September 28, 2018 Newsletter

Dear Parents,

It's hard to believe that we have reached the end of September and that October will be here next week!  We have finished most of our apple projects and will be starting our unit on mammals and other zoo animals soon in preparation for our field trip to the zoo on October 11th.  More info about this trip will be going home the day before the trip.  Please don’t forget to send the $4 to cover the cost of the trip this week.  Mrs. Lewandowski, Mrs. Shaw, and Mrs. Rosolino will be the three chaperones joining us on this trip.

The students enjoyed seeing the book all of you helped make at the Back-to-School Night last week that included the drawings of your faces!  I won’t say which children looked proud and which ones looked embarrassed. :) I do want to thank all of you for willingly participating in such a fun project for the students!  The students also completed the same project and enjoyed guessing who their friends were on each page. 

We have completed two other class books as well.  One is called Dingle Dangle Deary Me and the other is Our Class Color Book, which contains different colored paintings by each student.  The children are working on a new class book, Apples Up on Top and will be starting another one, Room 115 Likes Reading next week.  All of our class books have started circulating to your homes.  Make sure to have your child read the book with you before you return them the next day. Please try to return them the next day so someone else can bring them home to share!

The children finished their September writing journals and brought them home today.  They wrote their words in their best guess spelling.  We help them by saying the words with them and accept the letters they hear.  You will be able to see tremendous growth as the year progresses.  I would encourage you to keep their September journals so you can compare them to their journals at the end of the year! The students have finished their Brown Bear innovations and will bring them home as soon as they read them to the class.  Make sure to save these and all the individual books they take home.  These books are great for them to read and review often.  The small alphabet books they have been working on in class can also be kept and reviewed often.

We have been practicing counting and writing numbers 0-5 in math this week.  I will be sending home some number writing homework very soon.  Students should complete them at home with pencils and then return them the next day.  Hopefully the extra practice will help students learn their numbers better!  They aren’t always easy for those 5 and 6 year old hands!  I would also recommend students to practice letter and number formations in other ways too.  They can write letters and numbers in sand, salt, rice, and even shaving cream!

We went to the library on Wednesday and will go this Wednesday and every Wednesday after that.  Children can return their books whenever they are finished with them but they should be returned by Wednesday so they can borrow another book.

We will start having parent volunteers come into the classroom to help from 10:10-10:55am this week with our art projects.  I sent a volunteer calendar home to parents who emailed that they were interested in helping.  I will send an email towards the end of the month asking for volunteers for the month of November.  You can respond with the days and how often you are interested in helping.  Volunteers just need to check in at the office to get a badge and then you can come down to the classroom.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Melanie Duncan

PS… It would be tremendously helpful if you could help your child practice putting on sweatshirts/jackets, turning them right-side out, and zipping them.  We don’t mind helping them but would like them to become more independent as the year goes on.  Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated, especially now that the weather will be getting cooler.  Thanks!

Also, the Scholastic Book Club Order is due this Thursday, October 4th.  You can send in the order form with a check or place an order online if you would like.

We painted with apples!

Here are a few pictures from a movement break song we learned this week that had up skipping, sliding, walking, jumping, and tip-toeing all around the classroom!

September 21, 2018 Newsletter

Dear Parents,

We can safely say that we had a wonderful second week in Kindergarten!  The children are learning to listen to and follow directions.  They are learning to use materials and put them away.  The children walk in a safe and caring line and are learning one another’s names as we greet one another at meeting time. 

It was nice to see so many of you at our Back to School Night last night.  Thank you for participating in the drawing activity and listening to such a long presentation!  If you weren’t able to come to the presentation, we sent home the drawing activity in your child’s folder.  Please draw your face in the circle and return it to school.

I shared information about how to connect to your child’s Seesaw account in the packet from the Back to School Night.  Please look that over this weekend and try to connect.  There is already a post waiting for you to see! 

The students have begun their first of many innovations.  This one is following the predictable words of Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin, Jr.  They have also learned poems, participated in shared reading, and have listened to many stories.  They are doing a great job rotating around to their daily work centers and have been enjoying all the painting, gluing, and coloring!

We have started making letter/alphabet books.  We are going in the order that the letters are presented in Fundations.  The students have completed the T, B, and F books and will start their N books next week.  I would encourage you to put these books and other books that your child makes in a shoebox or on a special shelf so that they can find them and read them often.

In math, the children are practicing counting, representing, and writing numbers 1-5.  I hope the math papers that are coming home are helpful for you to see what they are doing in math.  The homework sheet is optional but would be a great tool for you to use with your child for further practice.  I would encourage you to practice writing the numbers 1-5 with your child during the next couple of weeks to make sure your child is getting lots of practice with them.  Feel free to get creative with it...they can write the numbers in sand, salt, or even shaving cream!  During calendar time, the students follow patterns and practice counting and have been working on learning the days of the week.

Our first field trip will be Thursday, October 11th.  We are going to the Franklin Park Zoo!  The cost of the trip is $4.  Checks need to be made payable to Burlington Public Schools and should be in by Thursday, October 4th.  If you are interested in chaperoning, please let me know sometime next week.  I will try selecting chaperones by the end of the week.  Also, please let me know if you are interested in volunteering in the classroom during the month of October.  I will be sending the volunteer schedule out next week.

The students completed their first class book.  Similar to the face project many of you completed at the Open House, the children drew and colored their faces for their friends to guess who they were.  All the pages got put into a class book that will start circulating to student homes next week.  Please read and enjoy the book with your child when it is his/her turn and send it back into school on the next school day so another student may borrow it.  You will know it is a class book because it has our class list on the back and is full of work completed by all of the students. 

I’ve included pictures of all the artwork we have done so far.  The students are hard workers and are off to a great start!

Have a great weekend!

Melanie Duncan

PS… School Photos will be this Wednesday, September 26th.  The order forms were sent home earlier this week.  Please be sure to return them with the payment by Wednesday if you would like to order pictures.

Also… We will be going to the library on Wednesday.  Students should return their books from our last visit so they can borrow another one.

SOARing at Francis Wyman

We have been learning about the SOAR motto at Francis Wyman and what the behavior expectations at school are.  We have been practicing them since the first day of school.  Mrs. McDonald came in today to give us the final golden falcon wings stamp!  We made necklaces demonstrating that we know what it means to SOAR!

S - Self-Control
O - Outstanding Effort
A - Acts of Kindness
R - Respect

ST Math

The students enjoyed learning how to use ST Math today!  I will share more information about it at our Back-to-School Night tonight. 

Cross-Section Diagrams

That's right!  Your kindergartner learned how to make a cross-section diagram today!  We looked at pictures of many fruits and vegetables to see what they look like on the inside and outside and then we drew and labeled what the inside of an apple looks like!  They labeled the skin, stem, flesh, and seeds!  If you would like to extend this activity at home, feel free to buy a few different kinds of fruits or vegetables at the grocery store, cut them in half, and see what's inside!  It would be great practice to draw and label what they see!  Students are welcome to bring their work in to show the rest of the class. 

Library Visit

Our class visited the FW Library this morning!  We enjoyed listening to Ms. Carney, our librarian, read a story and then we got to pick books to take home!  Each student brought home one book.  It will need to be returned by next Wednesday so he/she can take another book home.  We will visit the library every Wednesday morning.  I would recommend putting the library book in a safe, consistent place each week to make it easier to keep track of it.  Students are also welcome to return their books as soon as they are done with them.  We will keep them in the classroom until Wednesday.

Back to School Night

September 14, 2018 Newsletter

Dear Parents,

The first week of school has come and gone and your children seem to have adjusted well. We have spent the week doing "guided discoveries" which are focused, purposeful, and playful ways to introduce materials, areas, and activities in the classroom.  This helps in the use and care of the materials and also promotes independence at cleanup time.  Our expectations are clear and encourage students to keep a kind, caring, and safe classroom.  This is all part of Responsive Classroom and will be continued next week. 

We have read many stories, which we call "read alouds".  The children have read our morning message and have answered questions in morning meeting.  We have sung songs, done activities, and read poetry.  We are also getting to know one another better every day.  We have completed five days of work centers.  The students have a job list to complete each morning and will eventually rotate through their jobs independently (although they need quite a bit of support at the beginning of the year).  They have improved each day!

Our Parent Back-to-School Night is scheduled for this coming Thursday night, September 20th.  The schedule was sent home today in your child’s folder.  It is a great opportunity to learn more about the curriculum and what we do every day at school.  There will be a time to ask general questions but it is not intended to be a personal conference time.  I have a fun project for parents to complete that I know your children will love!  I am looking forward to seeing you all there!  It is not intended for children to come.

Please don’t forget to complete a CORI at the Central Office at the back of the High School if you are interested in volunteering at all in the classroom or on field trips. 

Mrs. Sullivan and I are both enjoying our time with your children and are excited about working with them for the remainder of the year.  We are looking forward to working with all of you too!

We hope you enjoy the pictures below.  They capture small glimpses of some of what we did during our first week of Kindergarten!

Have a great weekend!
Melanie Duncan