Brown Bag Lunch & Beulah Ralph's Birthday

Another busy and fun-filled day!

Thanks to everyone who came for our 1st Brown Bag Lunch!

I hope to have at least one more parent event like this before the end of the school year!

(click on the photos to enlarge)

Beulah Ralph's Birthday

Today marks what would have been our school namesakes 90th birthday.  Her daughter,  Monica Naylor, came to speak to the entire school about her mother.  Beulah Ralph strived to help all children, especially those less fortunate than herself.  In her honor and as a "birthday present" to Mrs. Ralph, our school presented her daughter with the items we collected for Turning Point Day Center.  We know that Beulah Ralph would be so proud of how much we were able to collect and that we are helping others!

Along with the assembly, we made cards, birthday crowns and enjoyed cupcakes on this special day!

Kindergarten card made by all 5 classrooms, using our thumbprints for the artwork.

Mrs. Monica Naylor speaking to us alongside the gifts we presented in the boxes

STEAM Bus

STEAM Bus

Today was the beginning of a fun and jam-packed week!  

To wrap up our math unit on measurement, Mr. Adams brought the STEAM bus to visit!  Every Kindergarten class was able to visit for a 45 minute lesson from Mr. Adams (he is the brilliant mind behind the bus).  They brought home a paper today in their take home folder that showed what they measured on the bus using Legos.

Mr. Adams also showed them his 3-D printer and made us a castle and timberwolf to keep in our classroom!

Weekly update and reminders

REMINDERS!!

*Brown Bag Lunch on Tuesday.  You can enjoy recess with your child from 10:40-11:00 and lunch IN OUR CLASSROOM from 11:00-11:25.  If you are eating lunch from the cafeteria, please stop there and pick up your lunch before heading to our classroom.  

*100th Day of School on Thursday!  We hope every child will come to school dressed as a 100 year old!  Here are a few great examples of costumes for you!  It's always a ton of fun when everyone participates!

*Please help your child complete their 100th day collection homework assignment this weekend if they haven't already. They are due by Tuesday!  Information came home in last week's Friday Folder. 

A look at our learning...

Fundations: we continue to work on "tapping out" words when reading and writing.  We have also started learning how vowels can have more than one sound.  There are short vowels and long vowels.  Long vowels say their name.  We will continue to work on this throughout the remainder of the year.

Shared Reading: our new word wall word was a tricky one this week!  To help us learn the new word "said" we read the following Big Books: The Little Red Hen, Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed and Who, Who, Who?   All of these books featured our word wall word "said." 

Next week's new spelling words:

like

by

PLEASE make sure you are helping your child practice their word wall words every night!  We have now learned 22 words and they are expected to read AND write them correctly at all times.  I suggest practicing 5-7 words a night.  Have your child read them (make flash cards, read from the word wall paper that comes home every Friday, etc.) and write them. You can practice anywhere, even in the car!

Daily 5: This week and next week Miss Nemechek and I are assessing kids one on one to prepare for the end of 2nd trimester and parent teacher conferences.  We are assessing the following: letters, letter sounds, rhyme, word wall words, counting, measurement and much more.  We can't wait to share their progress with you at parent-teacher conferences in a few weeks.  While we are assessing, the other children continue to work at their Daily 5 center choices. Many of these center choices focus on activities to help them learn their word wall words. Ask your child what Daily 5 center choice they went to this week.  They go to 2 choices each day.

Math: We are finishing up our month long unit on measurement.  This week we measured length with marshmallows (and even got to eat a few!) and used balances to measure weight.  Check out the fun below!

We wanted to end our measurement unit in a FUN way, so we have the CPS STEAM bus coming on Monday!  It will be here all day and all 5 classrooms will visit it!  Mr. Adams, who is in charge of the STEAM bus, will do a 45 minute lesson with each Kindergarten classroom on the bus about measurement!  We are so excited!  

                         

Writing: Along with adding details to our stories (telling more) we are learning how to put endings on our stories.  

Here are a few we came up with this week:

*The end.

*it was fun.

*I like....(whatever topic they wrote about)

*I love...

*Then I went home.

Career Day

Career Day was so much fun today! 

Looks like our future is in great hands!

Have a great weekend!

January Citizen of the Month & Spelling Bee Winners

Congratulations to Lucy!  
She was chosen by her classmates as 
January's Citizen of the Month!!

K-2 January Citizen's of the Month

Congratulations to Stella and Lydia!  

They were our classroom Spelling Bee winners!

We have so many wonderful spellers in our classroom 

and it was a tight race! 

K-2 Spelling Bee winners

Busy, Busy Bees!

Another busy week of trying to play catch up from our "ice day" last Friday and no school on Monday. Not only that, but Miss Nemechek and I were out Thursday afternoon for meetings in regards to her student teaching and I am out today for a personal day that was planned forever ago. I am excited for a normal, 5 day week next week to help with routine.  

This week we welcomed our awesome student teacher from Mizzou, Nicole Nemechek. Check your child's Friday Folder for a note from Nicole and a permission slip that she needs you to sign and return.  We are excited and lucky to have her in our classroom!  There will be times from now until the end of April where we teach together, where I teach and she observes/helps out and where she teaches alone and I observe/help out.  The kids are so lucky to have TWO teachers in their classroom for the rest of the year!

NEXT WEEK'S SPELLING WORD: SAID

(since it is a tricky word, but one they use often in reading and writing, 

there will only be one new word next week)

Be Kind, Be Respectful

Last week started our 5 weeks of learning about our school expectations at BEU.  Last week we focused on being kind.  Our 3rd grade buddies in Mrs. Dunn's classroom showed kindness by teaching our class and Mrs. Edgar's special education class board games.  This was originally scheduled for last Friday, but due to the snow day we rescheduled and played on Tuesday.  The kids had a blast and made many new friends ! We hope to do things with Mrs. Dunn and Mrs. Edgar's class again throughout the rest of the school year!  

This week we focused on being respectful & were able to celebrate with hat day and class colors day on Friday.

(click on pictures to enlarge)

Speaking of kind and respectful, it was a MUCH better week at specials! The specialists were happy to report that the kiddos did a much better job of listening, following directions, having safe bodies and being respectful to others.  
Thank you SO VERY MUCH for your support at home with this over the last week.  It is greatly appreciated and I love that we can all work as a team from home and school!  You guys are awesome!

January Lunch with the Principal

Yay Ty!  He was chosen to have lunch with Dr. Majerus on Wednesday!

  

Don't forget to turn in the Brown Bag Lunch RSVP by Tuesday! If you need a new one, please let me know ASAP.