This Week of Fun...

We are well on our way into the 3rd quarter!  

Important Parent/Guardian Information

1. Please remember... It is important to understand to receive your child's report card you must have paid $25 of the $50 school fees.  If you are unsure if you have paid or if you have a balance please contact me or Mrs. Ilg in the office at 943-6900.  
2. Please remember conferences are Tuesday, January 31st and Tuesday, February 7th.  Conference confirmation forms were sent home on Thursday and Friday.  Please return your confirmation sheets with your child on Monday/Tuesday.  It is very helpful for us to know if you are able to attend.  If you are unable to attend, please let us know so we can fill in the time slot with another parent.  Unfortunately, we were unable to meet all requested conferences.  If you received a yellow piece of paper regarding a phone conference, please let us know the best phone number and time to reach you (before school/after school).  We greatly appreciate your willingness to cooperate with us and our tight schedules.  We want to accommodate all of our families in some way, as these parent-teacher conversations are important for us to have.

This week we will be continuing with our Reading Street program and reading The Lion and the Mouse.  We will be focusing on the main idea (or theme) of a story this week.  We will also continue to work on blending words.  The children are doing this extremely well and we are impressed with how well they are learning their sounds and words.  Our sight words will remain the same this week (they, of, you).  Please take some time to review all of the sight words nightly for about 5 minutes.  

This week in math we are continuing our work on comparing and ordering numbers to 20.  The children are doing this skill extremely well.  One game we learned last week is taking a set of cards numbered to 20 and the children have to order them.  Next, one person "steals a card" and the other person has to figure out which card is missing.  The children have enjoyed this game and it is fun to watch them figure out the missing number.  Finally, we will be continuing to concentrate on writing numbers to 20.  It is important for the children to be able to do this without a model.  Many children do have difficulty with the teen numbers as children want to write 14 as 41 or 17 as 71.

Our centers for the next two weeks will have a mitten theme!  Below are our 4 centers for the next 2 weeks...

• Art Center: Students will use fine motor skills to cut, hole punch, and lace a mitten.  Students will then decorate their mitten with oil pastels.
• Computer Center/Math Center: Students will be able to explore math related websites (using 21st century skills) and continue to work on ordering numbers.
• Writing Center: Students will write sentences about their mittens using a capital letter, 2 finger spacing, and punctuation.
• Library Center: Students will continue identifying the title, characters, and their favorite part of a story. However, students will also have the opportunity to do a fun word family activity.

Thank you for all of your support and continuing to work with your children at home...We are looking forward to another great week of learning :)