Upcoming Events/Mark your calendars:
- Monday, January 19: No School, MLK Day
- Tuesday, January 20: 8am Mass
- Sunday, January 25: Catholic School’s Week: Catholic School’s week begins with 10:30 Mass on Sunday, January 25th. After the Mass, come on over to school for the open house from 11:30-2:30. This is for both current and prospective families. Bring a friend or neighbor if you can! All are welcome! If you’re able to volunteer at the event, click the link to sign up: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0E49A8AE22ABFEC25-61576311-stcletus#/
Looking Ahead: Read carefully, you don’t want to miss out on any of the fun to come! 🙂 Flyers are also below!
- 100th day kindergarten classroom celebration: As long as we don’t have any unexpected days off, we will have the 100th day celebration on Tuesday, February 3. I’ll send a note out about this soon!
- Valentine’s Party: Friday, February 13 at 12:20; this will be a parent volunteer opportunity! Watch for a sign-up from Mary’s mom to come out soon! Here is the note I sent home this week: valentine pass out letter, final
- Kindergarten Olympics: Friday, February 20th: we will do a cross-curricular mini unit on the winter olympics! We will end the unit with our own “kindergarten olympics” where students will “compete” in bobsledding, hockey, olympic torch relays and more! This will be another parent volunteer opportunity. To volunteer, click here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0548A9A62AAAFB6-61533628-kindergarten
- Spring Auction: Saturday, March 7, 6:30-10:30 in the Parish Center; all our fundraisers are important, but this one is ESPECIALLY important! We need your help to make it successful! Your attendance alone is a great way to support, and it’s always fun to be around other cardinal families!
- Little Cardinals Dudes and Donuts in the Parish Center: 9am on Saturday, February 7th
- Mother and Son Sweetheart Dance: February 13, 5:30-7:30 in the PC gym.
What’s Due:
- Hot lunch orders: Order now!
- Virtus training: In order to volunteer in our classroom or go on a field trip, you must be VIRTUS TRAINED: https://stcletusschool.com/volunteering/; Please be sure to get this completed! We’d LOVE to have you in our classroom! 🙂 Please reach out to Ms. Krieger in the office with ANY questions about virtus training: mkrieger@stcletusparish.com . We LOVE volunteers and are happy to help you with any questions. A BIG thanks to all that have gotten these requirements completed. We are so grateful to our volunteers!!
- Boom cards: I’ll post new ones by Monday!
- “Six Seven Surge”: help us meet our auction goal by raising $67! Lots of incentives for the kids if we meet the goal!
- Mystery Reader Sign-up: We’d love for you to be a mystery reader in our classroom! Sign up here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0548A9A62AAAFB6-61533225-mystery
- Open house volunteer sign-up: They are looking for volunteers for the upcoming open house! If you can help out, click here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0E49A8AE22ABFEC25-61576311-stcletus#/
- Spring Auction, Kindergarten Class Basket: A note from our room parent (sent by Mary’s mom to you in an email): Every class is assigned a theme for a basket that is included in the silent auction. We have been assigned the theme of “Movie Night”. If you would like to help me brainstorm and purchase items to put in the basket, reply to this email or text me. If you are looking to rehome any casting devices/ streaming sticks, streaming service gift cards, DVDs or other movie night related items that you may have received over the holidays, send them my way! The suggested minimum value of each class basket is $150. If each family could please Zelle or venmo me $15 (or whatever amount you are comfortable donating) it would be greatly appreciated. I need to have the completed and assembled basket turned in to the school office by Thursday, February 5th. Please Venmo or Zelle me by Friday, January 23rd.
This Week:
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We started the i-Ready winter diagnostic on Thursday. As a reminder, all students from kindergarten through 8th grade take the i-Ready assessments in both reading and math three times a year—at the beginning, middle, and end of the school year. i-Ready is a computerized adaptive assessment, meaning the more questions a student answers correctly, the more challenging the assessment becomes. For the winter diagnostic in kindergarten, the main thing we are looking for is GROWTH from the beginning of the school year. Please keep in mind that this is just ONE assessment, and especially for younger students, it may not always fully reflect their abilities. Students have almost completed the math diagnostic and will begin the reading diagnostic next week!
Next Week:
Language Arts:
Fundations: I’ve introduced: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P. Next week, we will work on Q, R, S, T. In addition to focusing on capital letter formation, Unit 2 is also all about:
- Phonemic awareness skills: blending, segmenting and manipulation of sounds
- Blending and reading 3 sound short vowel words, CVC words (cat, run, big) etc.
- Story prediction
- Alphabetical order
- High frequency/Word wall words: Click HERE for what our word wall will look like by the end of February. Next week I will not introduce any new words, we will continue to focus on COLOR WORDS and NUMBER WORDS (one through ten)
- Pocket chart: We will learn a new song next week: “We go to a Catholic School,” as we get ready for Catholic Schools week!
- We will ready stories about Martin Luther King, and kindness next week.
- Reading group: keep practicing the book folders I send home! Those books and passages are what we work on in reading group. Remember–kindergarten students who are exposed to decodable text and engage in repeated readings of that text, become strong, CONFIDENT readers!
Math:
We will finish up our current workbooks next week and will move on to modules 11-14 which is about adding and subtracting with 10 (previously we went up to 5), and ways to make ten (if I have 8…how many more to get to 10?)
- Counting to 100. We are now counting by 1s to 100! At home, please practice counting to 100 (or beyond)! The goal by the end of kindergarten is to count to 100 (or beyond)!
- Addition and subtraction: we are working on writing and solving addition equations within within 5. Students need to be able to identify +, -, = (plus sign, minus sign and equal to) and label equations as either “addition” or “subtraction.”
- Counting by 10s: We will continue to practice skip counting by 10s to 100. Practice at home!
- Counting by 5s: We will continue to practice skip counting by 5s. Practice at home!
- Counting by 2s: I introduced counting by 2s to 20. Practice at home!
Religion:
- I’ve got senses, I’ve got senses, yes I do! Yes, I do! Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching, thank you, God. Thank you, God. Next week, we will continue to explore our senses and will focus on HEARING. Students will participate in a hearing “test,” where they will only be able to use their sense of hearing to determine what is making the sound they hear. At the end, I’ll reveal the answers! We learn about our world through our senses. Thank you, God!
- Our new kindness project, “God’s love keeps us warm,” is off to a great start! This kindness project reminds students that on these chilly, winter days, we stay warm and fuzzy on the inside because of all the love we get from our family and friends. Each time students are caught doing something extra sweet and kind, they will put a heart sticker on a mitten with their name on it.
- Next week, we will read several nonfiction stories about Martin Luther King. We will talk about how what matters is what’s on the INSIDE, not on the outside. The “good stuff” we share with others all comes from the heart! We will talk about how MLK used his words instead of his fists to teach others. We will talk about how sadly, there will always be people that will do or say unkind things, and we will discuss how we can learn from MLK about ways to handle those kinds of situations.