K-3 Newsletter February 27, 2015

                                                  Mrs. MacIntyre

Dear Families,

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Welcome back! I hope you all had a great vacation. The children have transitioned well back into the schedule of school. We have been very busy working on our Chinese unit. The children created their own Chinese dragons, they practiced writing Chinese symbols and they also created their own Chinese lanterns. We have read some wonderful literature about Chinese New Year and we also practice writing the numbers 1-10 in Chinese. We have incorporated our Chinese unit into our math and have even done addition with Chinese symbols!  

 We are very excited about our Chinese Potluck on Thursday, March 5th. Please arrive promptly at 5:00. Please have your child wear as much red as possible. The children will be doing a quick performance before the dinner. When you arrive please send your child over to me and we will get ready to put on a quick show for you. While I am getting them ready could you please help me by setting up your entrée on the buffet table? Thank you in advance. The children have worked so hard and are excited to share what they know and celebrate with some delicious Chinese food. I sent home a sheet about what to bring. Each family in my class should bring a drink and fruit dish to serve 12. Please include a serving spoon to go a long with your meal and be sure to remember to take it with you when the dinner is over. Mrs. Green’s class and Ms. Mitchell’s class will provide entrees for all of the families. We are looking forward to having all the kindergarten families together.

In other news, please continue to read nightly with your child. It is very important that the nightly readers come back within 2 or 3 nights consistently. The nightly reading should be enjoyable for you and your child and should not take more than 10 minutes. Please let me know if you have misplaced your bag so that I can get you a new one. Our letter of the week was “Gg.” Our tongue twister was “Gail and Gwen grow goodies in their garden.” In Writer’s Workshop, the students have been working very hard. They are answering prompts well and adding spaces into their writing. We are also working on using lowercase letters in our writing as well.

Keep up the great work everyone!

I hope you all have a nice weekend. Thanks for sending in all the winter gear for your children. We sure do need it!!

*We are looking for donations of plastic spoons for our classroom.

Enjoy your weekend,

Fondly,

Mrs. MacIntyre

                     

K-3 Newsletter

                      Mrs. MacIntyre

                                                                                                                             

Dear Families,

February 5, 2015

Gung Hay Fat Choy!  Happy New Year. Even though February is a short month, we have been very busy in our classroom. We have begun working hard on our Chinese New Year Unit. During this unit, we will make many decorations for our classroom, including; Chinese writing, Chinese dragons and dragon masks. We learned that this year in Chinese Zodiac symbols, 2015 is the year of the sheep. Chinese New Year starts on February 19^th this year.

We are planning on having a Chinese New Year dinner and celebration on Thursday, March 5^th here at Melrose School from 5-7pm. I sent home a paper for you to return. Once we get an estimate of how many families are able to come, I will send home a signup sheet for food. It is a Potluck style dinner and it is a wonderful time to meet with fellow kindergarten families. There will be more info to follow.  

In the Home Living Center, the children are setting up for a Chinese party. They are also serving rice and lettuce to each other. During Chinese New Year lettuce is considered to be a symbol of new life. They enjoy cooking for each other and for me. They continue to practice forming their numbers as well.  The children were very excited to take our survey of our favorite Jan Brett book in K-3and the winner was

Our letter of the week was “Qq”. Our tongue twister was “Quinton and Queenie quilt quickly and quietly.”

As long as we do not have any more snow days, Thursday, Febraury 12^th  is our 100^th day of school! If you have not sent in your 100 items with 3 clues, please do so. It is a fun class activity that we do and I would not want anyone to feel left out.  I really hope we don’t have any more snow days, otherwise I may have to teach class at Mackerel Cove… actual that sounds good right about now!

Thank you so much for sending in the shoe boxes. I have enough now. We are using them for a Valentine’s Day project. Since there is no school for students on Friday, February 13^th, due to teacher development day, we will pass out our valentine’s on Thursday, February 12^th. Please be sure that your child makes a valentine for each student. Thank you!

The children seem to be doing a nice job with their reading homework. Thank you to all of you who are instilling a love for reading and a sense of responsibility in your child with nightly reading, the children are very proud about the reading that they are doing.  Just a note about the reading books, I know that they books are very repetitious and that they may seem easy or that your child is just “memorizing.” That is in fact, what they may seem to be doing, but they are learning sight words that they can carry over into their writing and also learning reading skills such as looking left to right and one to one correspondence (by pointing to each word as the read). Please do not replace the reading books with reading to your child. Reading nightly TO your child is the best “homework” you can do with them. I just want to stress the importance of that with you. Please let me know if you have any questions.

A big thank you to Mrs. McGraw who treated each child to a little treat at the Book Fair today in honor of Booth’s birthday.. which is July 8^th since he will not be here in the summer.. Thank you Thank you what a treat!

Finally, report cards will be sent out through Aspen in an on-line version only.

This is new for us here in kindergarten. If you have any questions about your child’s report card, PLEASE contact me. I am happy to meet with you.

I hope you all have a warm and fun weekend!

Fondly,

Mrs. MacIntyre