I will post my weekly communications here so if you need to re-locate them, they will be posted here.

Friday, September 1, 2022

Hello!!

Well we have made it through our first week with full days of school!! WOOHOO!! I am pretty tired so I would assume your child is also feeling pretty tired. I hope that you are all able to enjoy our Labor Day weekend break and have some good family time!!

This week we were able to start ABC Bootcamp!! We have learned the letters M, S, T, and N! Thank you to those that were assigned to bring something in this week!! It was very fun and exciting for everyone to see something special brought from home! Don't forget to check our ABC Bootcamp calendar to see when your child gets to bring something in and what letter they are assigned!!

We have started to learn about letters in our name and have practiced writing them the correct way! We have also started to talk about how only the first letter of our name gets to be uppercase. We will continue to work on this as we learn more letters throughout the next few weeks!

This week we have also been learning and talking about personal space, safe bodies, and being a good friend. We learned about our own personal space bubbles and how sometimes we pop other people's space bubbles when we get too close to them or if we try to touch them. We are working on keeping our bodies to ourselves and having safe bodies at school. :)

If you are part of our Community Snack, you do NOT need to send in more snacks for September at this point! If we start running low near the end of September I will give a heads up but I think we should be good for a while!!

A reminder we do not have school on Monday! Enjoy your Labor Day break!

Thank you for talking to your child about lunch choices and whether they are hot lunch or cold lunch! Our first week of lunch at school was successful!

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out! As always, this will be posted on our Google Site if you need to reference it!

Have a great weekend!

Thanks!

Friday, September 9, 2022

Hello!!

Happy Friday!! Wow, we have had a fun week with a lot of new learning and experiences!! With all this fun has also come some tired kiddos and some extra big emotions. We have missed home and moms and dads but we have pushed through and have continued to build up our stamina!! Next week, we will have a substitute teacher on Thursday and Friday (a half day) as I will be flying to Montana for a friend's wedding!!

Reminders for next week:

MONDAY: Picture Day & Gym

FRIDAY: Half Day (email or dojo if your child needs a sack lunch)

Walk-A-Thon

Ok when I told you guys I take Walk-A-Thon seriously, I wasn't sure how you would respond. But apparently, we have some competitive parents in our group We love to see it!!!! This is amazing!!! Thank you so much for supporting our school and all of the fun things we get to do during the year because of your generosity!!! If you want to share our classroom webpage, here is our site! YOU GUYS ROCK!!!!!!!!! LET'S TAKE THE WIN!!!!! Even just registering your child for a Walk-A-Thon account is helpful!! So if you are unsure if you want to donate or are unable at this time, you can still create an account for your child!

A Note from our PTC:

The Alward PTC will host an Open House on Tuesday, September 13th from 7-8 pm. If you would like to attend, please park in the parking lot on the office side (Door A). We would love for everyone to come out and look at the amazing things happening this school year. Our open house will have tables available to answer questions and gain volunteers. These wonderful events can only continue with your continued parental support. This is a true open house style, you are welcome to come and go as you please. The teacher with the most parents sign in will win a class pizza party! Don't worry, you can sign in for every child you have :) We look forward to seeing you Tuesday!

Classroom Parties:

This year we will have a Halloween Party, a Chirstmas Party, and a Valentine's Day Party! I am allowed to have 6 parents help at each party. If you would like to volunteer for a party, please follow the link to our Classroom Parties Sign Up and you can sign up for ONE party! If you do not receive a slot, we will have other opportunities for you to come in and hang out (donut parties, read aloud guest, tie-dye help, etc.)!!! I am very open to parents coming in and helping out or hanging with us while we learn!! So I will be sure to pass along some more opportunities besides these three parties and if you have an idea of something you would want to do let me know and we can see if we can make it work!! :)

This Week We Learned...

This week we learned the letters R, A, L and D!! Today I decided we should celebrate learning the letter D with one of my favorite treats: DONUTS!!! There are some pictures below from our donut celebration!! It was a lot of fun!! This week we got to go to all of our specials!! We will have gym on Monday! This week we also talked about what it means to be respectful and responsible at school. We are practicing taking good care of all of our different tools, toys, and materials. We also received a new tool this week: scissors!!! We practiced cutting slowly, safely, and on straight and curved lines. We had some dance parties, read a lot of good books, had lots of silly laughter, and overall a very fun week!! We read a book called Space Camp where we talked about our own personal bubbles and how we don't want to pop other people's bubbles by getting too close. We are doing a better job of keeping our hands out of our eyes, noses, and mouths!! Thank you for helping me tackle germs at school!!

I have really loved all the sweet hugs, silly laughter, and warm smiles we have shared this week!! My heart just keeps growing as I get to know the sweetness of your children more and more each week. Man, your children ROCK!! Seriously, I am so thankful for them and just love them to pieces!!!!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Please let me know if you need anything at all!!

Thanks!!

Friday, September 30, 2022

Happy Friday!!

Wow we have had quite an eventful week!! Unfortunately, I missed our pajama day and tourist day because I was sick :( But I was able to make it back for the rest of the week!! We had a lot of fun celebrating mismatch day, disco day, and Eagles day!!

IN FOLDERS TODAY:

I am sending home a BLUE note about our ABC Bootcamp Celebration! I am also sending home a white paper that will be used as a cape and a letter from the alphabet. The directions for what to do are on the blue paper! Capes are due on Wednesday, October 5!

On Wednesday we went to library! If your child did not check out a new book it is because they did not return their book from last week! If you send your child's book back this upcoming Wednesday your child will be able to check out a new book!

On Thursday we had a visit from an Ottawa County Agriculture in the Classroom Specialist! Her name is Taylor Evans. She came and taught us all about farms and what plants grow on farms, what animals live on farms, and what products come from those animals and plants! We got to build a web of resources in our classroom! She then read us a book called PB&J Hooray! that taught us all about where the ingredients to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich come from!! It was a lot of fun! Feel free to ask your child about what they learned and where products you have in your home come from!

On Friday we had a lot of fun Spirit Week celebrations!! We had football players, cheerleaders, and band players come and walk through our hals!! We were able to go into our hallways and cheer them on with special signs we made! We also had our Donut Party with donuts from Post Family Farms! That was a big excitement in our room ;) And we ended the day with Mr. Custer, a second grade teacher, racing some students!! What a week it has been!!

Pizza Party

On Tuesday, October 11 we will be having our Pizza Party from the Walk-A-Thon! You do not need to send a lunch with your child on that day as we will have pizza, juice boxes, and cookies. Let me know if you have questions!

October Community Snack

As we end September and enter into October you can start to send in your October community snack. It does not need to be sent in on Monday but within the first week or two of October is great! Thank you!!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!! Please let me know if you have any questions!!

Thanks!!

Friday, October 7, 2022

Hello!

Happy Friday!! We have had a really fun week!!

School pictures are in your child's backpack!!! Capes are also in your child's backpack.

Monday we will have Pajama and Stuffed Animal Day! Your child may wear pajamas, slippers, and bring ONE stuffed animal that can fit in their backpack! :)

Tuesday, October 11 is our Walk-A-Thon Pizza Party!! You do not need to send lunch that day.

On Wednesday we had our Fire Safety Program! We got to meet some really awesome fire fighters, learn about their gear, having an exit plan, and so much more! We got to look around and inside their really cool fire truck, too! We also had Library on Wednesday. We heard a story from Mrs. Fellows and then got to look through books before checking out a new one to take home this week!

On Thursday we went for a quick visit to Mr. Cuter's classroom! We got to see some really cool second graders and even some siblings! It was really fun to see where the older kids are learning and hear all about the mystery story they were reading!!

On Friday we had our extra recess for winning 2nd place for the Walk-A-Thon! We got to have recess with the first graders!!!! It was so much fun!! We also had our ABC Bootcamp celebration! We showed off our amazing capes and got to tly them around outside while bopping to some fun tunes! We also played alphabet bingo with some Halloween m&ms because m&ms make everything more fun!! We also made some cotton ball ghosts that are hanging up in our classroom right now!

There are a lot of pictures down below! I think they are shared as a google drive, if you need access let me know! I think I shared them all but if something isn't working let me know and I will fix it!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Please let me know if you need anything!!

Thanks!!

Friday, October 14, 2022

Hello!!

Happy Friday!! I hope you all had a good week!

We are going to begin talking about names in our first Phonics unit. We will study names, cheer names, and then hang our names up for everyone to see! Names are such a special part of who we are. Today we read a book called The Name Jar. It is a book about a girl who moved to America from Korea and was scared to share her name for fear others would make fun of her. It is a really beautiful story of friendship and kindness. This weekend you get to do our Name Project with your child! You can write the answers on the paper, your child does not have to write them. Please send in your answers on Monday!

This week we had our Walk-A-Thon Pizza Party!! Some quotes from the party include, "This is the best pizza party ever!!!!" and "This pizza is amazing! I could eat a million pieces!!" So overall I would say we quite enjoyed our pizza party!! There are some fun pictures shared down below!

We also had our pajama day this week!! There are photos of of our PJ day down below!!

Today we had our 3rd Grade buddies come for our first visit together!!! It was seriously so much fun!! Everyone did so well and it was so fun to watch our students interact with one another! We are paired up with Mrs. Skinner's class. Today, the 3rd graders interviewed the Kindergarteners about some of their favorite things! It was awesome. There are some pictures below :)

We are beginning to work on sounding words out, looking for letters all around us, recognizing the first sounds in words, drawing with lots of details and information, and treating books with kindness by turning from the corners and not ripping pages. We have started to do some writing that has included drawing pictures and adding some label words. You may even notice your child bringing home papers that they drew on with words on them that they have started to sound out!!! It is so fun to watch the progression from learning letters to putting those letters into words!! We are going to have a lot of fun as we begin to progress our reading and writing skills!!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!! A reminder that this upcoming Friday (October 21) is an Early Release!

Let me know if you have any questions!!

Thanks!!

Friday, October 21, 2022

Happy Friday!!

Wow, I hope you are able to enjoy this beautiful weather we are having today and are able to enjoy our long weekend!!

A reminder that we have no school on Monday! Enjoy your fall break!

We will have our Halloween Parade on Friday from 1:30-2:00! Parents are welcome to come! :) We will have our Halloween Party from 2:00-3:00. Your child is welcome to and encouraged to dress up!! Just a reminder that costumes need to be school appropriate (no weapons, blood, gore, etc.). Also remember that your child will need to be able to go to the bathroom on their own and participate in school activities throughout the entire day. Let me know if you have any questions!

This week we introduced our Phonics, Writer's Workshop, and Reader's Workshop!! We also got our brand new math books! It was a lot of new, fun things!

In Phonics we are studying our names. We are looking at the letters in our names and looking for tall letters, small letters, and hang-down-low letters. We are seeing if our names have vowels inside of them and how many vowels there are. We are also counting the letters in our names. After we study a name we cheer it and add it to our Word Wall! We also met our new, special phonics friend, Mabel the elephant!

In Writer's Workshop we are working on telling about something we know a lot about! Maybe we know a lot about football or a lot about dinosaurs or cheerleading! We pick a topic we feel like we know a lot about and then we make a plan for what we want to include in our writing. After we pick an idea and make a plane we WRITE WRITE WRITE!! We draw a detailed drawing and then start to add some labels to our pictures. We have started to learn how to stretch our words out and listen for the sounds we hear in the word.

In Reader's Workshop we have been introduced to books we call "Learn About the World" books, or non-fiction books. We have talked about how to love books and treat them with kindness. We turn our pages from the corner and are gentle with them whenever we read. We have learned how to privately read and how to read with a partner. We started to talk about the purpose of the books we are reading and that authors of non-fiction books write these books to teach us something.

In Math we have been working on our one-to-one correspondence which is being able to count objects or pictures on a page and telling how many. We want to be able to point to or touch objects and pictures and count them correctly without accidentally skipping objects or counting them twice. We have also been working on our positional words like below, behind, beside, above, next to, and in front of. We have also been practicing drawing our shapes and talking about the different attributes that each of the shapes has (how many sides, what kind of sides, are they the same or different, how many corners).

We also talked about our emotions this week. Sometimes we can feel more than one emotion at the same time. We talked about how sometimes we can be nervous and excited, like how many of us felt on the first day of school. We also talked about how our bodies and faces can show emotions we are feeling, too! When we are feeling mad, our faces probably look mad and our bodies may feel tight or tense or warm. We want to start recognizing how we are feeling so that we can learn how to bring our bodies and brains back down to being ready to learn whether we need to take some deep breaths, get a drink of water, get a hug, etc.

We have done a lot of hard work this week and had a lot of fun doing it!! I am really excited for all the Halloween fun next week! Let me know if you have any questions!!

Thanks!!

Friday, October 28, 2022

Happy Friday!!

I hope you all had a wonderful week! Today was so much fun! Thank you so much to all the parents that volunteered and made our party happen today!! It was a great success! The parade was so much fun and I am so thankful for the wonderful weather we had!! There are some pictures down below from our party and a few group pictures as well!

If anyone is interested in bringing in some donuts from Sprinkles on Monday to help us celebrate Halloween I think that would be really fun!! But the ask is quite last minute so if no one is able to, that is totally fine!!! No pressure, but if you want to just send me a quick email back :) Thanks!!

This week we started to explore some new concepts in each of our focus areas. In math we introduced the fun word "subitize" and how we can look at a group of things and see how many without even counting!!!! CRAZY! We also talked about tens frames: what they look like, how we can use them, and how they help us count!

We have been cheering each other's names all week long in Phonics and it has been so much fun. We have been studying names for tall, small, and hang-down-low letters as well as for consonants and vowels. We have also been working on rhyming words and coming up with our own words to rhyme!

We have started to explore the concept of writing a story across multiple pages instead of on just a single page. We talked about a topic and how we can tell a lot of things about one topic and write it across pages.

In reading we explored some new "learn about the world" books and got to discover some new topics that authors have chosen to write about. We have learned about re-reading a book to gather more information and looking for things we may have missed the first time. We have also been looking for "Wow" pages to share with our reading partner.

We have had a lot of fun this week!! I hope you all have a wonderful and safe Halloween weekend! We will have a pajama day on Monday!!

Let me know if you need anything or have any questions!!!

Thanks!!

Friday, November 4, 2022

Hello!

I hope you all had a wonderful week!

A reminder that we will have our Book Fair next week!! Our LOOK day will be on Monday and our BUY day will be on Wednesday! Feel free to set up your child's e-wallet or you can send in cash or check for purchasing books.

We will have our Body Safety presentation on Thursday, November 10.

We will have a half day on Friday, November 11. Please let me know if your child needs a sack lunch!

In Phonics we have finished studying ALL of our Star Names this week!!! It has been so fun to cheer and study everyone's names. Everyone's name is now displayed on our World Wall to continue to reference as needed! We have been working really hard on counting syllables, making rhyming words, and sounding out consonant/vowel/consonant words. We are making so much growth!!

In Writing we have started a new unit called Show and Tell. We are working really hard on showing a very detailed picture in our drawing but also telling about it with words and labels. Today we learned more of our writing process. We learned how to revise and how to color our writing when it was finished. We worked hard on drawing something we were wearing for the first few days and then we got to draw some items from our classroom!

In Reading we talked about how we can make a connection to the book we are reading; we call this "add a pinch of me!". We have been looking through "learn about the world" (nonfiction) books and sharing how we can connect the books we are reading. This makes the book more personal and makes our learning more fun!

In math we have played a fun dice game where we roll the dice and then have to find the number on our paper. We got to play this for two days! The first day we worked on numbers 1-6 and on the second day we worked on number 2-12!! It helped us "subitize" the dots on the die, it helped us count, it helped us find and recognize numbers, and it helped us write our numbers facing the right way!!

We had a guest reader come and read us some Halloween books this week! Mrs. Ambrose is a coach at our school and helps all of the teachers in our building. She went and visited many classrooms on Halloween and read us some really fun books!

Today we had our 3rd grade buddies come! We began an art project of creating a handprint and foot turkey! It was a lot of fun to see everyone working together to make something so fun!

I hope you all have a great weekend!! Please let me know if you have any questions!!

Thanks!!

Friday, November 11, 2022

Hello!

I hope you all have had a great week and were able to enjoy this wonderful weather we have had this week!

We have had quite an eventful week! On Monday and Wednesday we were able to visit the Book Fair! There were so many great books to choose from! Thank you so much to everyone that donated to help me buy some new books for our classroom!! We are all excited to read all the new books together!

On Thursday we had our Body Safety presentation. We learned about our private zones and how they should not be touched by other people. We talked about safe adults and who those safe adults could be at home and at school.

A reminder that we will have Parent/Teacher Conferences next week! I am excited to meet with all of you to talk about your child and how much they have already begun to grow!! Let me know if you have questions or need anything before!

This week in...

Phonics! We have started to learn some of our very first snap words. These are words that we are going to memorize and be able to read and write in a snap! The words we have learned so far this week are: I, a, me, and the! We have studied these words, practiced spelling them, and practiced reading them.

Writing! We have been working on drawing objects in our classroom in a lot of detail. We want people to see our drawings and know exactly what we are drawing! In addition to having detailed drawings we have also been adding labels and short sentences. Once we learned some of our new snap words, we went back and revised our writing by making our labels longer and more detailed. For example, instead of labeling "pencil" we may change the label to "the pencil" or "the yellow pencil".

Reading! We started to go on snap word hunts to find our newly learned words in the books we are reading!! It was really exciting to be able to make a connection with our new words and that we could start to really read words inside of books!! We have also been trying to look for shorter words that we can sound out inside of the books!

Math! We have been practicing writing our numbers 1-20! We have also been working in our math books on looking at pictures of objects and adding more to our pictures or taking away from our pictures. We have been talking about shapes and the attributes that make them unique. We have been practicing counting to 100, too!

Today we celebrated Veterans Day! We talked about the importance of our military and how they keep us safe and help give us freedoms like being able to go to school! We talked about family members that may serve or may have served in one of our 5 sections of the military! If you are a veteran or are currently serving, I would personally like to say thank you for your service!!

It has been a really fun week of learning! Please let me know if you need anything from me! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!

Thanks!

Friday, December 2, 2022

Hello!

Happy Friday! I hope you all had a great week! THere is a Secret Santa Shop flyer in your child's mailbox. Please read that and send the needed things back on MONDAY! Our Secret Santa Shop day is Monday, December 5! Please be sure to read the directions closely so our shopping can go smoothly! There is a chart on the back to write who your child will be buying for. Here are the directions digitally as well!! We are so excited! Thank you to any of you that have offered to volunteer and help out at the Secret Santa Shop!!!

This week we had a lot of fun reading with our 3rd grade buddies!! We also had a special visitor (Mr. Matt) come and read us a story this week!! We also worked really hard on building a HUMONGOUS paper chain to decorate our classroom with!! Our super long chain had 287 loops of paper!!! It was an awesome activity with a lot of teamwork and fun!!

This week in...

Math... we took our very first math test!! We were tested on finding groups of dots that matched the number, connecting dot to dots in number order, drawing shapes, writing out numbers 1-5 the right way, identifying shapes, and drawing a certain number of objects. We have also been identifying groups of things ranging from one object to 10 objects! We have also been helping Puzzled Penguin in our math book solve problems he has a hard time with. This week we helped him put his numbers from 1-10 in the correct order.

Writing... we have been working really hard on writing a pattern sentence on each of our pages following the pattern "I see the...". We have written 3 pages about things in our bedroom with a picture, labels, and a sentence that says something like, "I see the bed." Then we added an ending page that had the pattern on the sentence change and sum up our story. This sentence might have been something like, "My bedroom rocks!" Then we added a cover page and turned it into a real book!!! It was a lot of fun!

Reading... we got our very own book bags!! We have started to explore some real books that we can read when we use our sound out power. We have added some books that are at our level to begin reading on our own!! It has been really exciting to begin reading books and sounding words out all on our own! We have been working really hard on sounding out words and blending the sounds together to figure out what the word is.

Phonics... we have been practicing putting the letter sounds to the letters themselves. We did a fun activity this week where one partner would write the letter on their whiteboard and their partner would write the letter on their partner's back! We have also been learning some more snap words. This week we talked about the word "this". We talked about how to spell it and how the beginning of "this" and the beginning of "the" are the same!

We have had a really great week of learning and have really made some huge leaps in our reading and writing, which is so fun to see!! Next week we will continue some normal curriculum and then get into Holidays Around the World! I am excited to learn about different holidays and then end our semester with so many fun Christmas festivities!! Thank you so much to everyone that signed up to help with our hot cocoa day!! The kids are SO excited for it!!

I hope you all have a great weekend!!

Thanks!!

Friday, December 9, 2022

Hello!!

I hope you all have had a great week! We had a lot of fun this week as we get closer to Christmas break!

We were able to go shopping at Santa's Secret Shop!! Thank you so much to everyone that volunteered to help make that happen! What an awesome event and opportunity for the kids to go shop for family members! We also had buddies today! We love when our 3rd grade friends come and visit us! It is definitely a highlight of our week!

Today, we started Holidays Around the World! We decorated some luggage, created a Passport, and filled out our boarding pass. We boarded the plane and landed in Mexico!! We learned all about Las Posadas! We learned that people in Mexico celebrate the first Christmas and children will reenact the first Christmas. We also learned that pinatas are used for celebration! Poinsettias are used for decorations and some common foods are roasted turkey, tamales, and punch!!

We have been really working hard on blending our lessons in phonics, writing, and reading together! We have been working hard on making our snap words something we can read and write quickly! We have been using our snap words in Writer's Workshop as we write our sentences on each page and we have been looking for our snap words in books that we are reading! It has been really fun to start reading real books and becoming real readers!! I have been able to read with a lot of students this week and it has been so exciting to see the growth happening before we end this year!! We have also been studying what a sentence is. We talk about what makes a good sentence (capital at the beginning, spaces, punctuation at the end). We have been writing our own sentences and studying sentences in books. Sometimes it is tricky to grasp a letter versus a word versus a sentence so we have been trying to break those down and compare and contrast them.

In math we have been working really hard on writing our numbers 1-10 the right way so that when we go on to bigger numbers we will be an expert at the way the numbers face. This week we discovered that if we know the numbers 0-9 we can write any number in the whole world!!!! CRAZY!!!! We had to help Puzzle Penguin put his numbers in the correct order when he wrote 1-10. We spotted the problem and fixed it!

It seems like we have a lot of germs going around right now!! Please talk to your child about sneezing and coughing in their elbows, using tissues when needed, and maybe staying home if they are sick. We want everyone to be healthy for Christmas break! :)

Our Holiday Program is on Tuesday, December 13! Please have your child come to Fair Haven Church at 6:15! We will have our Christmas Party on Thursday!! We will have our hot cocoa, movie, pajama, blanket, stuffie day on Friday! Thank you so much to all of the parents helping put on our Christmas party and thank you to all the parents that donated items for our hot cocoa day!!! We are so excited!!

I hope you are enjoying the snow and have a wonderful weekend!! Please let me know if you need anything!!

Thanks!