Week of Dec. 1-5

Dear Parents,

We decided to have an Author Study about Kevin Henkes. If you have any books about this wonderful author please send them with your child to school. We will be reading some of his books and watching interesting videos about the way he creates his books.

Some of the books that we chose to read in class are the following:

Lilly loves everything about school, especially her cool teacher, Mr. Slinger. But when Lilly brings her purple plastic purse and its treasures to school and can't wait until sharing time, Mr. Slinger confiscates her prized possessions. Lilly's fury leads to revenge and then to remorse and she sets out to make amends.

Owen is a young mouse about to start school. Owen treats Fuzzy, his blanket, like it is his best friend. When Owen’s neighbor, Mrs. Tweezers, sees Owen playing with the blanket, she suggests ways for Owen’s parents to try to get Owen to get rid of Fuzzy before it’s time for him to start school. Owen is very upset. Everyone seems to be unhappy until Owen’s mother comes up with a solution that pleases everyone.

“There is no Jessica,” said Ruthie’s parents. But of course there was. She ate with Ruthie, played with Ruthie, and was sorry when Ruthie was bad. Nobody could see Jessica—except Ruthie. When it came time for Ruthie to go to school, Jessica went with her. Her parents hoped Ruthie would find a friend at school who would replace Jessica. They were in for a happy surprise!

This will also be a Review Week!!! We will be reviewing all the letters of the alphabet we have studied so far with the corresponding vocabulary words introduced for each letter.

We will be doing a sort of different activities to review syllable counting, beginning sounds and rhyming words.

We are going to be evaluating the 35 sight words we have worked with in the class. Please make sure your child recognize these words by sight. Practicing at home daily will be very beneficial for your kid and helpful for us. The sight words they should know by now are: the, I, and, a, to, in, is, you, that, it, he, was, for, on, are, as, with, his, they, of, at, be, this, have, see, or, one, had, by, can, but, not, like, my, we. It is very important for them to recognize all the words, since we are starting to do a lot of writing and reading activities. They are all very excited to know that they are starting to write and read on their own.

In Math, we will be reviewing numbers 0-20. The children should be able to recognize these numbers out of sequence, making sets to match each number and sequence the numbers in the correct order.

Please practice the following skills with your child at home:

Numbers and counting up to 20

D.2    Count dots - 0 to 20

D.3    Represent numbers - up to 20

We have a student that celebrates Hannukah. This week we are having a special guest in our classroom to talk to us about this celebration. The children will learn the meaning of it and we will have some decorations displayed in our classroom.

We will also decorate a Christmas tree. For this, we are asking the children to bring at least two ornaments from their house so we can decorate our tree. If you have any other decoration that we could use in our classroom please let us borrow it from you. If you have any books that are related to this holiday we would love to read them in class. Send them with your child and we will be displaying them in our book corner.

XMAS BASKETS - Christmas is the season to open our hearts and share with those around us that need it most. It has been a tradition at Discovery School for students to come together and contribute in assembling baskets of goods for our support personnel.  We are asking for your cooperation in sending the following:

Nursery/PKinder and 6th grade students       1 5-lb bag of beans

Kinder and 7th grade students                       1 5 lb bag of rice

1st grade and 8th grade students                   1 5-lb bag of sugar

2nd grade and 9th grade students                 1 bottle or 2 bags of oil, 2 boxes of                                                                                    margarine, OR 3 lbs of lard

3rd grade and 10th grade students                1 4lb-bag of MASECA

4th grade and 11th grade students                3 lbs of spaghetti (six packages) OR 1 bag                                                                       of coffee

5th grade and 12th grade students                4 packages of tomato paste

Please feel free to send any additional goodies that you want to share with our devoted staff, such as canned goods, instant soups, cookies and crackers, or anything else that does not require refrigeration.  Please send these items no later than Monday, December 15th. Your cooperation will be deeply appreciated.

NPH GIVING TREE - Nuestro Pequeños Hermanos (NPH) is an international organization that takes in abandoned and orphaned children, providing a home, education, and love.  Here in Honduras, the NPH organization provides for over 500 children in at large ranch near La Venta and home in Tegucigalpa for severely handicapped children.   While many children at the ranch have aunts, uncles, or grandparents that come to visit them and can provide some Christmas gifts, some children at a ranch have no family to visit.  It is these children, whom we would like to provide for this Christmas.   On the second floor of the secondary building, a NPH Giving Tree will be set up.   If you wish to participate, choose a paper tree that has a child’s information about his/her size for shoes or socks.  Purchase the new item and return it to Mrs. Agurcia’s Room (Rm. 7) by Friday, December 5th, with the tree tag taped to it.  As well, there are tree tags for basic food items that will be donated to the orphanage.  Cash donations will also be accepted to provide shoes and socks for children whose tags were not selected.  Thank you for giving this Christmas!

If more information about NPH’s work in Honduras, please visit http://www.nph-honduras.org/   and watch the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYC2A5njQTk