Upcoming Events/Mark your Calendars:
- Monday, January 16th: MLK Day, No School
Looking ahead/Mark your calendars/Volunteer opportunities through the end of the school year:
- Sunday, January 29th: Catholic School’s Week Open House for current AND prospective families. We hope to see you there!
- Tuesday, January 31st: 100th day of school for kindergarten: we will have a celebration! More information to come out soon!
- Tuesday, February 14: Valentine’s Party: all students should bring valentines to share with friends. Students will pass out valentines in the morning and then we will have a party in the afternoon. 5 grown-ups will be need to volunteer at our afternoon party. A sign-up genius will be sent from Amaya’s dad in a few weeks. Stay tuned!
- Cardinal Palooza: Saturday, April 29: hope to see you there!
- Friday, May 12: Kindergarten Mother’s Day Tea: ALL moms are invited to attend this event, which is a kindergarten tradition. Each child needs to have a special someone there. It will be around 10am and will last about one hour–songs, lemonade, muffins and lots of hugs and kisses! Official invite to be sent home in April, but mark your calendars now!
- Wednesday, June 7: Kindergarten Celebration, time TBD–plan on attending!
- Field Trip: We will also have another field trip in the spring, date TBD. This will be another parent volunteer opportunity.
What’s Due:
- Volunteering: If you wish to volunteer at St. Cletus School, please make sure you complete the following requirements. We will have two classroom volunteer opportunities in October. Get these requirements completed! https://stcletusschool.com/volunteering/
- Hot lunch: Don’t forget to place your weekly hot lunch orders!
- Students with last names N-Z: Supplemental supplies: 2 baby wipes, 3 canisters disinfectant wipes, 2 rolls paper towels, 3 boxes of tissues, girls: 1 box gallon ziploc bags and boys:1 box sandwich size bags
- Cardinal Palooza: Have you created your page? I have! please go to palooza2023.givesmart.com, click on “Become a #cardinalpalooza VIP” and create a page. If we just get all our school families to REGISTER, we get a prize! Other incentives include: first class that hits $2500—an ice cream truck will come to school for our class! If you surpass your family goal (you set your own goal)–you get your desk/table spot decorated! If you raise more than $100–you get to spin a wheel of prizes! If our class raises the most money–we get a pizza party! If your family raises the most money–you get a round trip limo ride, to and from school! If our class raises the most money–your child’s teacher gets a spa day! 🙂 If you hit your family goal by March 1, you get get entered to win raffle prizes! So much fun! Please help support this very important fundraiser for our school in any way you can!
- Scholastic Book Club Orders: due by 1/24–orders should arrive before Valentine’s Day. Class code is H2NGF.
- Pizza Hut Book It: turn in your December calendars at any time. January calendars went home. If you need an extra copy, just send me an email.
- Mystery Reader: Please consider signing up! https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0548A9A62AAAFB6-mystery
Language Arts: One of our New Year’s resolutions is to read more. To help us achieve that goal, we are doing a few things. The children are now allowed to pull books from their book pockets to practice at rest time. It’s a lot of fun to see because it’s a CHOICE and most children CHOOSE to practice! I’ve also introduced book tubs which had previously been off limits to them. They know how to correctly pull from them so they get returned to the appropriate tub and stay organized and easy to find.
- High Frequency words: I have introduced all number words one-ten. THREE, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, NINE, TEN–we know we can stretch these words out. We map out these words, discuss things like the TH, the EE, the silent E, etc. For ONE, TWO, FOUR, EIGHT—we refer to these as HEART WORDS, because they are irregularly spelled and we have to remember parts of those words by heart.
- LAST names: students are expected to write first AND last names on papers and projects. At home: ask your child to write his/her last name. If your child isn’t yet confidently spelling his/her last name, set the timer and practice for 5 minutes each night! We will keep practicing at school too!
- Journaling: Our daily journaling is going GREAT! I LOVE daily journaling. It’s the best way for students to practice our Jolly sounds. At this point in the school year, children are now
- Guided reading, fluency journals: we will begin fluency journals next week. Students will practice passages that have words with the phonics patterns they are currently working on.
- Pocket chart poem: “A Chubby Little Snowman”–we illustrated the new poem in our poetry journals. We will continue to practice this poem next week. Ask your child to recite it to you, along with the actions: “A chubby little snowman, had a carrot nose. Along came a rabbit, and what do you suppose? That hungry little bunny, looking for his lunch, at the snowman’s carrot nose, nibble, nibble, CRUNCH!”
Math: We are about halfway through Chapter 5, working hard on addition. At Home: Practice +0 and +1 orally. “What’s 6 and 1 more?” “what’s 8 and 1 more” “what’s 9 and 0 more”—until these become automatic!
- Our goal is to FLUENTLY add (and eventually subtract) within 5, and add (and eventually subtract) up to 10 (using objects, drawings, fingers, etc.) We use dice, dominoes, manipulatives, ipad games and more to practice math facts!
- Counting to 80 by ones
- Counting to 100 by 5s and 10s
- Counting to 20 by 2s. We just started this! At home: Practice counting by 2s!
- Count forward from a given number (except 1)
- Writing & Representing to 20
- 1 to1 Counting of objects to 30
- Represent Addition up to 10 with fingers, drawings, sounds
- Compose and decompose numbers 11-19 by drawing
- Compare two objects (taller/shorter, bigger/smaller, faster/slower)
Religion/Science/Social Studies:
- Senses: I’ve got senses, I’ve got senses, yes I do! yes I do! We will begin to explore our senses next week. We learn more about God’s world through our senses!
- MLK: we will read about Martin Luther King, Jr. and learn about how he taught people to use their words instead of their fists. He taught us to be kind to everyone. It doesn’t matter if others look different than us, like different things, etc…we can still be kind to all!