May 24-28, 2010

This week was a blast with all of our different spirit days!  Check out all the photos to see what we looked like!

We focused our time on getting ready for our Art Gallery on Wednesday night.  The children created their boards on Wednesday.  THANK YOU for helping to pay for those!  The children also created the programs we’ll hand out and helped choose what snacks and drinks to serve.  We had a lot of fun planning the evening.  The class will also perform 4 songs for you that night.  They can’t wait to show you everything!

We read a book called Panda Kindergarten by Joanne Ryder.  It is about the Wolong Nature Reserve in China.  Giant pandas are an endangered species and the people who work at the reserve help to care for panda families.  We loved to read about the young cubs and how they “go to school” while they are at the preserve.  They play on a playground, eat lunch, and take naps just like we do!

Have a great, long weekend.  See you on Tuesday for our final week of the school year!

In Him,

Mrs. Heifner

Crazy Hair Day!

Hat and Socks Day

Inside Out Day

working on our tri-fold boards for the Art Gallery

a delicious breakfast!!

breakfast with lots of parents!

have you ever been in church with your pj’s on??

playing board games on pajama day

board games on pajama day

getting ready for the movie!

A Few Things!

Hi parents,

A couple things I’d like to share with you:

1)  If your family is able, please don’t forget to send $8.00 to school so I can purchase tri-fold boards for the children.  Thank you!

2)  Field trip forms were due today.  I am unsure if we received them all.  Please bring it in on Monday if you forgot this week.

3)  The Skippyjon Jones literacy bag is missing a board book called Skippyjon Jones Up and Down.  If you locate it at your home, please bring it in.  Thanks!

May 17-21, 2010

This week, we focused on the lifecycle of the ladybug.  From egg, to larva, to pupa, to adult, the children now know much about these cool little creatures!  They created a book that talks about the lifecycle and we read, Are You a Ladybug? It was fun to compare humans to ladybugs while we read that book.

I am going to keep the newsletter part short and instead remind you of our upcoming things for the rest of the school year.

Monday, May 24: Crazy Hair Day

Tuesday, May 25: Hat and Socks Day

Wednesday, May 26: Inside Out Day

Thursday, May 27: Pajama Day – bring pillows and blankets if you’d like!  Breakfast at 8:30 am and families can stay and eat with us!

Friday, May 28: Free Dress Day – wear your “normal” clothes!

Wednesday, June 2: Family Night in the kindergarten room at 6:00 pm – snacks will be served since it is around dinner time.  Students will bring home “invitations” for this next week to pass out to family members.  Any family and/or friends are welcome to come.  We’ll celebrate a great year in kindergarten.

Thursday, June 3: Chapel at 8:35am in the church and then field trip to Happy Hollow

Friday, June 4: Last day of school and BBQ at 11:00 am.  Families are welcome to eat with            us.  Dismissal at 12:00 pm.

Sunday, June 6: Students sing in church at 10:30 am and kindergarten graduation for John, Kaitlyn, Jake, Jordan, and Lydia.

Whew!  I know it is a lot for the end of the school year, but we hope you can join us for as many of these special things as possible.

Have a good weekend!

In Him,

Mrs. Heifner

and measured our hands and feet

in math we practiced measuring

we experimented with magnets all around the classroom

lots of magnet “things” to try!

“eyeballs!” she said

art with watecolors

working on our ladybug books

May 10-14, 2010

We continued to be scientists this week.  The class learned a lot of interesting things about ladybugs, or ladybird beetles.  We used the book Ladybug on Orchard Avenue as one of our main resources.  The book follows a ladybug around and the class was able to get a good idea of what it is like to be a ladybug, including all of the dangers.

The children designed their own ladybugs on Monday.  They could use any colors and create any type of pattern, but they had to be symmetrical!  It was a bit of a challenge, but the class did it really well!  These ladybugs are currently crawling up our wall in the classroom.  The children also thought about the ladybugs we released last week.  What are they doing out in the wild now?  They drew very detailed pictures wrote a sentence to go along with their picture.  Later in the week, the class was introduced to the ladybug’s life cycle.  We watched a short video that captured the transformation from egg to larva to pupa to ladybug!

Our focus in Christ Light was God’s forgiveness.  We read about God forgave David for his terrible sins.  We talked about how important it is to tell God we are sorry for our sins like David did.  We are so thankful that God gave us the gift of his Son and eternal life in heaven despite the sins we commit each and every day.

In the afternoon, the children worked on finishing up their published books.  Since their stories are longer now, illustrating them definitely takes more time!  But their illustrations are great and really fill up each page of their stories.  We also added more words to our word wall and the children had fun reading off the words on the wall in the dark.  They read whatever the flashlight pointed to!  Later in the week, they began writing in their new lined journals with the “grass, sky, and dirt!”

In math, the older children practiced counting nickels and dimes.  Every morning at circle time we practice counting by 5’s and 10’s, so they are really quite good at this now!  The younger children graphed how many of each coin they had in their cups.  It was good sorting practice, graphing practice, and numeral-writing practice.

I hope you and your families have a good weekend!

In Him,

Mrs. Heifner

our HUGE parachute!

the kids love sitting in it like a mushroom

play time

they set up a toy store at play time

we got messy this week in art!

some children did both hands at once!

art

what are our ladybugs doing out in the wild?

counting, adding, and symmetry in our “Ladybug Gazettes”

Important DATE CHANGE

The kindergarten family night was scheduled for Tuesday, June 1.

It will now be held on Wednesday, June 2 at 6:00 pm.

Thank you!

May 3-7, 2010

We kicked off this week by welcoming hundreds of ladybug friends into our classroom.  Their home was set up all week and the students were able to observe them all week long.  We examined them with magnifying glasses and recorded our findings.  We counted their spots and made a huge graph of our results.  We also learned that their red shells are wing covers and that ladybugs are symmetrical!  The book we read this week was The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle.  On Friday after doing our experiment (see “Friday’s experiment) we released all of the ladybugs into the wild so they can go find their natural food to eat: aphids!  We are going to continue learning about these interesting beetles for a few more weeks.

In Christ Light, our focus was on being kind despite how you are treated by others.  In our story on Tuesday and Wednesday we learned that Saul wanted to kill David, but David always spoke to Saul with kindness and never once hurt him.  “Be kind to one another, forgiving each other” was certainly something we saw David do.  We also read about David becoming king over the Israelites and how kind he was to Saul’s family, even after Saul died.

The children also spent some time creating something special for their mom’s.  Happy Mother’s Day to all of the kindergarten mom’s.  I hope you have a great weekend with your families!

In the afternoon, the class was excited to find out that they get new writing workshop journals next week.  This time, the journals will have lines in them to help the students with correct letter formation and placement on the lines.  They learned that some letters are tall and reach into the “sky” (the top line), some letters like to hang out in the grass (letters such as: a, c, e), and some letters like to get dirty and go into the dirt (letters that go below the bottom line such as: g, j, p).  The lines in the journals will be coordinated with these: blue for sky, green for grass, and brown for dirt!

In writing workshop, the class continued to learn about vowels.  We also practiced recognizing word families such as: bat, hat, mat with –at endings, or pin, win, sin with –in endings.  This helps the students with spelling and reading!  On Friday, the class published their favorite stories.  After typing their stories, they illustrated them and put them into a “real book.”  We have saved all of their published books throughout the year, but at the end of the year, they will all be sent with the children to be enjoyed at home!

In Him,

Mrs. Heifner

Miss Petrie’s class joined us for our initial ladybug observations on Monday

we were artists like Henri Matisse

there was A LOT of wallpaper to chose from

yoga!

practicing letter formation using “the sky, grass, and dirt”

ladybug experiment: can ladybugs swim?

releasing 100+ ladybugs!