Weekly News & Homework: November 4th-8th

Weekly News: November 4-8

We had so much fun celebrating Halloween together! Thank you for all of the generous donations and volunteer time!!

There is no school on Monday, November 11th due to Veteran's Day and no school for students on Monday, November 18th due to parent conferences. 

The APEX Fun Run is Thursday! Whether you have received pledges or not, every child will participate in the run. Your child will be getting a special APEX t-shirt to wear over their clothes on this day. Please send your child to school in appropriate clothing and running shoes on this day.  Thank you!! You are more than welcome to come and cheer on our runners. More info coming your way via ParentSquare this week. 

Our kindergarten classes will be having a combined Thanksgiving Feast on Friday, November 22nd. We are looking forward to a great, big Thanksgiving celebration together!  We will be making many items for our feast in the classroom together! If you are able to donate items for our feast, we would really appreciate it - be on the look out for the ParentSquare sign up coming soon!  If you would like to come help set up and make this a wonderful Thanksgiving Feast for our kids, you are welcome to join us next Friday at 11:45 for set up.  The feast will begin at 12:15. We need LOTS of help for set up and tear down! Thank you in advance!

Mark your calendars now!  We will be having our very own special kindergarten play, "The Tale of the Gingerbread Man" on the evening of Thursday, December 19th. MUCH MORE information to come, but I know December is a busy month and you do not want to miss this, so mark your calendars now! 

This week, I am sending home our holiday Scholastic Book Order. Scholastic books make great gifts for the holidays and they are super inexpensive. I want to give you a few weeks to shop but I also want to make sure you receive your books before Christmas, so orders will be due the Friday before Thanksgiving break, November 22nd. Have fun shopping! 

What Are We Learning This Week:

Sight Words: This week we are reviewing our tricky W words - WENT, WHEN, WHAT, WAS, WANT. Please continue to practice all sight words that we have learned in the first trimester.

Letter Team: GE/GI (the soft sound of G which sounds like J, like in GENTLE and GIANT).

Reading: Continue to work on your fluency page given in reading bags. We will practice reading this all week to work on fluency. In class, we will also read many books turkeys and pilgrims and Indians, as we prepare for Thanksgiving. 

Writing: We have been working on using a Flow Map to put our narrative story in order.  A flow map is a series of boxes connected by arrows to represent the events in order.  We are learning to use the flow map to organize our ideas. For example:

From this flow map I might write the following narrative story:

Today I went to school.  I counted in math.  I played with my friends.  I read a story.

Some students are working on extending their sentences and their story may look like the following: This morning I was excited to go to my school Inland Leaders.  I worked on my math counting goal by counting to 100.  At recess I ate my apple snack and then played tag with Cathy and Angie.  At the end of the day I read my  fluency story in reading groups.

Math: We will work on fun Thanksgiving story problems and games this week. We will also have fun exploring 2D and 3D shapes. 

Leadership: For the month of November, our whole school will be focusing on the A of ROAR: Act Safely. We will talk about what that means and how we can act safely in the classroom, while walking, and at recess. 

Homework: November 4-8

Flashcards: Study flashcards for our review sight words (WENT, WHEN, WHAT, WAS, WANT,) Make Flashcards for the new letter teams (GE and GI).   Study flashcards every day. 

Phonemic Awareness: Keep working with your child on skills such as blending, segmenting, rhyming, syllables, and sound switch.  

Reading: In your book bag this week, you will find a new fluency page. Please practice reading every item each evening for reading homework and please make sure everything comes back to school each day in your child’s book bag. Continue to read TO your child every night, having conversations about the stories you are reading. Continue to log onto Smarty Ants for 10-15 at least a few times a week.

Writing: Practice writing CVC words. Practice writing sight words. Practice writing narrative stories, making sure you are using finger spaces, an uppercase only at the beginning, proper penmanship, and a period at the end.

Math: I hope you have had fun playing the Counting game that was sent home last week.  This a great game to practice important math skills. Continue to play Dreambox for 10-15 minutes each night. Continue to count to 30 (or 50 or 100!) every day, practice number flashcards out of order, practice writing your numbers to 20 or higher, practice identifying shapes and drawing shapes. Remember to also go over our "Daily Math" practice pages that we do every morning in class - take a moment to go over these practice pages to see if there is anything specific your child needs to work on. 

1. 
   

Our school code for Dreambox is X2we/inlandlcs

QR Codes: Download and print those QR Codes each week from ParentSquare and have your child work on those at home!