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!!!

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!)

March Curriculum Updates

Curriculum Updates

   We are working with children on a number of skills during the month of March. We are practicing how to identify characters and the setting in stories and being able to retell at least 3 things that happened in a story we have read. We are introducing the sh, ch, and th diagraphs in Letterland, including songs, activities, and stories to help us remember the sounds they make.

   We also ask that you work with your child at home on recognizing vowel sounds. They are quite tricky and take a LOT of practice to get right. In Letterland the short vowel sounds are made by Annie Apple, Eddy Elephant, Impy Ink, Oscar Orange, and Uppy Umbrella. The long vowel sounds are made by Mr. A (the Apron Man), Mr. E (the Easy Magic Man), Mr. I (the Ice Cream Man), Mr. O (the Old Man), and Mr. U (the Uniform Man).

   In math we are learning how to solve addition word problems. We are learning vocabulary associated with addition problems with words like “and”, “too”, “altogether”, and “in all”. We are starting with small numbers and not worrying too much about using the plus sign (+) and the equal sign (=), but those will come in time. Soon, we will solve problems using larger numbers with sums up to 20. We will also learn how to add using more than 2 addends. 

   We are also starting a new science unit on Weather to address the IB transdisciplinary theme of "How does the world work?" We will talk about the "ingredients" of weather (temperature, air, and water), seasonal weather changes, and weather processes. We will see how weather affects how people live around the world and why the weather can be so different from one place to the next. We will learn lots of vocabulary and try to become keen observers of our daily weather here in Raleigh. 

Lots of Events at JYJ

JYJ Book Drive

   JYJ is participating in the WAKE Up and Read Book Drive sponsored by WCPSS and Barnes & Noble. This program puts quality books in the hands of children who may not have reading materials at home otherwise.

   We’ve set a goal for our school to collect 2,000 children’s books March 2 – 28. On March 28 the entire school will have a Pajama Day and set aside a time to “WAKE Up and Read” our favorite books from 8:30 – 9:00. If our school collects 2,000 books by March 28, our principal, Mrs. Hutchinson, has promised to wear a rooster costume on that day!

   We are also having a friendly competition here to see which grade level can bring in the MOST books. The children at that grade level will receive a special treat. So look around, clean out your at-home library, and send in those books!

A Visit from the Dental Hygienist

   Last week, a Wake County Dental Hygienist visited our school. She taught us all about the best ways to take care of our teeth. Each student was given a free toothbrush donated by the Great Raleigh Dental Hygiene Association and the Wake Raleigh Dental Society.

   This association recommends that parents supervise their children while brushing (at least twice a day) until the age of 10. The association also recommends fluoride toothpaste, regular dental checkups twice a year, and eating the right foods to keep a healthy smile.

JYJ 5K

   This Sunday (March 9), Joyner will host its annual 5K Run. There is still time to sign up. It is a great fundraiser for the school and an opportunity for families to spend time together in a really healthy way. The run begins at 2:00. We hope to see lots of you there!

Golf Tournament

  We wanted to make you aware of an upcoming event sponsored by one of the members of our Joyner family to benefit Duke Children’s Hospital.

What: Golf Tournament, Dinner and Silent Auction

When: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 at 1:00 Shotgun Start; Dinner and Auction at 5:30

Where: Crooked Creek Golf Club 4621 Shady Greens Dr, Fuquay Varina, NC 27526

Why: Duke Children’s Hospital – The Oligo Project Treatment Research for Pediatric Brain Diseases

Format: Captain’s Choice, 4 Player Teams  All skill levels are welcome. There will be many contests including $5000 hole-in-one.

Cost: $75 per player Includes all golf fees plus range balls; beverages (including alcohol); dinner; auction and awards.

Register as a foursome or individually to be matched with a team.

Dinner/Auction Only Tickets are $10, children ages 5-12 are $5, and under 5 are free.

To donate, to register by April 8 or for information about sponsorships, visit Henry’s Team Green page at www.henrysteamgreen.org. Got questions? Email henrysteamgreen@gmail.com. 

I am so proud!

Shape Cities

   In some ways this felt like the project that would never end. We started collecting materials back in January. Then, we were out for snow TWICE, and it just took us forever to get back into the routine and get this done.

  That being said… the children did a phenomenal job with their shape cities. The children made some buildings out of construction paper (with a little help from Mr. Del), and they made others using the boxes and containers you sent in from home. The results are amazing!

   Each table group got a sheet of poster board and materials. They drew 2-D shapes on the buildings like triangles, circles, squares, and rectangles to be doors, windows, and signs. They drew and cut, and I taped and stapled. Then, each group got to name their own city. One is named Raleigh. Another is Downtown Raleigh. One is Virginia. One is Florida-Georgia, and the last one is New York City.

   They did such a great job that I asked Mrs. Hale, the school media specialist, if we could display our cities in the library. She was delighted to show them off. When you have a moment, please stop by the Joyner library and see your child’s hard work. I will also try to post some pictures of the children’s cities to this blog.

Special Event

Dr. Seuss Week

      March 2 is the birthday of Dr. Seuss, the famous author and illustrator. We are going to celebrate next week by reading some of his most popular books and completing some fun activities.

    Here are some things the kids can do to help celebrate. Thanks!

Monday	Green Eggs  and Ham	Wear something green.
Tuesday	Fox in Socks	Wear crazy or mismatched socks.
Wednesday	The Sneetches	Wear something that tells us about how special you are. It can be a favorite color, a   favorite team jersey, something about where you are from, or anything that tells us more about you!
Thursday	Horton Hatches an Egg	Bring in a baby photo. We will guess who is who.
Friday	The Cat in the Hat	We will make a special hat at school.

Change of Time

    This is what happens when I try to blog from home without my school calendar. We will NOT have our Valentine’s party in the afternoon. February 14 is an Early Release day. Instead, we will have our snack and pass out our cards at 9:00 that morning. Thank you to the parents who have volunteered to send in refreshments for the day!