May 20-24

HAVE FUN summer dress up day count down:
Tuesday, May 28- Hat day or crazy hair day
Wednesday, May 29- dress like an Animal or bring in your favorite stuffed animal
Thursday, May 30- dress like you’re going on a Vacation
Friday, May 31- Enjoy yourself--dress in something you love
Monday, June 3- dress like a character from a Fairy tale
Tuesday, June 4- dress actively for field day (there will be many Unique activities!)
Wednesday, June 5- NDLC wear or Neon day!

5/21: Family Night
5/24 & 5/27: NO SCHOOL
6/5: 1/2 day LAST day :(  11:30 Dismissal

Reading: Kindergartners will be starting book clubs this week! These book clubs help us to learn more about characters and what is happening in the story. Kindergartners explore characters and stories by acting out. Here are the most important parts to remember when acting out books:

Make your reading sound smooth (not. choppy. like. a. robot.)

Check how your character is feeling!

Make your voice match the character's voice

Make your face and body match the character's

"Pop out" important parts of the book

Writing: This week, writers will learn about different ways to elaborate when writing true stories.  We will be studying a mentor author, Mo Willems, to find ways to make our stories the best they can be.  One way to elaborate is to make their characters talk back and forth in speech bubbles. Writers also show and tell the way the character felt in the story, especially at the end. We will use a checklist to make sure our writing has a beginning, ending, speech bubbles, feelings, and setting and we will also make sure our writing is continuing to be easy for others to read.

Math: This week, the mathematicians will practice composing and decomposing 2D shapes, comparing numbers using greater than and less than, and creating teen numbers by circling a group of ten and then counting the extras. We will also discuss measurement; specifically, length, width, height, weight and capacity.

Science: Now that we've had a chance to really explore and understand inclined planes, we will be challenging ourselves to use our knowledge of gravity and force to change direction of  things headed down an inclined plane.  We will also have a chance to create our own simple machine inventions to make a job we have a bit easier.

May 13-17

It is crazy to think this is our last full week of school!!!  It has gone SO fast! 
Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!  We hope you felt extra loved this weekend!  You deserve it!

HAVE FUN summer dress up day count down:
Tuesday, May 28- Hat day or crazy hair day
Wednesday, May 29- dress like an Animal or bring in your favorite stuffed animal
Thursday, May 30- dress like you’re going on a Vacation
Friday, May 31- Enjoy yourself--dress in something you love
Monday, June 3- dress like a character from a Fairy tale
Tuesday, June 4- dress actively for field day (there will be many Unique activities!)
Wednesday, June 5- NDLC wear or Neon day!

5/21: Family Night
5/24 & 5/27: NO SCHOOL
6/5: 1/2 day LAST day :(  11:30 Dismissal

Reading:We will start a new unit on characters this week! We will start to learn the ways you can ‘meet’ the characters in our books. Some ways to do this are to pay attention to the title, cover, and setting. We will also take picture walks and think about the feelings our characters have. By the end of the week, we will be focusing on the changes in character feelings and being able retell the stories we read!

Writing: This week we will learn that writers can ask themselves the same questions readers do!  We will focus on rereading our writing to ask ourselves: Does it make sense? (words and pictures match), Does it sound right (the way we hear others talk) and Does it look right (have snap words spelled correctly and letters facing the same way).  We will also have a mini celebration where we will gift a one of our books to someone else in our class!!

Math:This week in math our focus will switch back to comparing quantities and noticing similarities and differences in how groups of objects are arranged to show a number.  This helps us to be flexible as we look to find partners of numbers 6,7,8,9, 10.  We will also work on making two unequal groups equal and to really focus on what needs to be added to make them equal.

Science: After visiting the Building for Kids and thinking about how force can make simple machines work, we will dive in to a study on incline planes. We will watch videos to build our knowledge and then rotate through the following centers:

• We will watch videos and look at pictures of balls and ramps. Then we will draw blue prints for when we make ramps. 
• We will use paper tubes, wood, and bouncy balls to observe and explore.
• Scientists will be given Marble Works materials to build, observe, and take notes on what we notice.

May 6-10

Our field trip is Friday!  Remember that students and chaperones need a bag lunch and drink (no lunch boxes) unless you preordered a bag lunch from school!

Upcoming Events
5/10: Building for Kids Field Trip

HAVE FUN summer dress up day count down:
Tuesday, May 28- Hat day or crazy hair day
Wednesday, May 29- dress like an Animal or bring in your favorite stuffed animal
Thursday, May 30- dress like you’re going on a Vacation
Friday, May 31- Enjoy yourself--dress in something you love
Monday, June 3- dress like a character from a Fairy tale
Tuesday, June 4- dress actively for field day (there will be many Unique activities!)
Wednesday, June 5- NDLC wear or Neon day!

5/21: Family Night

Reading: Readers reread for many reasons! We will use the following tool to learn about how/why we reread and make plans for rereading with a partner.

Your reader will be creating a video to show you how they use rereading in their books! Check out the videos on Seesaw on Thursday!

Writing: After creating some AMAZING all about books, the writers are ready to tackle true stories! During read alouds in the classroom, we have used the following chart to keep track of story elements in our books.

This week, we will use the chart to help us plan our true stories. Writers need to make sure that their pictures and words show who, where, and what happened on every page. Students will also learn that they need to make sure their story has a beginning, middle, and end. We can't wait to get started on this new genre of writing. 

Math: This week in math we will continue to study the ways numbers to work together (part, part, whole) to form numbers 6-10.  We will practice this by playing the missing partner game and a game called Pigs in a Pen.
To play Pigs in a Pen, students put 10 objects in 2 rows of 5.  One student closes his/her eyes and another student removes part of the group.  The other student then has to use how many they see to determine how many have been removed.

As students play they say this rhyme....

"Oink, Oink 3 pigs in the pen, tell me what is the partner of 10."

The students then say both quantities together "3 and 7 are partners of 10."

This game helps with both subitizing work and counting on from a number which is an important addition strategy. This would be a great to work with math at home!

Science:  This week, we will start to learn about simple machines and how they can help to do work. The scientists will become inventors and will be asked to think about how a machine could help with a chore—or better yet, do the chore for them. Students will draw a machine that could help them and then use materials in the room to build it! We are so excited to finish up the week at the Building for Kids to further explore simple machines!