Week of 5-22-17

This is always a bittersweet time of year.  We are all excited for summer break and are looking forward to rest, relaxation, and fun, but we are also sad that this school year has come to a close. The Monkeys have worked so hard and made some amazing friendships that will only continue to grow next year in 1st grade. In math, the Monkeys have been learning about coins and working on being able to identify one coin from another. We have used these fun songs to help us out and they are loving them!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVpcZ5obmsM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aajLkveG750&t=102s

In language arts, we have been doing some author studies on Mo Willems and Oliver Jeffers. Both authors create fun and engaging books for all kids.  Ask your child what their favorite Mo Willems book is and what their favorite book by Oliver Jeffers might be.  We have also been writing about how we have grown this year in Kindergarten.  The Monkeys have been writing some fun and kind things about their dads that will go home next week as early Father's Day love!

We also got to watch another tradition this week at CCE when we watched the senior walk. It will be so fun to watch your kiddos come back to CCE for the senior walk!

Remember that next week is a short week with Memorial Day on Monday.  Then, since the last day of school is on Thursday, we will not be at school on Friday.  It will be a fun and exciting week!

Tuesday is field day and game day!  Remember that your child will need to bring a change of clothes to school on Tuesday since we will have water stations during field day.  We will be changing after field day before we go to lunch.  Your kiddo may also bring any board games or card games to school that day for our game day. They will need to bring a game that they know how to play and that they can teach others to play. Please no electronic games.

Wednesday will be the day that we will start packing up all their things. Please send a reusable bag labeled with their name to put all their school goodies in to take home! We will also be doing some flashlight reading, so please drop a flashlight, again labeled with their name, into their backpack.

Thursday is the last day of school and our end of year party will start at 1:30. We hope you will all join us!

Have a great holiday weekend and I will see my Monkeys on Tuesday!

Week of May 1st

The Monkeys had a very busy, but great week of school!  In science, we have continued learning about the life cycle of plants.  The students have been very excited to see the rapid growth of their pinto bean plants in our classroom.  We have been observing them daily and recording our observations in our Plant Observation Book every few days.  The students will be bringing their plants home Monday afternoon, so find a place in your yard or a larger pot or planter to transplant their pinto bean plant.  Only a couple of the beans did not grow, so we will probably replant for those 2 students.  We will finish up our study of the life cycle of plants next week and then begin learning about Patriotism and Historical Figures in social studies.  

We also finished our PBL project and celebrated with our Cinco de Mayo Salsa celebration.  The students had so much fun growing our jalapenos and cilantro, harvesting them and watching the teachers make salsa.  The salsa was delicious!  Thank you SO much to all of the parents for your support and help with this fun learning project!

In language arts, we finished our research unit of reptiles and zoo animals.  We finished our individual reports and our animal posters.  I filmed each of the students reading their report and I filmed the students presenting their posters.  I will be creating QR codes for you to scan with your phone to watch the videos of your child.  Come check out our posters in the hallway.  We will also be sharing our individual reports with you at our Kinder Showcase on Tuesday, May 16th from 8:00-8:30 a.m. in our classroom.  Be sure to come!  We will be working on some special projects for our parents and for our mothers in language arts this next week.  

In math, we have been focusing on solving word problems.  We have discussed "clue" words to determine if a problem wants us to add or subtract.  We talked about words such as "more", "in all", "altogether", "total" and "sum" for addition.  We also talked about words such as, "less", "left", "away" and "difference" for subtraction.  We will continue to practice solving word problems next week.

The week before last, the Monkeys had fun dressing up as their favorite storybook characters!  Check them out!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!