February 5-9

As you may have read on the note sent home Friday(see below), we will be inviting families with Kindergarten-aged students to visit our room on Thursday. I am so proud of these Kindergartners and can't wait for others to see how they shine!

Hello NDLC Families, 
Enrollment for the 2018-2019 school year is underway and we have a few spots available in Kindergarten! We find that word of mouth is the best way to market our school. 
If you have friends or family with upcoming Kindergarten-aged students, please share what you love about our school! We will be having an open house to see Kindergarten in action on Thursday, February 8th from 8:15-9:00 or 2:15-3:00. Feel free to invite any families that have expressed interest in our school.  
As always, families can also call Mrs. Frischmann at 766-6116 to set up individual tours. 


Upcoming Events: 
February 12: 100th Day of School Celebration
February 14: Valentine's Day-wear red and pink
Feb 16th: Funky Friday
February 22nd  and 23rd: NO SCHOOL

What’s happening in Kindergarten this week?

Reading: Readers learn to be problem solvers! Even when they get to unknown words in their books, they can use lots of strategies to figure out a word. Here are some of the ways we solve words:

Writing: Writers will pick one piece of writing to publish this week. They will use the following charts to help them revise and edit their books.

On Friday, we are inviting our 4th grade buddies in to listen to our how to books and test out the directions! The kindergartners will create props for their buddies to to use while following the directions of their how to books. It will be quite the celebration!

Math:
So I realize that in almost every blog I mention the students being fluent within 5 for addition and subtraction. This is a huge and important skill for Kindergarten that requires LOTS of repeated practice.  To be truly fluent with math facts research says students need to be shown an equation and solve it within 3 seconds without the use of counting, fingers or tools.  This is hard work!

 Each day we do things during math time to build our fluency.  The image below shows math skills in an "iceberg model" to show different skills students need to use and master before they reach the "tip" of the iceberg, which is seeing an equation and solving it fluently.



The games we play and activities we do focus heavily on the informal and pre-formal section of the iceberg because we want students to relate the visual representations they create with tools and see on game pieces directly to an equation so they can solve them quickly.

Fundations: We will also discuss long and short vowels. Typically, we focus on the short vowel sound, but as students are reading more and more, they will come across the long vowel sounds as well. The chart is a helpful visual!

Science: As we wrap up our plants and animals unit, students will be comparing and contrasting plants and animals. Then, each student will pick a topic to research. They will use books, iPads, and the plants and animals in our room to research. Each child will get to decide how they want to share their information; it could be a poster, a book, a diorama, or whatever else they come up with. We will present to the class about our learning on Friday!