Ice Day Update

WAKE Up and Read Book Drive

   Don’t forget to send in your gently used books for JYJ’s WAKE Up and Read Book Drive.  Our school goal is to collect 2,000 books, but within a few days so far, we have collected over 350 books!   So scrounge around your bookshelves and send in those books that you no longer need and benefit another child within Wake County who does not have access to books.

 Kindergarten Spring Scavenger Hunt:   

   The date has not been set, but our class will be having a Spring Scavenger Hunt and we need your help!  I will attach a sign-up sheet to the blog.  We need filled plastic eggs, and this is the time to buy them. You can get any size. Just make sure there is enough blank space on them to write a letter or draw a shape. If you can help, please go to the sign up sheet and put your name beside the item.  We have a scavenger hunt for specific eggs – children will hunt for the eggs that have the following written on the outside of the egg with a sharpie:

S, P, R, I, N, G, a circle, a square, a triangle, a rectangle, a smiley face, and their initials. 

So each child will end up with 12 eggs!  So you can see we need LOTS of eggs!!!  The sign up sheet should explain how you can specifically prepare eggs.  Please DO NOT put chocolate or unwrapped jelly beans into the eggs.  Stickers, tattoos, life savers, individually wrapped bags of candy, trinkets, etc. are great to use!  If you sign up to help, please send in all eggs by APRIL 11.  THANK YOU!!!

 Curriculum Updates

Literacy: We are working on rhyming and word families. These two ideas don’t always go hand-in-hand, though. For instance, “glue” and “shoe” rhyme because they sound the same at the end, but they are not spelled with the same vowel combination to make the “oo” sound. Likewise, “cough” and “dough” are in the same word family, but they do not rhyme. For the most part, we will focus on word families that do rhyme. This skill allows children to decode and spell new words based on what they already know about other words. For example, if a child already knows the word “cat”, they can quickly see that if they just change the first letter, they can read and spell the words “hat”, “mat”, “bat”, and so on.

   In Letterland we are working on combinations of letters. We have already learned the “ck” and the “ng” combinations that come at the end of words. We have also worked on the diagraphs “ch”, “sh”, and “th” (which actually makes TWO sounds). We will soon also know about “ll” and “ff”, which come at the end of words.

Math:  We continue addition with number partners that make 10.  (1 + 9, 2 + 8, etc.) We are learning that addition word problems use specific language such as total, plus, more, altogether, and in all.  The children are practicing making and solving their own simple one-step word problems. We are also learning that you can add more than just two numbers to make a larger sum.

Science:  We are continuing our study of weather.  We have discussed the water cycle (evaporation, condensation, precipitation), and then we conducted experiments with water to observe the effects of evaporation. Next week, we will talk about different types of clouds and what they look like. We will also talk about how clouds can affect the temperature.

Dates to remember:

March 27 – Science Go Round

March 27 – End of Quarter

March 28 – Read – a – Thon for Wake Up and Read Book Drive (School-wide Pajama Day!)