Upcoming Events/Mark your calendars:
- Monday, January 13: Dining for dollars at Lou Malnati’s in Western Springs on Gilbert from 4-10pm. Order online, through the app or call! Use promo code: GPFUND24. Pizza night on a Monday ROCKS! Thanks for supporting our school!
- Tuesday, January 14: 8am Mass
- Friday, January 17: 21+ Trivia night at 6:30 in the parish center. Details were in your Wednesday envelope. This event is BYOB and bring your own snacks too. Gather a team (no more than 10) and come out and have some fun!
And finally…SAVE THE DATE for the 2025 SPRING AUCTION: VEGAS NIGHT: April 5th, 6pm in the Parish Center. ALWAYS such a fun night! Please consider attending!
What’s Due:
- RSVP for both the spring auction and trivia night!
- Personal Hygiene Collection: NJHS (national junior honors society) is collecting personal hygiene products next week. This is in support of Nazareth Academy who will be making kits to give to those in need. The 7th grade will go there for a retreat on January 21st and will bring the items on that day. Please send any items (t00thpaste, shampoo, deodorant, feminine products, etc.) to school with your child and we will put them in a bin that will be placed outside of Morrissey Hall. Thank you!
- There is one time slot left on the mystery reader sign-up; once it’s filled, just email me a day that works for you and we’ll set it up! https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0548A9A62AAAFB6-54183244-mystery#/
This Week: We had a great first few days back at school. The kids seemed so ready to be back! They were excited to be with their friends and ready to get back to learning. As I mentioned, the new year means a lot of new things in kindergarten. One exciting thing is our rest time is officially more of a “quiet time” now. Students have newly stocked book pockets and they’re allowed to practice their reading. Please make sure you’re able to log in to your SEESAW because I’m going to start sending you recordings of your child reading. You should see how excited they are when they realize they can READ! I can’t wait to share that excitement with you through the videos. I record each child once every couple of weeks.
Next Week:
Language Arts:
- We will begin to practice LAST names. Students will practice learning the letters in their last names as well as where to start each letter. Once students know how to spell their last names, they will be expected to write both first and last names on their papers.
- We will begin unit 2 in Fundations with A, B, C, D, E, F capital letter formation. We continue more blending of two and three sounds.
- We will begin our Superkids decodable readers next week. These will be coming home with your child to practice in pouches/bags. Please watch for them!
- We have a new poem in our pocket chart and poetry journals: “A Chubby Little Snowman.” We will continue to practice reciting the poem together. Our pocket chart poems and songs really help us with left to right tracking. The kids love getting pointers out and practicing them at free choice time!
- 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. Next week, I will introduce number words: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten. The new word wall went home on Friday. These are words that I will introduce by the end of February.
- Journaling: Students will finish up “journal #2” next week. Once this journal is complete, students will be expected to write 2 sentences in their journals. Remember, we use “phonetic spelling” or “brave spelling” or “inventive spelling” when writing. They all mean the same thing. We expect students to “write the sounds they hear.” Correct spelling will come as they continue their phonics instruction and gain more knowledge of patterns and rules. In kindergarten, we want to build confident writers and you do that not by spelling words for children or by correcting their spelling, but rather by having them “write the sounds they hear”. During interactive writing time (students write on their whiteboards with the teacher), we will practice writing 2 sentences by having a student come up with a topic sentence and then we will work together to generate a second detail sentence.
Read alouds: We will read and reread “The Snowy Day” by Ezra Jack Keats next week and complete comprehension and story element activities throughout the week. We will also do some comparing with another book titled “The Snow Day”.
Math: We started modules 11-13 which is all about addition and subtraction. That will be our main focus for the next 2 months.
- 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!
- 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, I will introduce:
- Skip counting by 2s to 20.
Religion: We will start our new kindness project in kindergarten. “God’s love keeps us warm” is the theme for the next two months. We we will watch for students who work hard to show God’s love to their friends and will ask them to put a heart sticker on their mittens which are hanging on our door. We will also begin our senses unit. We will learn about the 5 senses and how our senses help us to learn more about God’s world.