School Wide Postal Service

There will be a school wide postal service the week of 7th- 11th and your child can send their friends a letter or note through the “mail”. You may send your child a letter through school mail, too! Letters must be labeled with the each student’s first and last name and their room # (this must be written legibly!). There must also be a return address of the sender’s first name, last initial and room #. No actual stamp is required. Simply attach a sticker or have your child draw his/her own “stamp”.
I encourage everyone to write a short note on each piece of mail they send. This is a great time to get to practice some real world writing!
I will be sending all the kids in my class a piece of mail so that no one will be without, however, the more mail you send the more likely you are to receive! So if your child is really interested in receiving mail, please remind them that they need to send mail to others too!
If you are interested in participating in this activity, please have your child bring the completed postcard with them to school between Feb. 7-11th and we’ll drop it off in our hallway mailbox.

Classroom Update 1.28.11

In reading groups, we learned about initial “Ll” (words with “Ll” at the beginning) and listened to “Nature’s Spy” by Shelley Rotner and Ken Kreisler. This book introduced us to the word, “spy” and showed us how you can see new things if you look closely at nature. During guided reading we read, “Nap in a Lap.” While reading this book, we continued making predictions and discussing the main ideas, the characters, and the setting. These discussion opportunities are helping us to comprehend the stories that we read. Please continue using these questioning techniques at home. Our word of the week was “go.”

In math we learned about how to represent numbers with sticks and introduced the idea of the "ones" place and the "tens" place. Students also drew pictures of three things they did during the day and put them in order. We discussed the importance of sequencing. Finally, the students learned to make addition stories using words, pictures and/or numbers.

I will be sending home your child’s January journal soon. Please take some time to look through it with your child and have him/her read you his/her journal entries. Possible areas to discuss:
o Finger-spaces
o Temporary/Dictionary spelling
o Detailed/ colorful pictures(5 art B's)
o Neat “Ball and Stick” handwriting using uppercase and lowercase letters
o Correct punctuation (the use of periods)

Next week is Standford testing. Please make every effort to be on time to school.If a student happens to be absent next week, make up tests will occur the following week. Make up tests are done in a different room in the school proctored by an EA or someone from the office staff.

Have a great weekend!

MLK Assembly

On Monday January 24th there will be a school-wide assembly honoring MLK. The assembly starts promptly at 9:30 and ends at 10:15. If any PM students want to attend this assembly, they may attend accompanied by their parents.

Stanford Testing

Just a reminder that Standford testing will begin on 1/31. There will be a practice test on 1/28. We will not need any volunteers on 1/28, 1/31, 2/1,2/3,2/4.
Thanks!

Bus Zone

Many parents have been parking in the bus zone right outside of Grand Central for pick up and drop off. This was okay for awhile, however we now have students who ride the bus and the buses are not able to access the bus parking.

Please park your car in the parking lot or somewhere else on the street so we can leave the bus zone open during drop off and pick up times.

Thank you!

Enemy Pie Author | Derek Munson

Today we had the opportunity to listen to Derek Munson speak to us about his book, Enemy Pie. He was such a great speaker and really engaged the kids in the theme of the book. He called up many kids from the audience to help make his enemy pie!
Anna and Chloe teammed up to put in sidewalk chalk and cat litter.

Amanda put in something that made your breath stink, I think!


Anna putting in dog food...

Snowman Art

Today we had our artist in residence come back for a snow day make up art session with the PM class. Luckily, I had my husband bring me my camera in time to capture the kids working. These turned out SO well! I just love the creativity. To be honest, when they first started working on them, I was a little nervous how they would turn out. My mantra now is "Thou shall not judge a kindergartener's art until it is finished!"