4K April Newsletter!

We’re ready for the April showers that will bring May flowers!

Thank You!

Thanks go to our parents who helped make our St. Patrick’s and Sledding Day celebrations such a success with treats, sleds and warm clothes! 

Thanks also go for all who also donated canned goods to the Mitchell food drive…we received over 100 items! Thanks for your generosity.  And finally, thank you to April Klipstein, Lisa Winslow, Heather Hawver, and Sarah Schulz for donating milk and cookies for our March Madness Slam Dunk Reading drive!

The Zipper Club

We are happy to report that 100% of our students are zippering their coats and getting themselves dressed and ready to go home each day.  Please continue to encourage my 4K friends to dress themselves and take care their own belongings! This will help next year in 5K when they have more responsibilities.  Great work families J!

 

No New Student Teacher!

We are sad to say good bye to Miss Withington but happy to have had her.  We are not going to receive another student teacher as planned due to a scheduling issue at UWM.  I am sad to miss all the extra hands to help but so happy to be the one who is teaching again, especially as I finish my last year at Mitchell.  Thanks for all the help you do with snacks, homework, etc.  It really does help… especially now! 

Literacy and the Daily News Sentences

We have been enjoying the opportunity to write our daily sentences.  We are also impressed with how many can sound out words to spell them and then read their news to us too!  This is something you can do with your child at home!  We say a sentence, clap count out the word’s syllables and draw a line for each word: a long line if it has two or more syllables and short line if it has just one syllable.  Then we s-t-r-e-t-c-h out the sounds of the word and write it out, making sure we have “finger spaces” between the words and punctuation at the end of the sentence!

 

I hope you have been able to read the Daily News sentences that we have been sending home with your child on Fridays but now we will begin writing our own news in our writing journals, which you can have fun reading with them over the summer! 

In this week’s Friday folders I will be placing some great articles that you can read about how children develop as writers and try some of the things suggested. I am also sending a chart of the letters and the sounds they make. Please use this with your child as you write with them.  We often use the reading wall at school to help us find the letters and sounds as we write and this is sort of a small reading wall!  If your child is writing with you at home please be sure to send “your daily news” to school...we would love to read it too! ☺

 

Letter People

During April we will be introducing the following Letter People.  We’ll give you some hints about them, but please keep this TOP SECRET! Too many students are telling us what letter person is coming next, that means some of you are giving the information away! J We’re sharing this with you now so you can ask your child about the Letter Person and if they don’t know, you can help discuss the letter person because you know a little about the letter! Thanks for keeping this quiet until then.

Mr. O has fun being “opposite”, but is never dangerous or unkind.  When you say “Fast” he’ll say “slow”.  When he says “no” he really means “yes”.  This is confusing fun for the children!  He has 1 eye open and the other closed, one arm up and the other down, one shoe on and the other off, 1 pocket open and the other closed.  He has 1 capital O and 4 lower case o’s on his bare toes and 3 lowercase o’s on each hand.  Being opposite helps everyone remember his regular /o/ sound, just like the /o/ in opposite.  His Same Name Sound, or long /o/ sound, is like his name: Mr. O.  He is a LetterLight like Ms. A.  He lights the way to making words.

Mr. X  is different from everyone else.  You might say he is all mixed up!  He walks on his hands and not his feet.  He talks differently, too!  His sound is never heard at the start of a word – even if his letter is the first letter in the word!  However, his letter is found at the end of many words like fox, box, six,…  Mr. X is exceptionally different from us and we are different from him.  Being different is an excellent way to learn more about people and many other things!  When you listen to his sound, you can hear that Ms. K and Ms. S were kind enough to share their sounds with Mr. X.  His letter sound makes 2 sounds at once! He has hidden 4 lowercase x’s on one of his shoes.

Ms. U Our third letter vowel has a very unusual umbrella…besides teaching us about water and rain it can fly!  We’ll discuss the changes we see coming in seasons and in the weather and do a ton of water experiments.  If you have any weather items (rain gage, thermostat, etc.), or water toys you’d like to donate…we’d like to use them! Thank you!

Thanks for all of you who are helping your child to find items from home that help us hear the letter sound for the week.  If you have not been able to do that yet please consider doing that and sending one or two items that begin with the week’s letter. Thanks!

Library Day

Children are bringing back their library books with out having them read to them and many are NOT bringing them back at all! Parents we need to make sure your child is being read to each week and daily if possible! Thank you! We could also use some readers…just email to let me know if you would like to help out!

Math- Literacy-Science

This month we will continue to learn about the season of spring and begin a unit on ANIMALS~!   Please look for a permission slip to come home shortly for a field trip to the zoo and information about a project that will need your help!

 Our trip to the zoo will be Wednesday, April 30…right after we get back from Spring Break!  A permission slip with details will come home with report cards…April 4^th and need to be RETURNED…Friday, April 11^th! 

The entire field trip is free because a Kohl’s Care Grant we received!  How exciting so please make sure you sign the slip and return!
While at the zoo we will take part I a program entitled Animal Athletes: Run, jump, swing and slither– learn about animal movement as we play an “Animal Locomotion” matching game and practice some unique animal moves! This day will have a different start and finish time for students also so please plan on making arrange-ments for such…we will most likely start at 8:30am and return at 2:00 or 2:30 pm.
We will also continue to work on counting to 30 (and for some to 100), by finding the numbers that come before, after and between other numbers patterns, sorting, and recognizing/writing numbers 11-20.

 

First Stage Theater Workshops

On Wednesday, April 9^th and Friday, April 11^th First Stage Theater will come into our classroom for two more workshops that were part of our Anatole theater experience…they will be presenting a program on Cycles in Nature which will be part of our unit on Animals! Hurray!  We are looking forward to this great opportunity and so please make sure your child is in school these days! J

Homework Packets    Just before Spring Break I will send home a pack of worksheets and activities that you can do with your child before or over the break…they will help reinforce things we have taught in class and therefore hopefully they can mostly be done independently

Screening/ Assessments

 The 4K-5K Dial assessments will begin at the end of the month, right when we come back from Spring Break.  It is so helpful if you make sure your child is healthy if they come to school and have had ample rest and a good breakfast or lunch! Results will be coming home next month. If you have any questions regarding the results please feel free to give me a call,  I may also request conferences to discuss the results and will let you know in the next few weeks.

 

Dates to Remember:

 April 3…Report Cards come home

 April 9 and 11^th…First Stage Children’s Theater Workshops!

 April 16…Spring Break

 April 28…School resumes after spring break

 April 22…Mrs. Berka at a district meeting, sub in class
 April 30…Zoo Field Trip

 May 2…Final Scholastic Book Orders Due

 May 8 and 9^th… Animal Projects Due

  May 12…4:00 pm Student Led Parent Conferences for all parents and students during   Inquiry Fair to display student animal unit projects

Some Reminders:

·         Check Friday Folders...some folders come back with all the stuff in them on Mondays!

·         Snacks...healthier choices are needed please! No fruit snacks and cookies and please help me by having them ready to go! Thanks!

·         We could use the following items if you have extras...

                        SANDWICH SIZE ZIP-LOCK BAGS

                           Plastic jewels (one side flat for gluing on items)
                        Play dough      Thank you!.... 

          Have a safe, wonderful Spring Break and Happy Easter!!