Blog

February

Mon, 1 Feb 2010 20:57:18 -0500

Pal-Mac Pals
The class had a wonderful time on Wednesday getting to know their Pal-Mac Pals. We traveled over to the intermediate school at 10am and visited with Mrs. Crisafulli’s fifth grade class. The kids were paired up. First the kids made Valentines for Veterans. They melted crayon shavings between wax paper then glued the wax paper onto heart shaped cards. They were quite beautiful and I am sure the Veterans at the Canandaigua Veteran’s Medical Center will appreciate receiving them next week. The Pals then took turns reading books to each other.
Math
The students are continuing with lots of practice writing their numbers correctly, matching sets to numbers, counting by tens and ones, and making patterns. Next week in math, we will begin a unit on measurement. The kids will be measuring the length of many items in our classroom with nonstandard measures (feet, inchworms, and plastic chain links) and then recording their answers... more opportunity to count and practice writing numbers.
100th Day of School
The 100th day of school is getting closer! If we don’t have any more snow days, the 100th day of school will be on February 12th, which will also be our day to celebrate Valentine’s Day making it an action packed day!
We’ll be having a Hundred Day Hoedown. For the hoedown, the kids dress as cowboys. I supply the bandanas (we put 100 dots on them). You can send your child in wearing anything cowboy-ish such as jeans and a button-down shirt. If they have cowboy boots or a cowboy hat, that would be great to see. The kids are quite excited about it.
On the 100th day, each child will be asked to bring in a collection of 100 to share in our Hundred Museum. The collection can be as simple as a bag of 100 cheerios or as complex as a structure made of 100 toothpicks and 100 gumdrops. If you are looking for ideas, check out the book Mrs. Bindergarten celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten. She gives 26 different ideas. The internet is full of ideas too.
To go along with the cowboy theme, I am awarding sheriff badges to any child who can count to 100. A number of cowpokes have already won a badge (which will be given out at the hoedown) for counting in front of the class. Help your child practice counting to 100!
By this time in the school year, your child should easily be able to count to 30. If your child is still skipping numbers (usually 13 or 14 or 15) practice hard at home. We practice counting every day at school too through games.
Valentine’s Day
We will be having a Valentine’s Day party in the afternoon of Feb. 12th complete with the exchange of Valentines. We’ll be opening the cards and enjoying a special treat in the afternoon. The kids can bring in Valentine’s for each other. Please send in 16 cards without any names on the outside of the cards (the kids can sign them!). The children will just go down the line of Valentine bags and drop one in. I have tried in years past to have them match names on Valentines to the names on the bags but it is too labor intensive and takes an adult to guide them through it. :-)
Report Cards
The second marking period ended last Friday and report cards are distributed this Friday, February 5th. We are very pleased with the progress all the children have made. Be sure to share how proud you are with your child, this is their first “official” school report card! When you get the report card, please keep all the papers (those are your copies) but send the empty envelope back in signed on the outside. That way we will know you received it. After you review it, if you would like to request a conference to discuss the report, just drop me an email or leave a phone message stating a good time after school to meet. We will also be sending home your child’s journal so you can see all the original work. Please send the journal back after you’ve look it over so we can continue to add his/her work to it. You will get to keep it at the end of the year.
Homework
Thank you to everyone for helping your children complete the homework for the month. There is a new homework packet for February in the Bee Book.
Upcoming Events!
Presidents’ Day always kicks off a study on the American presidents. I always like the kids to know about more than just Presidents Washington and Lincoln. This helps us when we study money and President’s Day. You may be surprised at how many presidents your child will know by the end of this study in March!

Chinese New Year
With all the talk of our Hundred Day Hoedown and Valentine’s Day, I have overlooked our upcoming study of Chinese culture focusing on Chinese New Year. We celebrate Chinese New Year by having a parade up and down the hallway with other kindergarten classes. Most of the children will be part of our long dragon. But some will be dancers and noise makers. We have to scare off bad luck! We’ll learn about the Chinese customs which go with the celebration and we’ll look at the geography of China and some of its national symbols. We celebrate this after the winter break.
Dr. Seuss Day
Coming in March, we’ll be celebrating the anniversary of Theordore Giesel’s (aka Dr. Seuss) birthday on March 2nd. We’ll be having a Seussical day complete with Yurtle the Turtle stacking, Oobleck play, Cat the Hat hat making, creating rhyming word books and more!
Snack
Thank you SO much to everyone for remembering your snack week. It is so nice to have such caring families. The children really look forward to snack time each day. Speaking of snacktime.... we are all out of cups. I’ve been buying cups for the classroom. If anyone would like to send in a box or two of paper cups, I’d greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Festive Happenings

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:54:04 -0500

Pajama Day is coming to the Palmyra-Macedon Primary School on Monday, December 21st. Yes, the children can wear their pjs to school. On PJ day, we’ll enjoy some festive celebratory activities including watching the 2nd grade Holiday Play. We’ll have our Christmas party on Monday. Tuesday is going to be a busy day. The high school select choir is coming to sing to our school. We love to hear their beautiful voices. Later in the day, we’ll join the rest of the school for a Holiday Sing-along.
I have attached the 2010 Snack Schedule. The children appreciate all the nutritious snacks that you have sent in. They are proud when it is their turn to share also.
Upcoming events
We are almost 30 school days away from the 100th Day of School which is a pretty big event in Kindergarten. We celebrate with a “Hundred Day Hoedown” –cowboy style! The 100th Day usually falls in the beginning of February. During the month of January, all the students have the opportunity to earn a Sheriff's Badge for counting to 100. You can help your child earn a badge by practicing counting to 100 each evening or at least a few times a week. The hardest part for kids is remembering the transition numbers 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 so it helps to have them practice counting by tens too.
Have a safe and happy holiday! Enjoy the time together as a family.
Mrs. Alsup and Mrs. Rubiano

December Part II

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:53:47 -0500

Eliquatuero dip eros numsan vent lam, conum zzrit la facillum init lut doloreet ullam etuero od tet lor adit, commod tatummy niam dolorti onullaore te dolor in estrud dunt iure te feugiam velit praese exer aute enit alit, veliqua mcommodit dolorer iure te do conulla mconse ming ex ent am, quat velenit exerci tate duipsusci et landrem zzriusc inim nullaorem dipit nos exeril diam ea facidunt lum init. Duis nonsequ ismodol oreetuer iril dolore facidunt, vulluptat volore consecte dolesed dolor se velit ver adionse magnisc illandi gniamet, vendre feum veniamc onullutpatin hent ipit wisi esse dolesting ero dunt utpatin vel ipit, quation ullum aut etoun prat.

Quatet nosto od minci euip enim delessequisl ullutat augait eu facilla ad ea autpatie eui blan henim ad te facip eugait lametue rostis nonsenibh exeriliquat incin heniam, secte dolesequat nulla facilit la consectet nim iusto odipsum zzrillute magnis do dolortin henim et nit augiatie erat. Vullandrem in eum velestrud eraesto doloreetum quis non vendreet, consed minism olore eugue conulput ad tat. Im non veraestio er accummo loboreet ad magna non conummy vel et praesto odolore et, quisit etum zzrilisse core feu gue magniss endiam, venis nonse quatum qua tumm olortin hent lobore dipit iure con er in utpat. Ut ea faccum velis esequisit inisit auguero.

December

Sun, 6 Dec 2009 18:35:58 -0500

This week week will be making a Gingerbread House for the Breakfast at Santa. Our theme will be from a favorite story The Three Little Pigs. The children will work together to build it. Be sure to purchase your tickets for Breakfast with Santa this week. The lines are long if you wait until that day to buy tickets. It’s a fun event to attend with the family and a nice way to support our school. This month we’ll be learning about celebrations and traditions.

Thank you to all parents who attended the conferences last Friday. Meg and I are looking forward to meeting with everyone else this week. Don’t forget it is a half day for students, no lunch will be served at school and dismissal will be at noon.

Your children have worked hard and learned so much during the past months. Thank you for your support in reinforcing number, letter and sound identification. When you work with your child, you are demonstrating that you value his/her education. Just 10 minutes a day can make a big difference.

November

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 17:02:09 -0500

Report cards come out this week for the rest of the grades 1-12th. Kindergarten does not do a report card for the first 10 week marking period. Instead, we will review your child’s progress over the ten weeks at our Parent-Teacher conference (reminders of your time will be coming home this week).

We have had quite a bout with the Swine Flu in our classroom. Some of you may know we only had 7 students last Thursday and only 6 on Friday! Glad to report that 14 were present today. The good news is that once we’ve all had it (I had it too), we shouldn’t get it again...at least not this year anyway. So it’s back to business.

We are going on a field trip a week from Thursday- November 19th. We are going to see The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other Eric Carle stories performed as puppet shows at Nazareth College. The performance begins at 12:00. We will be leaving school at 11:10. Please send a bagged lunch to school with your child that day. (Sandwiches will be provided for free lunch students.) We will be eating lunch before we go. We also thought it would be nice if the children dressed up a little. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy; something similar to school picture attire would be great. The performance lasts 1 hour. We will return to school at approximately 1:40.

This week and next we will be doing an author study of Eric Carle books. We are also making our own class Eric Carle inspired story. It will be viewable here online as a podcast when it is completed.

We continue to work hard on learning the alphabet, letter formation, and the letter sounds. Some have picked it up so quickly they are ready to begin reading now. We will be doing much more with popcorn words and beginning reading books. Others still need more work on the alphabet.

You can see pictures from our field trip to the Pumpkin Patch, the visit from the Palmyra Fire Station, the fun we had with apples and pumpkins, and our Halloween festivities all under photos.
Check them out!

This month, we’ll also be having a Thanksgiving Feast at school. This is a wonderful community building event modeled on the first Thanksgiving. The children from all the Kindergarten classrooms come together to share a snack. The food at the feast is made by the children earlier in the day. The children will work together to produce homemade butter and cornbread to go along with cranberry juice and popcorn. The children come to the feast dressed as pilgrim boys or girls or Native Americans (we make hats in the classroom to represent the different people at the original Thanksgiving). At the feast, they exchange handmade patterned placemats. It is a terrific culminating activity to our study of the First Thanksgiving.

In math, we are working on matching sets to numbers 1-20, numeral formation, and patterns.

In writing, the students have just started coming up with their own ideas and stories. Soon we’ll begin blogging these stories on the internet for you to read and comment on! The kids love that.

Remember as always, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email, call or stop in.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Alsup and Mrs. Rubiano