| From the Teacher's Desk | | Dear Parents, It is hard to believe that the school year is half over! The children have been working hard and have accomplished so much since September. I am so proud of the social, emotional and academic strides that each child has made. I look forward to school each day with joy and excitement. This class is wonderful and each day they show how well they get along and care for each other.
Thank you for all your support each and every day, and special thanks to parents who will be providing refreshments and activities for Valentine’s Day. Have a great Valentine’s Day celebration with your loved ones. Sincerely,
Ellen Landriau
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| Language Arts | | This month's themes are “Sunshine and Raindrops” and “Wheels Go Around.” The children will be building on letters and sounds that have been previously introduced, as well as learning new Alphafriends. Words with short -i- will be made and reviewed along with short -a- words. The children will continue to write sentences using high frequency words. Comprehension is an essential part of reading, for decoding alone does not impart meaning to the reader. Therefore, comprehension skills such as predicting and inferring, summarizing, and evaluating are taught and reinforced daily. Children should practice predicting what will happen next, summarizing and retelling the story, and evaluating the actions and characters as they are read to by parents or siblings. Writing is an integral part of learning to read. The children write regularly in their journals and make class books. Correct spelling is not important, but rather deconstructing words, identifying the sounds, and writing the letters. Writing will help all children become better readers. | |
| Mathematics | | The children are learning to sort and classify objects by size, color, and shape. They will continue to make graphs with real objects. The children will compare, sort, order, measure, and estimate size, weight, and capacity. | |
| Seasonal Themes | |
Science and Social Studies continue to be integrated into the Language Arts curriculum. In January we focused on community helpers. We had a wonderful tour of Fire station # 22 in Germantown as well as a fun and informative tour of the Kingsview Village Giant. In Science we are focusing our study on polar animals. We are learning many facts about polar bears and penguins. We have learned how to draw penguins and have learned about the 17 different penguin types. We will continue to create penguin related projects as we discover more about each type. We have also learned many facts about the polar bear. We measured their length of ten feet in our classroom to understand how immense these animals truly are. We have studied how they stay warm. The children have seen several real-life movies about both penguins and polar bears. We have listened to stories both factual and fictional about both animals. We have also discussed the effects of global warming on the polar bear.
POD meetings in February will focus on healthy habits and our character word- COURAGE Valentine's Day will be celebrated on February 14, and will give children an opportunity to express friendship toward each other. Children should bring a Valentine for each student, as well as one for their 4th-grade buddies. A small gift or treat for the buddy would be appropriate. Please do not address the envelopes so as to facilitate the delivery of the Valentines.
The 100th Day of school will be on February 18, unless we have a snow day. To get in the spirit of the day, and to help the children understand the concept of 100, each child should bring a collection of 100 small items. The collection must be in an unbreakable, see-through container, such as a ziploc bag or plastic jar. They must be able to easily carry their collections! Fabulous Field Trips
| | We worked together to make a thankyou book for the fire fighters and a banner for the friends at the Giant. On January 19th Kindergarten children traveled to the Kingsview Village Fire station #22 in Germantown. We met some wonderful fire fighters. We were allowed to tour the entire facility and saw their TV lounge, bunkrooms and kitchen. We got to walk inside the ambulance and hop aboard the fire engine. Fire fighter Steve got dressed in all of his gear and talked to us a bit about fire safety. We knew the answers to all of his questions and he told us that he was very proud of how much we knew. After leaving the fire station we traveled by bus to the Kingsview Village Giant. Upon arrival we were met by John, the manager. He issued us each a badge telling us what our jobs were.We toured each department and got to go inside the floral department refrigerator, eat a cookie at the bakery, pet a lobster in the seafood department and press the buttons to make the conveyor belts work at the checkout. John gave each of us a goodie bag at the end of our tour. We are looking forward to our March trip to see a production of Aesop's fables at George Mason University Center for the Performing Arts and to the National Gallery of Art in April. |
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| | IMPORTANT! | | Looking ahead to First Grade, the Kindergarten children have homework Monday through Thursday. Please help your child complete the work and return it to school the next day. Homework should take no more than 15 minutes per night. | |
| Reminder | | Children need SNEAKERS every day for safe play inside and outside. If there is snow on the ground, they need to bring boots to school for recess. Every child needs a HAT and GLOVES OR MITTENS every day—we go outside unless it is raining or extremely cold. If children change out of wet clothes, the clothing needs to be replaced the next day so that they have a change at school. | |
| Tentatively Scheduled Events | | Pencil these in….more info to follow…
March 9- Field trip to George Mason University Center for the Arts April 14- Field Trip to National Gallery of Art
April 21- 1:30 dismissal and Spring break May- Kindergarten Art Gallery date to be announced
May 13- Mothers’ breakfast May 20- Fathers’ breakfast | |
| Spanish | | The school year is moving by very quickly. I am excited at the progress that I have seen from our younger grades. We will also begin new topics in class on February. During this month we will learn about the four seasons and the weather. We will learn a song called “Que llueva, que llueva” “It is rainy, it’s rainy”. | |
| Art | | We have learned about many new artists in the last few months using the letter of the week to guide our artist choices. Some of the artwork we have made recently are Picasso circus clowns, Calder mobiles, Grandma Moses winter scenes and Klimpt magic trees. This week we will be creating linear industrial pictures as we learn about artist, Fernand Leger. In the weeks to come we will be doing art like Dubuffet , Paul Klee, and Karl Appel.
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| Music | | In Music Class, the students are singing songs about Winter, and they also continue to build their repertoire of traditional and fun folk songs which have originated in our great big, diversified country of America. They are learning how to read "picture symbol charts" in which little images stand for music notes of a song, indicating relative pitches and basic rhythms. This is a step towards learning to read music. They continue to have fun with creative movement, and acting out songs as they sing.
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| Physical Education | | Kindergarten has been jumping for joy in PE. They are learning the beginning steps to jumping rope properly. Through different jumping activities, they are building their coordination and balance so that jumping becomes easier. They are showing that no obstacle is too high to jump over. | |
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