The children are certainly learning quite a bit about sea life! Their aquariums are on the back wall and they have made octopuses and sea turtles and have learned many interesting facts about them both. You should ask them how many legs an octopus has and about where the sea turtle lays her eggs!
We are getting excited to go to the Aquarium on Thursday, January 31st. More information about the trip and what the students will need will be going home the day before we go. They will need a disposable drink and lunch. We will eat snacks before leaving the school. If you have not sent the $7 to cover the cost of the trip, please send it in as soon as possible. It should be a fun trip!
We will be having our Fish Day on Friday, February 1st. Students will get to travel to all the different Kindergarten classrooms to complete various fish and other sea creature projects. Thank you in advance to those who have offered to volunteer. We could still use a couple more volunteers. Volunteers should plan to be here from 9-10:00am and should check in at the office first.
We had a whole-school assembly today in the gym. The focus was on showing Outstanding Effort and Acts of Kindness. Ms. P. from the Burlington Science Center talked about being kind to animals and shared about how she took care of an abandoned owlet found in the middle of the road. (She named him Eddison). She took care of him and trained him and actually brought him to the assembly for us to watch and learn about him. The students enjoyed watching Eddison swoop over the heads of students and teachers!
Progress reports went home today. Our next scheduled conference isn’t until April but if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me. We could either talk over the phone or we could set up a conference in the classroom. The blue progress report folders do need to be returned. You can keep the actual progress report.
The students continue to write in their journals. We continually encourage them to write on their own in their best guess spelling and not to be afraid to make a mistake. We will be starting a unit on persuasive writing. The students will try to convince our science center to give us a class pet! We will be talking a lot about features of good persuasive writing.
We have been practicing our letters and numbers but it never hurts to have them practice at home too. The more they write numbers 0-20, the easier and more natural they will become. The teen numbers are particularly challenging so those are great numbers to practice. We have are currently working on subtracting in math. We spent a lot of time this week practicing our addition and subtraction fluency facts. I would encourage you to continue working with your children on them at home.
We will start our guided reading program next week. Guided reading enables children to practice reading strategies with the teacher's support in small groups. This is just the beginning. It helps your children become more and more comfortable with text. It’s amazing how far they have already come since September!
There has been a lot of sickness going around lately. Our school nurse wants to emphasize the importance of good hand washing and hygiene. If your child has a fever, just a reminder that they have to be fever-free for 24-hours without medicine before returning to school.
There is no school on Monday for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Have a great long weekend!
Enjoy all the snow and stay safe!
Melanie Duncan
PS...We will be going to the library on Wednesday.
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