WEEK OF SEPT.30-OCTOBER 4

This week we are going to continue the fun in our Kindergarten World. We are going to be working with the letter Bb. The vocabulary for this letter is the following: branch, bowling, bench, button, boot, backpack, basket, belt, bicycle, brush, bone, broom, boat, binoculars, and bell.

Some of the stories that we are going to be reading are:

Bubble Bear

Bear loves to blow bubbles. But when Badger tries to spoil Bear's fun, he blows a bubble you won't believe!

 

 

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

A big happy frog, a plump purple cat, a handsome blue horse, and a soft yellow duck-- all parade across the pages of this delightful book.

 

 

Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?

Young readers will enjoy Baby Bear’s quest to find Mama, and they’ll revel in identifying each of the native North American animals that appear along the way.

 

 

Goldilocks and The Three Bears

This is book is about a little girl who cuts through the woods on the way into town, even though her mother specifically warns her not to. She stumbles across a house owned by 3 bears!!

 

 

 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

A newly hatched caterpillar eats his way through all kinds of food, getting bigger and bigger, until eventually he turns into a beautiful butterfly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In our Phonemic Awareness this week we will continue to identify rhyming words. You can help us out at home by naming a word and your child finding a word that rhymes with it.

We are going to continue to work with the sight words from last week. These words are as, with, his, they and I. Please practice, practice and practice these words daily with your child at home.

 

In Math, we will work with number 13. The students will practice writing the number, drawing sets to match the number and sequencing numbers up to 13. We will continue to count backwards from 10. We are going to work with the concepts big, medium and small.

 

 

 

 

In Science we will start a new theme about MY BODY. This week we will mainly review concepts the students should already know. We will be talking about eyes, nose, mouth, ears, head, shoulders, knees, toes, hands, fingers, arms. If you have any poster or any other material that you are willing to share with the class, we would appreciate if you will let us borrow them from you.

We will be making some cool binoculars with the students. For this, we need your help. Please send by Tuesday, October 1^st 2 empty rolls of toilet paper. If you have more than 2 we will gladly receive them too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The children in charge for donating our ingredients for Kindergarten Kafe this week are: Maya Elizabeth Miller and Luciana Nuñez.

We would like to give a warm welcome to our Kindergarten Class to Carmen Marta Castañeda. She is joining us this Monday!!!

 

Numbers and counting up to 10

C.14   Count forward and backward - up to 10

Data and graphs

O.1     Making graphs

O.2    Interpreting graphs

 

MAP TESTING SESSION: This week our students will take the MAP test on Monday, September 30^th. K-A will take it at 10:10 a.m. and K-B will take it at 11:40 a.m. Please try not to miss school this day!

MAP = Measures of Academic Progress

We invite you to visit http://www.nwea.org/node/4661 so you can have more information about what MAP is all about!

A nice activity that you would like to try with your child at home is MAKING A BOOKMARK!!!

Watching your children learn to write is a proud journey for any parent. But along with all that pride comes something else… souvenirs! From the moment your children take pen to paper, they create all sorts of truly unique things. Rare is the parent who doesn't want to clip and snip and save tidbits of every precious stage of their child's development. But there are ways to do that other than collecting dusty shoeboxes full of papers. One way to make use of those special memories is to wrangle up the kids and spend time together turning all those bits and pieces of their handiwork into a special gift, a bookmark.

 

What You Need:

·         Material for the bookmark: this can include your child's old artwork, family photos, postcards etc.

·         Hole punch

·         Glitter

·         Markers, crayons or paint

·         Yarn or ribbon

·         Quick-drying glue

·         Contact paper cut to 3 in. by 5 in.

·         Construction paper cut to 1.5 in. by 5 in.

·         Scissors

 

What You Do:

Have your child pick the materials she would like to use for the bookmark. So how do you figure out what to use, and what not to? First of all, don't dismiss anything. Chances are that if there is a scrap of paper haunting your house that you just can't bring yourself to throw away, it'll look good in a bookmark.

Once your child has picked out some materials, fold the contact paper in half lengthwise and peel the backing off one half, cutting it away so that only one half is sticky. This will make the contact paper easier to work with.

Have your child arrange her materials in the way she likes. She can put the materials directly on the sticky side of the contact paper, or she can glue them on a piece of construction paper cut to the right size, then place the finished design on the contact paper. Encourage her to use her imagination and spruce it up with some glitter or draw in her own additional designs.

When she's finished, peel the remaining backing off the contact paper and fold it so the sticky sides are together. If it doesn't fold perfectly, just cut away the extra material, and voila, you have your bookmark!

For some extra decoration, punch hole in the top and string through some yarn or ribbon.

So start foraging through those old art projects and crumpled train tickets. No matter how you cut it, making your own bookmarks means helping memories last a whole lot longer. And they make great gifts!

 

 

 

WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 23- 27

This week we are going to be reviewing all the letters of the alphabet and vocabulary words that we have been working on since the beginning of the school year.

We are going to be rereading some of the books from last week to do an activity that goes along with them. We will be discussing about:

The story is about a lady who swallows a whole list of animals (fly, spider, bird, cat, dog, cow, and a horse). The lady keeps swallowing animals to catch the last animal she swallowed.

We are going to be ordering the animals she swallowed from smallest to biggest.

 

A clever young man tricks an old woman into believing that soup can be made from a stone. As the pot of water boils with the stone in it, he urges her to add more and more ingredients until the soup is a feast "fit for a king".

We are actually going to be making stone soup with the children at school!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One unit that we are going to be introducing for the next week is Landforms. We will be talking about oceans, rivers, islands, hills, lakes, volcanoes, desert, valleys, and mountains. If you have any poster, or book that talk about any of these landforms we would appreciate if you would let us borrow them from you.

 

In our Phonemic Awareness, the children are going to be identifying rhyming words.

Rhyming teaches children how language works.  It helps them notice and work with the sounds within words.

 

In Math we are going to be working with number 12. We are also going to be counting backwards from 10.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the following couple of weeks we are introducing the following sight words: as, with, his, they, I. Please keep in mind that we are assessing these words in a cumulative manner. It means that children need to practice all the previous words as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The IXL skills that need to be practiced this week are

 

Numbers and counting up to 10

 

1.     C.8Count up and down - with pictures

2.    C.9Count up and down - with numbers

3.    C.13Count forward - up to 10

 

 

 

MAP MATH TESTING SESSION: This week our students will take the MAP Math test on Monday, September 23^rd. K-A will take it at 10:10 a.m. and K-B will take it at 8:30 a.m. Please try not to miss school this day!

MAP = Measures of Academic Progress

We invite you to visit http://www.nwea.org/node/4661 so you can have more information about what MAP is all about!

 

We want to remind our students and parents that there will be NO SCHOOL for students on Wednesday, September 25.  The teachers will be working on a professional training with a visiting consultant.

 

DONATIONS NEEDED: “Ya Tengo Donde Escribir” is an organization aiming to help children from public schools that cannot afford notebooks. In order to help, the organization makes notebooks out of cereal boxes and pages from used notebooks. They are now collecting cereal boxes until November 20^th. We need our students to bring cereal boxes from their homes. At the end of the contest, the grade that brought more boxes will be awarded a pizza party or ice cream party! Please help us help those in need!

 

 

BAKE SALE - The Community Service Club will be hosting a bake sale on Thursday, September 26 to raise funds for the annual Christmas party for the orphans from Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos.  Many delicious treats will be available at break and lunch time!  Thanks, in advance, for your support!

 

FLU SEASON: The flu season has arrived, and we feel it is important that parents be aware and on the lookout for flu symptoms. We want to give you some suggestions and guidelines for keeping your child and your family healthy.

 

 

 

1.      One of the first ways of controlling exposure to the flu is to avoid crowds and close contact with others.

2.      If your child is sick with flu symptoms (fever, cough, sore throat, vomiting, diarrhea, difficulty breathing), please keep your child home until s/he is symptom free for 24 hours.

3.      We have placed antiseptic hand wash and Lysol disinfecting spray in each classroom and office. It is advisable for students to also have their own antiseptic hand wash and to use it frequently.

4.      Teachers are reminding their students to wash their hands frequently, cover coughs or sneezes, not share drinking bottles, food, straws, etc., and to use the antiseptic hand wash.

 

Flu Symptoms:  Fever, body aches including headache, fatigue, runny nose, cough and congestion.

 

What to do if your child has these symptoms:  Contact your doctor; keep your child home until s/he has been symptom free (including having no fever) for at least 24 hours.

 

          By following the above precautions, we are hopeful that we can contain and prevent widespread cases of the flu

 

WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 17-20

A long weekend is always a good time to recharge our batteries! We hope our Kindergarteners are ready for the new and exciting challenges that we have for the second half of the first quarter of the school year.

We would like to thank each one of you for everything you sent last Thursday for our “Desayuno Catracho”. The students enjoyed tasting Tamales de Cambray, Tamales de Frijoles, Corn on the Cob, Baleadas, Honduran Candies, Cheese, Catrachitas, and more.

Midterm Reports were issued last Thursday, September 12. Please go over them, sign them and send them back to school. If you would like a conference, and one was not requested, please call the school to set up an appointment.

 

 

This week we will be working with the letter Ss. The vocabulary we are going to be discussing is the following: sandwich, sand, seal, stop, sink, skates, stapler, suitcase, socks, skirt, sofa, skeleton, sandals, soup, and smile. Some of the stories that we will be reading this week are:

 

Seal´s Silly Sandwich come for supper at Seal’s house! This story is about a super-duper sandwich that will surprise kids and teach them all about the letter S.

 

The Very Busy Spider is well on its way to becoming a modern classic. Follow an industrious spider as she carefully spins her web. A cow, a pig, and other farm animals want her to play--but a busy spider needs to finish her work, or there'll be no dinner.

Swimmy is a happy black fish that lives in a school of red fish until a big tuna eats all of his brothers and sisters. Lonely and sad, Swimmy searches the sea and finally finds another school of red fish. These fish are too frightened to swim in the ocean, so Swimmy comes up with a plan: all the red fish swim close together in the shape of one giant fish, and black Swimmy is the eye!

We are going to talk about facts about spiders. Some of the ones we will be discussing are that Spiders come in many sizes and colors. Spiders hatch from eggs. Spiders are NOT insects like many people think… and much more!!!!

We will continue to work on beginning sounds. Help us out at home naming objects around your house and asking your child what letter does it begin with!!

 

This week we will continue with the same sight words as last week. These words are: he, was, for, on, are. Practice, practice, practice!!!

In Math, the students will have the chance to make pictographs. We are going to focus our study on the number 11.

 

 

 

 

The IXL skills that need to be practiced this week are

Numbers and counting up to 10

1.     C.5 Count by typing - up to 10

2.    C.6 Count up - with pictures

3.    C.7 Count up - with numbers

 

This week the children in charge of bringing the ingredients for Kinder Kafe are Maria Fernanda Almeyda and Felipe Antonio Bertrand. Thank you in advance.

 

 

 

Tip of the Week: Read it and experience it

 

Connect what your child reads with what happens in life. If reading a book about animals, relate it to your last trip to the zoo.

 

GAME OF THE WEEK: Psychic Scavenger Hunt

What you'll need

·         5-10 objects that can easily be found in a room (bowl, brush, bottle, etc.)

How to play

1.     One player writes out a secret list of 5 to 10 objects that can easily be found in a room, such as a bowl, a brush, and a bottle.

2.    He/She then announces the number of objects he's/she´s looking for, and the other family members have one minute to gather that same number of items.

3.    If anyone brings an object that's on the list, he/she gets a point. And, of course, players have to put their items away before the next round. You may want to vary the game by limiting the objects to things that begin with the same letter or are a certain shape.

 

 

 

SCHOOL ANNOUNCEMENTS

 

DPTO – The Discovery Parent-Teacher Organization (DPTO) works to help the school fund raise for projects and provide fun activities for our students, parents, and teachers! Anyone interested in joining and help to organize events is more than welcome to join us, as we meet every Tuesday at 7:30 a.m. in the school Cafeteria. We would like to remind all parents of the agreement made by the General Assembly in May 2013, to have all parents donate L. 200 per child to help finance the events and activities organized during the year. You can pay the fee in the finance office to Ms. Belica Varela, or your homeroom teacher. You will receive a receipt from the school. Parents who still have not done so, please fill out our survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Q6QY2VF

 

MAP FALL TESTING SESSION – Our Map testing session will begin on Monday, September 23. The specific times and dates for our grades will be published in our blog. Parent cooperation in making sure our students are in school on time is greatly appreciated. 

 

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPEMENT WEDNESDAY IN SEPTEMBER – There will be no school for students on Wednesday, September 25. Teachers will receive a training with Ms. Judi Fenton.