
Anyone staying home for winter break who is interested in showing our fish a good time for ten days, please let me know via email or Bloomz. First to respond wins! They come fully equipped with a small tank, heater, filter and food. You provide the love and attention.
The past weeks have been busy and fun, finishing up our study of nocturnal animals and preparing for more wintery pursuits, including our first brush with sub-freezing temperatures. Thank you for providing boots, hats, gloves, mittens and seasonal outerwear!! We will go outside most days, even with snow on the playground, so please continue to provide snow pants and boots. If you have a spare pair of snow pants you would like your child to leave at school, just let me know and we'll store them.
Thank you to our Mystery Readers! Colin's Mom, Pam, came in to read Bear Snores On. We will get to revisit Bear in his sequel stories in the coming months. Bailey's Dad, Noah and sister, Harper also came by to share The Day the Crayons Quit, a crowd favorite!
Coming Attractions
Winter Break - No School
Saturday, December 24- Monday, January 2
School Resumes in 2017
Tuesday, January 3
No School, Dr. Martin Luther King's Birthday
Monday, January 16
Delayed Opening grade 1-5/No AM Kindergarten
Tuesday, January 17
What we've been up to.
- In math we learned to play the dreidel game. So everyone incidentally learned a little bit of Hebrew during math time. So there's that.
- Our nocturnal animals study took a crafty turn these past weeks. We have filled our bulletin boards with foxes, raccoons and owls, and we made them all by collaging and painting shapes (circles, triangles and squares). We also learned how to draw realistic owls with a guided drawing lesson, painted skunks and glittered ourselves silly to make some sparkly spiderwebs. If the whole yoga teacher thing doesn't work out for me, I might look into art...
- We learned to identify the setting in the story Brave Little Owl and made our own emergent readers about nocturnal animals and all the places you can find squares.
- You may have noticed we raised the bar with our Weekend News writing paper. We now have the option of adding page 2, because sometimes one page just isn't enough.
- Mrs. Martell, our technology teacher, came to our classroom with Beebots (little robots that look like bees) to introduce us to coding. In December, all schools across the country are invited to join in an hour of code challenges. We learned to give our Beebots commands in order to reach a destination.
- We are so, so, so close to earning 100 fuzzies! I hope you are as excited as we are. We made it all the way to 99 on Friday. However, I am a mean teacher and denied number 100 because, tough love, we just didn't earn it. Silver lining alert, we already cast our votes for the special event we will earn next week when we get to 100. So far we have 8 votes for movie day and 8 votes for "share" day, with 3 absent student votes outstanding. It's a nail biter.
Links of the week.
The things kids say. For real.
Mrs. Cohen: An owl has a special neck to help them turn their head around almost completely. People don't have a special neck like that, so we can't turn our head that way.
Student: Owls have 14 vertebrae in their neck. Humans only have 7.
Mrs. Cohen: I had no idea, but I am totally going to take your word for it.
If you're googling right now, he was absolutely right.