week of April 30, 2012

Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Jones Nifty Newsletter (week of April 30) Homework for the Week: Monday-Thursday: 1/2 sheet practice Tuesday-Thursday: Reader practice In Math, we will be sharpening our addition and subtraction skills in order to get ready for First Grade. We will continue to review counting by ones, twos, and tens to 100. We will also continue to count pennies, nickels, and dimes as well as telling time to the hour and half hour each day during our Math Meeting. In Phonics, we will be finishing up our last digraph, oo like in hook and booth. We will also be ready to introduce and use the sneaky e rule. The sneaky e at the end of words (cake, concrete, bike, rope, cute) does not make a sound, but sneaks up on the vowel to make it long and say its own name. There will be examples on all of the phonics papers coming home. In Reading, our story will be Building Beavers. This is a nonfiction story about beavers building their homes. Our skill will be identifying main idea. *Please fill out and return the field trip form as soon as possible if you did not do so already.* Important dates to remember: FYI: Kindergarten Graduation will be held on Tuesday, May 22nd. Please mark your calendars. Monday will be Day 1. We will have Art. Don’t forget Library books for Tuesday and sneakers for Thursday.

Week of April 23

Mrs. Borden & Mrs. Jones Nifty Newsletter (Week of April 23) In Phonics we will continue to work with digraphs. Digraphs are to letters that come together to make one sound. We will finish working with voiced digraph th as in feather and move on to unvoiced digraph th like thimble. We will also learn about digraph oo as in tooth and hook. We will also review alphabetizing, syllables, accents, initial and final sounds in words and manipulating sounds in words. Keep practicing sight words and decodable readers. Everyone is showing very nice progress! Great Job! In Math we will share a whole by separating it into equal parts and identify halves and fourths. We will also create a pictograph comparing temperatures during different seasons. This is our last lesson in our Saxon Math unit. We will then review everything taught during the year and build on those concepts to give them a head start in first grade! We will be working on two Reading stories next week, Homes Around the World and Old McDonald had a Woodshop. We will discuss kinds of homes people around the world build, and tools you need to build things. We will compare and contrast and relate the characters in the story to everyday life. We are so proud of everyone for doing a wonderful job on their DIBELS test this week. Everyone showed progress! Nice Job! To celebrate Earth Day, Kindergarten decorated paper bags that will be used to put groceries in at Boyer’s. FYI: Kindergarten Graduation will be held on Tuesday, May 22nd Please mark your calendars. Monday will be Day 1. We will have Art. Don’t forget Library books for Tuesday and sneakers for Thursday.

week of April 16

Mrs. Borden and Mrs. Jones’ Nifty Newsletter (week of April 16)
Homework for the week:
Monday-Thursday: ½ practice and sight word practice
Tuesday-Thursday: Decodable Reader
*There will be a fill in the blank page coming home. Please work on it together and return it by the end of the week, Friday, April 20.*

In Math, we will be identifying and making symmetrical designs. We will be also counting pennies to 30 Cents and writing numbers to 30. We will also be making indirect comparisons with heights and lengths and measuring length using inches.
In Phonics, we will be working on Digraph sh like in shark and we will be reviewing Digraph ck like at the end of duck. We will also be introducing Digraph th. Digraph th has two sounds. The voiced sound is like the sound in feather and the unvoiced sound is like the sound in thimble.
Our Reading story is This Is The Way We Go To School and we will be comparing and contrasting how children get to school all around the world. We will also be drawing conclusions from the story information.

Great Job on all of your hard work; Keep it up! We are proud of you!