Upcoming Events/Mark your calendars:
The St. Cletus “Read like a cardinal” group/club of students has come up with a plan to celebrate READ ACROSS AMERICA WEEK, which is next week! Each grade level is being given a book basket with Seuss books and trivia games along with a treat. They are also hosting a coloring contest for Prek-1st. It will be a fun week of reading here at St. Cletus! The two spirit days are listed below.
- Tuesday, March 4: 8AM Mass
- Wednesday, March 5: 10am Ash Wednesday Mass
- Thursday, March 6: Cat in the Hat day: wear stripes and your favorite hat
- Friday, March 7: Sleep book day: Wear your favorite PJs
Looking Ahead:
Saturday, April 5th: 2025 SPRING AUCTION: VEGAS NIGHT: 6pm in the Parish Center. Get those tickets purchased! https://e.givesmart.com/events/AP6/?isOrderFormActive=true
Friday, May 9: MOMS, please mark your calendars: Friday, May 9th from 10:30-11:30ish is the kindergarten Mother’s Day Tea! This kindergarten event has been a St. Cletus kindergarten tradition for over 30 years! Your child is going to work really hard to make it a special hour for you by learning new songs, making special art projects, yummy treats and more. You won’t want to miss this special event!
What’s Due:
- Sign up for Parent/teacher conferences! Check your email for information and the link.
- Purchase tickets for the SPRING AUCTION: https://e.givesmart.com/events/AP6/?isOrderFormActive=true
- Mom and son event: RSVP with the form that was in your Wednesday envelope! Friday, March 7, 6:30-8:30
- Spring auction donations: Reach out if you need a form or email auction@stcletusparish.com!
- Fish Fry: Friday, March 14: 4:30, 5:30, 6:30, 7:30: please refer to the e-newsletter for more information including how to reserve your seat and pay.
- Set up your family page for the auction! Information was in your Wednesday envelope. There are lots of incentive prizes if we get everyone to sign up! https://e.givesmart.com/events/AP6/signUpC/
- If you would like to be a mystery reader and didn’t have a chance to sign-up (the sign-up is full), please just reach out and give me a day that works for you at 2:30! We’d love to have you. Remember, one mystery reader slot per child! Wish we had time for more! 🙂
- Don’t forget to take a look at those book recommendations I sent home!
Seuss Recommendations: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hJLDRjB23sy983xakw33f5NkGEKqhH-k/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=102750389033909029220&rtpof=true&sd=true
General book recommndations:https://docs.google.com/document/d/13-V3vS6AJp32hP4ri4aQFKBgKZcP9tD7/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=102750389033909029220&rtpof=true&sd=true
Next Week:
I am almost done with trimester 2 assessments. I should be finished early next week! I look forward to sharing those results with you at conferences and you’ll also receive your child’s first kindergarten report card.
Language Arts:
- We will continue UNIT 3 in Fundations. Next week, students will be introduced to the LONG A sound. The letter a says /a/, but sometimes it says its name, which we call the long sound. We will begin to work on telling the difference between the long and short sounds. We will practice decoding (reading) and encoding (writing) CVC words, paying close attention to those tricky vowel sounds. We will continue to practice “scooping” or reading sentences in meaningful chunks. This will help with fluency.
- Reading group: we will read fluency passages focusing either on CVC words or digraphs, we will read SUPERKIDS readers, we will segment and blend words, we will work on remembering details in stories including the characters, setting, problem and solution.
- High Frequency words: I have introduced: NO, GO, THE, YES, WE, TO, WILL, DO, A, MY, LIKE, AND, HAVE, HAS, HIS, YOU, AT, IT, IF, IN and color words, RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, PURPLE, WHITE, PINK, BLACK, BROWN, BY, WENT and number words ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT and NINE, AM, PLAY, WITH, LOVE, FROM, DEAR, OR, FOR, CAN, NOT. Next week, I will not introduce any new words, we will review.
- Journaling: Journaling continues! Journaling is such a great time to practice those letter/sound relationships and practice word wall words. Expectations include: 2+ sentences, finger spaces in between words, starting each sentence with a capital letter, correct spelling of word wall words, independent “stretching” of unknown words, generating a topic, and a detailed picture. I’ll be sending home journals 1-3 at conferences. We are starting journal #4 next week!
Read alouds: We started reading Seuss books on Thursday beginning with I Am Not Getting Up Today and One Fish Two Fish… Next week, we will read The Cat in the Hat, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Wacky Wednesday, What Pet Should I Get and more!
Math: We’re still all about addition and subtraction in kindergarten! We will continue modules 11-13. I expect to complete this in about 2 weeks.
- Counting to 100 by ones. At home: please practice!
- Counting to 100 by tens (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100). At home: please practice!
- Counting to 100 by 5s. At home: please practice!
- Counting to 20 by 2s. At home: please practice! This has been the hardest one for the kids.
- Acting out and solving addition problems within 10.
- Acting out and solving subtraction problems within 10.
We will also continue to practice:
- tallying, graphing and sorting! Next week, we will create a graph to go along with the Dr. Seuss story, What Pet Should I Get? We will graph which pet each of us would get!
Religion: We have read Jesus Welcomes the Children, The Good Samaritan and The Lost Sheep. Next week, we will read more stories where Jesus showed love and kindness. Next week is also the start of Lent! We will receive ashes on Wednesday at 10am Mass. Those ashes will let everyone know we are friends of Jesus! We will also learn that Lent is a time to get ready Jesus. I’ll be sending a note home next week discussing how we will get ready for Jesus in kindergarten. One thing we will do is participate in the Stations of the Cross each week during Lent. We will pray the stations separate from the school because as I tell the kids, it IS a sad story and they typically have lots of questions at the beginning when we start. When praying the stations, we focus on all the people that helped Jesus and we talk about how Jesus FORGAVE all the people that were mean to Him. This is a great talking point for the kids. We’ve often seen in the classroom how hard it can be to forgive friends who hurt our feelings. After praying the stations, students can remember that Jesus is a perfect example of how to forgive others. We learned that Jesus was a teacher and He still teaches us today about love, kindness and forgiveness.