K-C News
January 20, 2017
What you really need to know
Thank you for helping your children with our optional take-home enrichment activities. Our sight word practice page return rate is awesome and I see many of you have logged onto Reading A to Z. These activities are a helpful reinforcement for the work we are doing in school. As always, if you have any feedback, please send it my way.
In celebration of the upcoming 100th day of school and of Dr. King's message to actively do good for others, the kindergarten classes are aiming to collect 100 cans of shelf-stable food (boxes of pasta are ok, too) to donate to the Needham Food Pantry. If you would like to contribute, we will be collecting until February 7.
Thanks to Zoey's dad who came by to be our Mystery Reader. He shared Eric Carle and Bill Martin Junior stories that Zoey read for us!
Happy Birthday to Ezra who turned six on January 20th and may actually use that Karma to become President someday. He has my vote.
Coming Up: K-C Valentine exchange! Look for a class list in your child's folder soon. We love to share the love in Kindergarten :)
Coming Attractions
Our Bloomz calendar also lists all important NPS dates for the remainder of the year.
"Early" Release at 12:15
Tuesday, January 31
"Early" Release at 12:15
Tuesday, February 14
No School, February Break
February 18-February 26
School Resumes
Monday, February 27
What we've been up to.
- We met Shrek the hedgehog who came to visit our classroom with Science teachers Mrs. Goldberg and Mrs. Huber. We learned about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores while Shrek bravely took a stroll around our meeting space! Did you know hedgehog quills are made of hair?
- We celebrated Dr. King's birthday by drawing his portrait. learning a freedom poem (and a bunch of -ing words while we were at it), and studying some of his famous quotes.
- While we continue our study of teen numbers, we are also investigating three-dimensional shapes and sequencing steps of a multi-step task in order. This week, given visual instructions in the wrong order, all students demonstrated how to follow the steps properly to build a castle with their 3-D shapes!
- We have introduced reading baskets with just-right books for each student! Students are beginning to put their sight word and cvc decoding strategies to use to read new books independently. WOW!
- Our latest artistic endeavors have included paper bag gingerbread houses, paper plate hedgehogs, giant mittens at the easel, and funky hats made with watercolor paints and tissue collage.
- We have compared versions of the stories The Mitten and The Hat and even wrote our own story about things you would probably never find in a mitten!
- On inauguration day, we talked about the President's job, where Washington DC is located and the many interesting features of the White House.
Links of the week.
Read Here are My Hands and listen for all of the ING words.
Challenge: write a list of ING words from he story ( You can see them on the pages if you look carefully!)
Challenge: Keep playing to try to get to 40.
The things kids say. For real.
We have introduced a lot of challenging vocabulary lately, including words like, sphere, cylinder, rectangular prism, inauguration, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. which is an impossible multi-syllabic mouthful for most kindergartners. Which is why I generally refer to him as Dr. King.
Student: Why didn't we have buddies or computer time today?
Mrs. Cohen: Since inauguration day only comes around every four years and it's a very important day, we decided to discuss that instead of doing our usual Friday activities.
Student: Will we have buddies next week, when it isn't that day?
Mrs. Cohen: Inauguration day?
Student: I know the word. I just can't say it.