Week of: March 23 rd – March 27 th News to Know SPRING BREAK: Next week there is no school for Spring Break. Please take time to relax, spend time with family and friends and enjoy the time with your child. MATH CON: Similar to Rocket into Reading, Math Con starts over Spring Break. Your child will be bringing home a packet of information and math activities today. Please note that each child will only be given ONE packet, teachers were not given any extra copies. BASKETBALL GAME: In late April there will be a fundraiser at Brooks Middle School in which members of the staff will play in a basketball game against member of the parent community. I usually play in this game, however this year I have a wedding that day . This is still a fun event and I encourage all to attend. Please direct any questions about the event to Mr. Williams TYPING: You may have noticed that the kindergarten team has added typing activities to the weekly homework. In the last trimester, we will be working on typing, specifically letter and number location. Please consider trying some typing practice at home. NEW STUDENT: This week we had a new student added to KD. Please welcome Owen Wilson! Rowdy Readers This week we wrapped up two units in our morning reading block. First, we finished up our “Amazing Creatures” unit by reading and discovering more about dinosaurs. Also, we concluded our month long Dr. Seuss author study. This week was busy but it was a blast as we worked on long/short vowels, main ideas of nonfiction texts, reading rhymes and sorting rhymes. Some of the books that helped us out this week were: Fox in Socks Oh The Places You’ll Go Green Eggs and Ham If the Dinosaurs Came Back Powerful Plant Eating Dinosaurs My Book of Dinosaurs We did not add any new word wall words this week but we made sure to work on the ones that we already know and the ones that are giving us a hard time. We did however, add five new vocabulary words. The new words that should be appearing more in your child’s oral vocabulary are: reality, fantasy, gulp, enormous and incredible. Lastly, we have been working on printing lowercase letter more, this week we practiced u, i and e. Math Madness This week in our afternoon math activities we worked on decomposing numbers. What that looks like is I would offer the class the sum and they would have to figure out ways to add up to get to that number. For instance, if I gave them 9 they could figure out that 9 decomposes to 4+5, 3+6, 7+2, 8+1, etc… We are going to continue with decomposing after break with larger numbers. Upcoming Dates 3/30-4/3: SPRING BREAK! 4/6-4/17: Math Con Tuesday, April 7 th : School Store OPEN! 4/13-4/17: STEM Week Wednesday, April 15 th : PTO meeting Thursday, April 16 th : STEM Night Saturday, April 25 th : Parents vs. Staff Basketball Game Get To Know Your Child’s Teacher Meet Penny, Mr. and Mrs. Dolan’s puppy! She is an 14 month old mutt (after a DNA test we discovered that she is part Australian Cattle Dog and part Italian Greyhound). She loves playing ball, meeting new friends and cuddling. We rescued her last spring from a shelter is Des Plains. Be on the lookout for Mr. Dolan walking her around town (she LOVES walks and is quickly becoming Mr. Dolan’s running buddy).