April 27, 2018 Newsletter

Dear Parents,

I hope you all had a wonderful vacation! I loved hearing all the stories that your children came back with! They were all excited to share what special times you had last week.

We have had a busy week in Room 115!  We have started learning all about seeds, trees, and plants.  We will start learning about insects soon. The students made trees and labeled each of the parts at the art table. They wrote in their journals about their vacations, what trees give us, and about how seeds travel. Their writing is coming along nicely. We have been practicing putting spaces between our words, periods at the end of the sentences, and uppercase letters at the beginning of sentences.  They will continue writing narrative stories during the next couple of weeks and will be writing stories about themselves and some things they have done!

We have read several of Eric Carle’s books this week.  We started making our own versions of “The Very Busy Spider.”  These will come home when they are finished.  We also finished a class book called “If There Were No Trees.”  Please be sure to return all class books as soon as you are done reading them.

We took more pictures of different plants/trees around our school today. We have been discussing the changes in nature we have been observing.  I would encourage you to do something similar at home if you are able to.  I would love for students to bring in their pictures or drawings in a few weeks to show us the changes in nature they observed at their homes!  We also planted peas in the school/community garden this afternoon.  We will check on them in a couple of weeks to see how they are doing!

We will be going to the library on Wednesday.  Students will have an opportunity to buy books from the Spring Book Fair.  Please look at the flyer that went home or look online and send money in on Wednesday if you wish to purchase books.  The Book Fair will also be open Tuesday night during the art show/concert if you would rather shop then.  Purchasing books is completely optional.

It certainly was a busy week!  We have more exciting happenings coming up during the month of May! 

Enjoy your weekend!

Melanie Duncan

PS… Spring Photo Day is Friday, May 4th.  It is completely optional.  If you wish to purchase pictures, please fill out the order form and return it to school by Friday.  Students will not have their pictures taken unless they are ordering them.

April 13, 2018 Newsletter

Dear Parents,

Thank you so much for coming to our Kindergarten Museum on Tuesday.  It was an exciting day for the students who got to show off a lot of the hard work they have completed over the past month or so.  They have much to be proud of!  I hope you have enjoyed looking through their artwork at home too.

The students finished their individual innovations called One, Two, Three, Four.  These went home today in their folders.  I would encourage the children to read them as often as possible and be sure to point to the words as they read.  It is a wonderful way to reinforce their sight words in context.  The students did a great job thinking of different adjectives to describe the animals in their books.

We finished learning about all seven continents this week.  Asia was our last one.  The students brought their continents book home to share with their families earlier this week.  We were very fortunate to have Abhirama’s mom come in to talk about what life in India is like.  She shared a lot of really neat facts about India and talked about some of her experiences there.  She also showed some really neat pictures and videos!

I would encourage you and your child to work a lot on their sight words and math fluency facts over vacation.  May is a big assessment month for us and I will be checking students on both of these skills during the next few weeks.  I would also encourage you to read, read, read as much as possible!

We will be starting our nature unit when we return from our spring break and will be learning about life cycles, trees, seeds, and eventually insects.  We will also be making observations about the signs of spring we see outside.  We will be taking pictures of different places around the school over a 4-6 week period and comparing the pictures every week to see how nature changes.  It may be a fun project for you to do at home too!  I would love to see the pictures when you are done if you do decide to do it!  We actually went for our first nature walk today and took some pictures that we will add to over the next several weeks.

I hope you have a fantastic, fun-filled, and relaxing week of vacation.  I look forward to hearing all the students' stories when they return!

Have a great week!

Melanie Duncan

PS… We will be going to the library the Wednesday after vacation.  Be sure to return your child’s library book.

Wishlist items:  small brown paper bags, large brown paper bags with handles, and brown, black, and white yarn

Kindergarten Museum

It was so nice to see so many of you this morning at our Kindergarten Museum!  The students were very proud to show off all their hard work and they enjoyed giving tours to their parents and other teachers/administrators from Francis Wyman.  Most of the students' artwork went home today.  Please take some time to enjoy each piece with your child and be sure to ask lots of questions about how he/she made each one.  Here are some pictures for you to look at in case you weren't able to make it.  It really did look so impressive when it was all hung up!