Happy Friday!  Thank you so much for your support of our magazine drive this week.  As of Thursday afternoon, our class is in the lead, so hopefully we can maintain this lead and win the pizza party.

I needed to make you aware of several things:

*Picture Day is April 5.  This will be for pre-paid children only.  The studio will only take pictures of students who pre-order their spring pictures.

*The school is still in need of proctors for our TCAP test the last week of April.  If you have the time to help it would also benefit our kindergartners even though we won’t be taking the test.  Without parent volunteers our special class teachers will be called upon to proctor these tests, so Kindergarten will not have KSmart or special classes this week.  We love our special classes!

*Yearbooks will be on sale later in April.  We have a nice hardbound copy that sells for $25, so make plans to buy yours now.

*Talent Show auditions will be held April 17 &19.  The application to audition is due to the office no later than Friday, April 10.  THE TALENT SHOW WILL BE HELD MAY 18.  You may request more information from me or print the forms from Ms. Clark’s Castle Heights Webpage.  Simply access the CH webpage, go to faculty & staff, specials, Ms. Courtney Clark.

*I am still collecting plastic eggs for our hunt next Thursday.  Each student needs 12 stuffed eggs.  The hunt will be held at 1:00.

Have a great weekend!

Welcome back!  I hope everyone enjoyed their spring break.  This week only, we are collecting magazines for our recycling drive.  The class to bring in the most magazines will be given a pizza party.  Please help us to win this party!

Also, we are now beginning to collect egg cartons that we will decorate for our egg hunt next week.  If every child can bring in one carton by Friday we can decorate them next week.  I also am in need of plastic eggs (stuffed).  These can be stuffed with small prized or individually wrapped snacks/treats.  We need enough eggs for each child to match twelve eggs to the labels in their carton.  We will be doing a traditional egg hunt, but the catch is that the children must find the twelve numbered eggs to match the words in their carton (ex. one goes with 1).  We want to make sure our boys and girls know their number sight words!

Thanks for your help in making our egg hunt and recycling drive a huge success!

Happy Friday once again!  We have had a great week!  I was glad to be back with the children.  Thank you for your understanding in my absence.

We have been really working on our sight words this week.  All of the children are at different stages in the process of learning these words.  I have attached the most recent check of your student’s progress with these words.  This list is the “official” list for this nine weeks.  In order to receive the award for sight words the children must be able to read these words independently in random order.  If there is not a sheet attached to this newsletter, your child has mastered all of the words for this nine weeks.

In the future, I will periodically check these words instead of continuing to send home the sight word folders.  As your student masters the nine week’s list,  I will provide additional lists in agendas.  If you have questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Just a few classroom helps… we are running low on Germ-X.  We have had several students out this week with various illnesses.  We also have lots of runny noses. There is not a sink in our classroom, so germ-x is the only way we have to clean our hands while in the classroom.  If you can, send in an extra bottle.

If you have an extra pair of headphones lying around your house, please consider sending them to school with your child.  We use headphones in all of the computer labs and many times they are broken or missing parts when we go into the lab for our computer time.  The more students who have their own pair, the easier it is for us to spend our time focusing on the computer activity at hand.

We celebrated 3 birthdays today, so we had cupcakes galore!  It was a fun time, but the children may be a little revved up from all the sugar and excitement.

There is a lot going on at school during the next few weeks and months, so I am giving you some dates in advance.

Monday, February 20 – President’s Day – NO SCHOOL!

Friday, February 24 – Wacky Tacky Day

February 27 – March 2 – Book Fair in the Library

February 28 – Bank Day

March 6 – Parent Teacher Conferences (teacher request) – I’ll send a note if we need to meet.

March 8 – Awards’ Day at 8:10

March 12-23 – Spring Break

Enjoy your three day weekend!

Amber

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Our 100th day celebration would not have been the success it was without your support.  The kids really enjoyed getting to count their snack and of course eating it was lots of fun too!  We were able to wear our 100 day shirts for most of the day to keep with the festive atmosphere.  The kids are continuing to enjoy our 100s collections and counting these.  We haven’t quite been able to get them all in yet, but will continue to count until everyone has a chance to share.

This week we are exploring Fairy Tales.  Today we looked at Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  We will introduce one tale each day throughout the rest of the week.  We will be looking specifically at  the sequencing of each story. We will also do math activities centered around the tales.  Today we were able to make and taste porridge, graphing the results of our like or dislike.

We will be completing our mid-year computer based testing, Children’s Progress, on Wednesday afternoon.  Please stress to your student the importance of doing their best on this test.  I rely heavily on the results of this test to determine groupings of students in the classroom.

Don’t forget to work on sight word folders.  I have stressed to the children the importance of learning these words.  Learning the sight words is a great way for the children to jump start their reading.

Have a great week!

Mrs. Amber

We have a very busy week planned with our 100th day celebration on Friday.  We worked on our 100th day t-shirts today, so if you haven’t sent one in yet, Thursday will be the last day for painting.  I am still looking for more parents to send in a healthy snack for this celebration day.  If you would like to send something in please let me know, and I can note in the agenda what we still need.

In writing this week, we are working on labeling the details of a person.  The students will begin by drawing a self-portrait, later in the week draw another classmember and end with a fun winter person on Friday.

In math, we are still working with addition.  Although, this week we will focus on counting to 100 much of our time.  If you haven’t sent in a 100’s collection, don’t miss out.  The kids are loving this activity and it is such great practice for us to count.

Just a reminder, there is no K+ this week.  We will resume K+ on Monday, January 23.

Have a great week,

Mrs. Amber

Tuseday, January 24 – School Bank Day

Wednesday, January 25 – Children’s Progress Mid-year computer testing

Monday, January 30 – Castle Heights shirt orders due

Happy Friday!  Well, Autumn is finally here.  I am so glad that the weather we are experiencing will begin to match the things we are studying.  We have one more week to study fall, apples, and harvest.  Next week we will introduce the letters d & s.  The majority of our language arts and math lessons will be centered around squirrels and acorns.  In math the concepts will be greater than, less than and equal, still working with numbers 0-5.

At this point all children should recognize and know the sounds for the following letters: t, b, f, m, n, c, a, i, r, o, g.  We have introduced the following sight words: red, blue, green, yellow, purple, the, I, a, am, to, like, one, two, my, and in.  You can review these words at home.  After fall break, we will have a sight word folder that will go home each night for review.  The more the children see these words, the easier it is for them to learn by sight.  Thanks for your help!

Upcoming dates:  September 27 – Bank Day

September 28 – Report Card Day

September 29 – Awards Day and School Pictures

October 3 – Fall break (students return to school Oct. 17)

This week we studied the letters o & g. In Math, we worked on the concepts of greater than or less than, so for a fun Friday activity, we stacked Oreos. We then wrote about stacking either less or more than a partner.  Here are the pics!