Field Day & Summer

The Monkeys had a BLAST at field day!  Thank you to everyone that purchased the field day t-shirts, which made the inflatables at field day possible!

It was a wonderful year with your children!  They are all so special and I wish them the best in 1st grade!  They will do great things in 1st grade and will love it!  PLEASE keep reading with your child all summer long.  Studies show that if children do not read over the summer, they can lose 2-3 months of their reading progress.  Please take a look at the summer activities packet I placed in your child's report card envelope.  Have your child get a start on the list of 1st grade sight words, keep a writing journal this summer and work on math word problems.  Most of all though, let your child have A LOT of fun and stay safe!

News for the Week of May 13th

Thank you SO much to all of you for the wonderful gift card from the class to Moviehouse & Eatery!  I love it!  Also, thank you very much for all of the book fair book donations, sweet cards, delicious treats and gift cards during teacher appreciation week!  I am so lucky to be able to teach such amazing children and work with such wonderful and supportive families!  Teaching can be hard, but it is so rewarding and fun!  I will truly miss each of my little Monkeys, but I know they will do great things and continue to learn and grow in first grade!  

We hope you enjoyed the kindergarten showcase and the kindergarten musical performance on May 10th!

The week before last we had a power outage at school and it last for approximately 3 hours.  We had to get creative!  We told campfire stories with flashlights, read books, took a walk around the school and had our last library time.  Here we are in the dark, in the library!

This past week we finished up with some math activities to spiral our learning from throughout this year.  We took an assessment on teen numbers and we made some really cute teen number people.  The students got various teen numbers and then had to show the number in 4 different ways.  These are so cute and are hanging up in our classroom.

During language arts, we read the poem My Little Hamster and focused on the sight word "her."  We read the poem together several times, word the sight word "her" in the blanks, highlighted the rhyming words and colored the illustration.  We have completed an author study on Mo Willems and read the books Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, The Pigeon Wants a Puppy, Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog, The Pigeon Needs a Bath and Knuffle Bunny.  We completed a variety of different reading response activities after reading these books.  I am sure you have seen some of them come home in your child's folder.  We also began an author study on Oliver Jeffers.  We read his books, Lost and Found, Up and Down, The Day the Crayons Quit  (he was the illustrator) and we will read Stuck next week.  

In social studies, we finished up our unit on Patriotism.  We watched the video "Old Glory" about our American flag and finished making our "tear art" American flags, we read a book called America Is... which taught us about our country and some American symbols.  We then learned about the Texas flag and watercolored some Texas flags and then added the lone star to the flags.

Next week, we will work on memory books, a summer goals activity and some other fun things to finish up our kindergarten year!  Wow!  It went by SO fast!!

Reminders

Field Day is on Tuesday, May 21st.  Please send your child to school in a bathing suit with a shirt to cover it up, water shoes (they can't be barefoot when running around on the wet, slippery pavement) and apply sunscreen before coming to school.  Make sure to pack a towel for your child to dry off and a set of dry clothes (including underwear/panties, socks and dry shoes) in their backpack.  We will have field day activities from 9:40 to 10:40 a.m.  Then all of the girls will go in the classroom to change out of their wet clothes.  When they are done, they will wait in the hallway while all of the boys change out of their wet clothes.  Then we will go to our "cookout" lunch!

Our class party will be on Thursday, May 23rd at 2:00 p.m.  Room parents & volunteers will set up for the party at 1:30 p.m.  Please sign in at the office with a driver's license or valid ID first and get a badge.

Please be sure to check out the "Dates to Remember" below. 
Upcoming Dates to Remember:

5/21           Field Day and Cookout
5/23           Last Day of School
5/23           End of Year Party, 2:00 p.m.
5/23           Report cards go home (if you have cafeteria charges or all library books 
                  are not turned in, the report card will be left in the front office until charges
                  are taken care of with the cafeteria and/or library)

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris May Birthdays:

Alicia-5/5
Avery-5/5

Morris June Birthdays:
CJ-6/10
Benjamin-6/12
Jackson-6/16
Aubrey-6/28

Morris July Birthdays:
Lucas-7/11
Noah-7/23

Morris August Birthdays (before the 2018-19 school year began):
Lauren-8/1 

Happy Birthday Alicia & Avery!

June Birthdays

Benjamin, CJ, Aubrey & Jackson

July Birthdays

Noah & Lucas

August Birthdays (before the start of the school year)

Lauren

News for the Week of April 29th

The Monkeys really enjoyed the kindergarten salsa celebration on Friday!  We have had fun growing our jalapenos and cilantro and learned a lot in the process.  We appreciate all of the parents that took time out of their busy schedules to attend the celebration and try our homemade salsa with chips.

In math, we completed a unit on identifying coins (penny, nickel, dime, quarter).  The students only have to be able to identify the coins, but we also discussed their value.  In first grade, the students will work more with adding money.  Now we are finishing up our teen numbers unit this upcoming week.

In language arts, we read the poem, Go Get Some!, which focused on the sight word "get."  We wrote the word "get" several times, looked for rhyming words in our poem and colored the pictures.  We continued our We Are Researchers unit and will finish it this week.  We will share our posters with the class and finish writing our individual research reports.  We will also start a new unit at the end of this week called, "We Can Read and Write."  We will start an author study on Mo Willems.  We will also work on a little something special for our moms for Mother's Day and prepare our things for the Kindergarten Showcase on Friday morning at 7:20 a.m.

In science, we have been learning all about the life cycle of plants (seed, sprout, seedling, plant, flower/fruit).  We are growing our own plants after planting pinto beans in our own cups.  We have been observing them and recording our observations in a booklet.  We will finish our unit on plant life cycles this week and we will begin a new social studies unit called, "Patriotic Customs."

Special Events

Please join us in our classroom from 7:20 a.m.-7:40 a.m. on Friday, May 10th for our Kindergarten showcase.  Your child will show you some of their learning from this school year!  After the showcase, you can go down to the cafeteria for the students' musical performance.  Please make sure you sign in at the office and get a visitor badge beforehand.  Thank you!

Dear Kindergarten families:

The combined Kindergarten classes will be performing for you on Friday, May 10th at 8:00 am.  We will be sharing some songs about our Kindergarten year, and we also have some specials songs in honor of our Moms!

We are looking forward to seeing you on Friday, May 10th at 8:00 am in the CCE Cafeteria.

Reminders

Please return the report card envelope if you have not already.  

Please return book envelopes as soon as possible.  Book envelopes are done for this school year.

Please be sure to check out the "Dates to Remember" below. 
Upcoming Dates to Remember:

5/7             Volunteer Breakfast, 7:15-8:00 a.m. (library)
5/10           Kindergarten Showcase 7:20 a.m.
5/10           Kindergarten Musical Performance, 8 a.m.
5/13-5/15   STAAR Testing in Grades 3-5
5/21           Field Day and Cookout
5/23           Last Day of School
5/23           End of Year Party, 2:00 p.m.

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

Keyan!

Morris May Birthdays:

Alicia-5/5
Avery-5/5

Morris June Birthdays:
CJ-6/10
Benjamin-6/12
Jackson-6/16
Aubrey-6/28

Morris July Birthdays:
Lucas-7/11
Noah-7/23

Morris August Birthdays (before the 2018-19 school year began):
Lauren-8/1 

News for the Week of April 15th

This week our class became a SHINE class!  We completed our class application and were surprised by the PROS and Mrs. Hougham, who came to let us know and cheer for our class!  Here is an explanation of a SHINE class:

S.H.I.N.E. Classes: To become a S.H.I.N.E. Class full of students who are Supportive Helpful Inclusive Non-Stop Encouragers, classes have to complete an application, including four components:

• Receive compliments from two staff members 
• All students have signed the Resolution of Respect from No Plate for Hate 
• All students have to have given at least one affirmation to a classmate 
• Students work on a caring action (a student directed project or activity) that promotes peace and deep care for others in the class, school, or community

The kindergarten classes also got to listen to a couple of stories about service dogs on Monday morning in the library.  Jessica Cunningham, who is a parent of two students at CCE, is training a service dog and will be on campus at times with her service dog, Paige.  Mrs. Cunningham brought another service dog (who is almost finished with its training) for the students to see on Monday.  She taught us not to talk to or pet the dog, because it is learning to work for someone who will need its help.  The service dog has to learn to avoid distractions and focus on its job.  She told us the dog will learn to do things such as turn light switches on and off, open and close drawers, pick up items from the floor and more.

In math, we continued working with developing number concepts for numbers 11-20.  We also have been spiraling past math concepts that we have learned about this year in our math rotations.  Next week, we will take a one week break from numbers 11-20 to really focus on recognizing coins.  We will spend a day focusing on each of four coins:  a penny, a nickel, a dime and a quarter.  We will review our learning and complete a fun coin craft on Friday.  The students have already been learning songs about identifying coins for the past couple of months.

In language arts, we read the poem, My Puppy, which focused on the sight word "and."  We wrote the word "and" several times, looked for rhyming words in our poem and colored the pictures.  We began our new unit called, "We Are Researchers."  Each student has picked an animal that we might see at the zoo or in Africa.  Some students chose an animal and are working on their research by themselves and other students chose animals that others were also interested in and are working in groups.  We are exploring simple non-fiction text about our animals are will listen to more information about them on PebbleGo in the computer lab this week.  The students are writing about their animal's parts and what they look like, their animal's diet and their animal's habitat.  We are also learning many interesting facts about our animal.  We will make a poster of our animal in our groups or individually for some.  We will also write individual research reports about our animals that you will see at our Kindergarten Showcase on May 10th at 7:20-7:40 a.m.

In social studies, we have been learning about characteristics of a place the past 2 weeks.  We learned about landforms such as oceans, plains and grasslands, deserts, mountains, rivers and lakes and glaciers.  We made a book of landforms that we took home last week.  We also learned about natural resources such as water, sun, air, soil, plants, animals, oil, coal, etc.  Next week, we will begin our science unit on plant life cycles.  We have already started to learn about this through our jalapeno and cilantro planting.  However, we will focus more in depth over the next couple of weeks.

The Monkeys were excited to learn about our superstar student, Melvin, the week before last!  We were able to learn about his life and interests.

  

A Note from the Music Room -

Please mark your calendars for Friday, May 10th at 8:00 am!  You won't want to miss the Kindergarten Spring Music Program which will be held that morning in the CCE Cafeteria!  We will share some songs and poems about our Kindergarten class, our Moms (just in time for Mother's Day) and even our own Big Dreams!  We are looking forward to performing for you!

Mrs. Martin (Music) and the Kindergarten Students

Reminders

Please return the report card envelope if you have not already.  

Please return book envelopes by Monday morning each week.

Please be sure to check out the "Dates to Remember" below. 
Upcoming Dates to Remember:

4/28           CCE Round Rock Express Day
4/29-5/3    Book Fair
4/30           Kona Ice after school
4/30           Book Fair open until 6 p.m.
5/10           Kindergarten Showcase 7:20 a.m.
5/10           Kindergarten Musical Performance, 8 a.m.

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

Melvin!

Morris April Birthdays:

Melvin-4/11

Happy Birthday Melvin!