March 6, 2020 Newsletter

Dear Parents,

We’ve had a busy week in Room 115 with a lot of excitement!  It started with a celebration of Dr. Seuss’ birthday and several guest readers on Monday.  We’ve also been learning more about the seven continents and have been making lots of special art projects for our Kindergarten Museum, including self-portraits and portraits of our friends! 

We focused on the continent of South America this week.  We read books about the rainforest and the animals that live there and also made a toucan project and carnival masks.  These will be on display at our Kindergarten Museum.  We hope you will be able to make it at 9am on Friday, April 3rd to see those projects and many more!

The students have also been working on their “All I Am” books that will go home next week, writing in their journals, illustrating poems, and reading in their small guided reading groups. 

We started a new topic in math working with teen numbers.  The numbers 11-20 are some of the most difficult numbers from 0-100!  If possible, please encourage your child to practice counting these numbers often.  Have them count peas on their plate, snack items (popcorn, grapes, berries), etc. and practice looking for and writing the numbers. 

The Francis Wyman Used Bookstore will be this Wednesday morning for those who would like to participate.  Students are welcome to bring either a quarter or a book from home to trade.  We will also be going to the library.

The Francis Wyman Family Carnival is on Saturday, March 21 from 10am -2pm.  There will be a lot of great games, prizes, raffles, food, and fun.  I am planning to be there with my children for part of it and would love to see you all there!  If you are interested in volunteering (there are a lot of ways to do this) please contact the PTO.

There is NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS ON MONDAY,  the 9th.  It is a Professional Development Day for teachers.

Our parent conferences will be starting next week.  I am looking forward to meeting with all of you and sharing about all the wonderful things your children have been doing in Kindergarten!  If you can’t make it at your scheduled time or if you need a reminder, please let me know.

Also, don’t forget to change your clocks this weekend for Daylight Savings Time!

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Melanie

Read Across America Day

We enjoyed celebrating Read Across America Day and Dr. Seuss' birthday!  Anaya's brother was our first guest reader and we also enjoyed listening to Mrs. Sullivan and Miss Coluci read some of their favorite Dr. Seuss books too!  Miss Coluci brought her second grade class with her so we could participate in a fun Dr. Seuss coloring activity with them.

February 28 Newsletter

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a wonderful week for winter break.  The break always comes at just the right time but it's always nice to get back into a routine.  The students are already back to working hard and learning lots!

As soon as we returned to school, we started working on our fine arts unit with a focus on art from the seven different continents.  The children are learning about various kinds of art and have already started painting their self-portraits for our Kindergarten Museum.  We started with art from North America (we made dream catchers and tipis) and will be moving on to South America next.  We are planning on having the Kindergarten Museum on Friday, April 3rd, probably from about 9:00-9:45am. More information will be sent home next week.  Creating the artwork for the Kindergarten Museum is a lot of work, but worth every minute of it!  We hope you will be able to visit our Museum!

We celebrated our 100th day of school on Tuesday.  We did a lot of counting!  We made 100th day hats with 100 dots and did some math activities with a hundreds chart.  We also wrote a class book about what we would do with $100.  The students have accomplished so much in 100 days and should be very proud of how far they have come!

We explored some really exciting “Funomenas” this afternoon.  The students got to rotate around to four different Kindergarten classrooms to learn about and explore different “Pushes and Pulls experiments.”  The activities included shuffleboard, magnetic gears, stomp rockets, and fan experiments.  Earlier this week, we enjoyed a Magnet Show with Mr. Musselman from the Burlington Science Center.  The students loved learning about poles and seeing magnetic poles repelling and attracting. 

The students have worked on a class book about what they want to do when they are older and they are beginning an individual book all about who they are.  They have also been enjoying reading books in small groups for guided reading.

Our exciting news was that Ms. P. brought us our pet snake this week!  The students loved learning about Galileo the corn snake and many even dared to touch/hold him!  Galileo will stay in our class for a few weeks.  We are looking forward to learning more about snakes and watching a snake feeding in the next week or two!  The students should be proud of how hard they worked on their persuasive letters to Ms. P!

Please be sure to practice the Kindergarten sight words and addition and subtraction fluency facts as often as possible.  It will be a huge help!  I will be assessing the students soon!  Thanks!

I sent home information before vacation about how to log in to Clever, the app/website we use for ST Math, along with the badge students can scan for logging in.  I will be sending home additional information early next week with instructions for logging in to Clever without the badge.  Our technology teacher is looking for feedback about using Clever at home.  Can you please try logging your child into Clever next week and just let me know how it goes?  We want to make sure it is accessible to everyone.  Thanks in advance!

Have a good weekend!

Melanie Duncan

PS...We will be going to the library on Wednesday.  Please be sure to return your child’s library book by then.  Thanks!

Also, the next Francis Wyman Used Bookstore is Wednesday, March 11th.  Students are welcome to bring either a quarter or a book to trade, if they wish to participate.