SHORT week and a visitor...

It's a 4 day week! Wahoo! Thank you presidents! We will all have lots of catching up to do! Kindergarten has a new pet! It's a ringed neck dove named "Sweety". Sweety is 14 years old and has been living at the Alta school that long I believe. We are very excited to have her be a part of our classroom and learn more about her and how to care for her.

Sweety loves to land on your head...so if you don't like that you just put your hand on your head and wave it around. It seems to work.

Otherwise just be quiet and let her land on you. She is harmless!

We are wrapping up our YOUNG AUTHOR's stories and art work...kids have done a nice job with their SMALL moment stories. 

It's been a GLUE festival around here for a few weeks....many thanks to my VOLUNTEERS...you rock!

Other than that...we will be wrapping up a few assessments this week for Parent/Teacher conferences next Tuesday and Wednesday. Your scheduled time was sent home today in your child's red folder. Please mark it on your calendar and fill out the attached form and send it back to me by Friday. The form really helps me be prepared on what you would like to discuss and manage our time, so if you have some specifics please write them down and send them back.

On another note, I have been pulling teeth (not really) to get books back to school the next day. The books always come home Tuesday-Thursday. Please read them and ALWAYS stick them back in your child's red folder. It helps me teach my guided reading groups the following day. Kids that leave their book at home miss out on learning opportunities.

Reading this week consists of DRAWING conclusions. We began our unit of study this week by playing and practicing the game of charades. Kids learn to draw conclusions from a given action. Tomorrow we will be at it again, but adding drawing conclusions from verbal cues. Kids are picking up on this comprehension skill and began relating it to reading today right away. It was so cool!

Writing this week will consist of wrapping up the finishing touches on our YOUNG author's stories, free writing in our journals and learning to grade our writing based on a WRITING rubric, and taking our MID YEAR writing ASSESSMENT.

Math will consists of:
1. Creating and extending patterns
2. Review estimating
3. Writing numbers, counting from different numbers, and interrupted counting
4. Introducing MEET the calculator.

SCIENCE will consist of:
1. Meeting "Sweety" and learning how to properly care for our new animal.
2. FABRIC investigations....that include exploration of fabric and feely boxes AND a fabric hunt (What is fabric used for?)
Also, Mrs. Farrier is extending my FABRIC unit with painting self portraits on burlap in art...(by the way...they look amazing)

Looking forward to seeing you next week.
Mrs. G