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Gala & Auction: April 28, 2012               Family Fun Night: February 24, 2012 www.barnesvilleschool.org joy. support. excellence. From the Teacher's Desk     Dear Parents, It is so hard to believe that January is gone and we are so close to celebrating our 100th day of school.  The children are growing both socially and academically and the changes I see are just mind boggling.  We have really gelled as a class and  work together so very well.  We have a couple of wonderful field trips coming up in March and April. Homework responsibilities have grown and the children have stepped up to the plate!  We are really working hard to get ourselves ready for the move to first grade next year! Valentine's Day is right on our heels and in preparation for our celebration, please have your child sign their name on one card for each of our 17 students and one for their 4th grade buddy as well. This is a time when buddies generally will exchange small gifts or treats. If you would like to have your child do so, send the gift in, labeled with their buddy's name and we will be sure that it gets to the proper person.  Please do not put an individual name on each card as this makes giving them out more difficult.   Our room Moms will be in touch to sort out the plans for our Valentine's Day party. Stay warm and keep reading to and with your child. Sincerely, Ellen Landriau Language Arts     In January we focused on retelling stories, answering comprehension questions and sequencing stories.  We continue to blend and segment words and our focus has been on the short a words in the -at and -an families.  We have been singing the vowel song to reinforce the short vowel sounds.  We continue to read phonetic readers and to expand the stories.  We are learning different reading strategies such as using picture clues or sounding out unknown words when we read.  We have introduced the high frequency words - to, play, and, go.  In February we will continue to expand these skills and move on to words in the families that contain short e sounds.   Fabulous Field Trips     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 worked together to make a thankyou book for the fire fighters and a banner for the friends at the Giant.   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.      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 Mathematics     In January we worked on telling time to the hour.  The concept of elapsed time was introduced.  We were also introduced to time to the half hour.  At the end of January we began a study of measurement.  We measured objects with non-standard measures such as linking clips and cubes.  We will continue our study of measurement with volume.  We will also work to estimate length and then find the actual measurement. Spanish     Art     Physical Education     Music     Return To:   Home Page  |  Newsletters Section