End of the Year Festivities!

Kindergarten BEACH DAY!  The Kindergarten teachers will set up WET and WILD beach activities on the front lawn for two days.  3 classes will have Beach Day on one day and 2 Kindergarten classes & the Pre-K class will have Beach Day the next day.  Our class is scheduled for Wednesday, June 11.  (This is the CORRECT date for our class!!)  This is one of our biggest events in Kindergarten & we need many hands to make this a safe and FUN morning!!! 

Volunteers- Beach day Volunteers are needed from 8:30 until 11:00.  Anyone can help:  moms, dads, grandparents, older/responsible siblings.  But we ask that younger siblings stay at home so our volunteers can focus their attention on the Kindergarteners.

End Of the Year Supplies-I have posted the link for the specific supplies for many of the end of year activities we have planned for the class.  In addition to these items, we are asking that every child send in $5.00 so that the class may enjoy a snow cone from the Kona ice truck and a pizza lunch on Beach Day. 

We are also collecting some supplies for Kindergarten's Beach Day.  These will be used by all the K classes, whereas the linked supply list is only for our class' activities.  Some of these materials will be used on other days prior to Beach Day.

If you are able to bring one of the items listed below, no need to sign up- just send it to school by May 30th.  Thanks!

Kindergarten Beach Day supplies needed:  rub-on tattoos, gallon size containers of bubbles, big bubble wands, sidewalk chalk, empty & rinsed out gallon milk jugs, or large empty dish detergent bottles

Other Upcoming Events Include:

Friday, June 6th -- Ice Cream Day  From 1:15 - 1:30 the kids will enjoy ice cream sundaes with their friends. 

Monday, June 9th -- Friendship Day  We will spend the morning celebrating the friendships we have made this year. We will have friendship centers throughout the day, and then we will take our lunches over to Kiwanis park to have a class picnic. 

Tuesday, June 10th -- Ocean Animal Day  The children will have some fun ocean themed centers in our class that day. 

Wednesday, June 11th -- Beach Day  As described above.

Thursday, June 12th -- Game Day and the Last Day of Kindergarten!  The children can bring in their favorite board games to play with their friends. (Please, label them with your child's name on them.) We will clean up, pack up, and say our goodbyes. : (

Curriculum Updates and Important Dates for May/June

JY Joyner Field Day

Friday, May 23

8:30 – 10:30 K-2

Kiwanis Park

Things to remember…..

*sunscreen should be put on at home BEFORE coming to school

*wear tennis shoes (no flip flops)

*wear tie-dyed Kindergarten shirt

*bring a change of clothing (including socks, underwear and shoes)

*bagged lunch (we will be eating in the classroom that day)

Animal Report

Animal reports are due next Friday, May 23.  We encourage you to go to pebblego.com to retrieve information.  This is a great website – very age appropriate and easy for the kids to use! 

Username:  joyner

Password:  book

Animal Parade:  On Wednesday, May 28^th, the Kindergarten students will be having their Animal Parade.  Each student will carry or wear their animal project and we will parade through the halls to show off everyone’s hard work.   Our parade will begin around 8:45.  I hope you can join us! 

Lunch Coverage:  Because of Field Day next week, we WON’T be having K lunch coverage, May 23.   We did want to extend our sincerest thanks to parents who have taken the time to cover lunch so that teachers and teaching assistants can have a duty-free lunch once a month.  We are so grateful!  Thank you!

Reading:  We continue to work on building our sight word (target words) vocabulary.  Please continue working with your child at home to recognize these words in their reading and to work toward conventional spelling of these words in their writing.  During Daily 5, we are building our foundation of various reading skills.  We’ve learned that it’s OK to skip a word we don’t know, to read to the end of the sentence and then go back and try and make a guess.  We’re learning the difference between a good guess and a not so good guess.  A good guess needs to make sense, sound right in the sentence and look right (do those letters make the sounds I am saying?)  As we build strategic readers, we are working toward independently moving between difference strategies to solve for unknown words.  Sounding out a word is a good strategy, but it is important to remember that it is not the only strategy and it is not always the best strategy.  By asking the questions:  Does it make sense?  Does it sound right?  Does it look right?, we are helping children to not only build their reading strategies, but it ultimately strengthens their comprehension of the text. 

Writing: In Daily 5, we are thinking about our own writing and what specifically make us a better writer.  We are thinking specifically about the following things that good writers do when they write:

1.          Using finger space between words

2.         Putting a period at the end of a sentence.

3.          Using target words correctly.

4.        Using a beginning, middle and end to our stories.

5.         Writing more than one thought (sentence) about a topic.

As we write in Daily 5, the children are specifically targeting one goal for their writing that day and making certain that we are working toward achieving that goal! 

Math:  We continue to work on addition and subtraction.  Our subtraction and addition problems go to 20.  We are beginning to work on word problems and having to decide whether we use addition or whether we use subtraction to solve the problem.  We try to think…”are we getting more?  …. Are we getting less?”

We begin our study of measurement.  We are using non-standard units of measurement to measure objects.  What would happen if I measured two objects with the same thing?  What would happen if I measure the same object, but with two different measurement units?

We are also studying different types of graphs! 

***IMPORTANT***

Kindergarten plans a beach day at the end of the school year.

Please note the following dates:

Tuesday, June 10

      Forbes

      Thompson

      Piner

Wednesday, June 11

      Del

      Wilkinson

      PreK

(We will doing a specific blog post later in the week to explain all the volunteer opportunities and supplies needed! )  IT’S a BLAST!!!!

Dates to Remember:

Saturday, May 17-Letterland Day-Wake County Schools will be hosting a Letterland Day at Pullen Park.  Bring your Kindergartener out to have fun with all the Letterlanders!  

 Friday, May 23-Field Day-a FUN day at Kiwanis Park! Mr. Poyer will need donations & parent help (Animal Project Due)

Monday, May 26-Memorial Day-School Closed

Wednesday, May 28-Animal Parade

Friday, June 6-Ice Cream Day in K!  …details to come
Monday, June 9 - Friendship Day ....details to come

Tuesday, June 10-Beach Day in K!  …details to come

Thursday, June 12-LAST DAY!!!