Mrs.O'Bryan's

 Our home page features updates about our weekly adventures in the JK class!

Happy Valentines! Thank you to all the parents who came out on Tuesday to help. You all put on a wonderful party and the kids had a blast. I know leaving was hard for a few, but know that tears dried up VERY quickly and we were off to the next fun thing; which happened to be making collage cardboard hearts! Thank you for the time you took to help your child make their Valentine boxes. They were super cute and I could tell fun was had in making them. 

Though we had a shorter week, we still managed to have a lot of fun and learn a lot. Mrs. Ella did a religion lesson on the many gifts that God has given us. She also led the group in making the collage hearts. We pulled out our math boxes and worked with ten frames. We used 2 and talked about what they were called (ten frames), why they were called that (they have 10 squares), and how if we have 2 ten frames, how many squares do we have in all. We did several different things with our ten frames. We practiced counting out the one or two digit number I gave using our ten frames. We also looked to see what happened if we added one or subtracted one. We filled one of our ten frames and made teen numbers by just adding a few to our second ten frame and then counting up from ten (as we know one full ten frame = ten). Lastly, they were told to count out any amount they wanted and let me know what number they had made. We learned the letter J in out handwriting book then reviewed the letters C O Q G S A I T.

We did manage to get outside for a little bit today. We actually were listening very well today so I knew I could trust them to follow my directions. We went for a shorter walk in the neighborhood, being sure to STAY ON THE SIDEWALK and NOT TOUCH THE SNOW. They did great. Then we played on the playground for about 10 minutes and went inside. I am hopeful that when we return from break we will be able to get back outside again! We also had Reed give his show and tell. He showed us his favorite video game Mario Kart. Everyone loved watching highlights of him playing and asked very good questions about it. 

Thank you all for meeting with me for conferences. I tried to stay on time and managed to for MOST of them, though not all, so thank you again if you had to wait a little bit for you conference to start, I really appreciate it. Conferences always go so quick and I almost never feel that I get to go over everything I intended. If you feel that way as well, please don't hesitate to email me with any questions you still may have. I believe I discussed Brigance testing with everyone, but just in case let me review. Brigance will begin sometime early to mid March. Everyone will do the 5 year old Brigance and this will help determine where we are in Kindergarten readiness. Please work on address (house number and street), phone number and potentially writing that last name. We will return on Wednesday next week. It will be a church day and Ash Wednesday, so if you can do your best to prepare them for that, that will be great. I will make sure to build in extra wiggle time after church so we can get our wiggles out. We will be moving into our theme of Arctic Animals but I am hopeful that we will NOT have the weather to match! We will also begin observing the Lenton season with a daily lenton calendar that I use that has different challenges for each day of Lent (i.e. prayers or acts of kindness). The kids really love it and the each get to color a day as we count done to Easter!

I hope everyone has a safe, fun and healthy break and I can't wait to see everyone when we return on Wednesday