Mrs. Porter – Pre KA
Posted on March 8, 2012, by Pamela Porter, under Pre-kindergarten.
PrintOur littlest Saints are anxiously awaiting the Spring so we can get started watching for and investigating our world, and observing all the new life in our environment. We have many exciting plans for the springtime including, butterfly larvae to watch the amazing process of a cocoon turning into a butterfly, chick eggs in an incubator to watch (and pray) as they hatch into adorable chicks, and our Venus Fly Traps are already in the process of growing to show the many ways in our world for New Life! The class will continue learning about Jesus’ miracles, and will learn through stories and role playing about our Jesus’ Resurrection which gives us all New Life, too!
We are almost finished with our trek through the alphabet,
and the class is doing a great job recalling the sounds, names, and picture cues we have learned through our Open Court program. The foundation we are building through various ways of hands on, visual, and audio lessons are giving them lots of exposure to help them become successful emergent readers. We only have four more letters to study before we turn our sights on blending sounds to create words! We will use the slide approach as we discover visually how the letters from the alphabet tree can catch up to one another as they push together to create words! We will also spend time with nursery rhymes to begin building the foundation for rhyming next year.
In Math, the class is working hard to learn about color and shape patterns, directional words, measurement, sorting by color and shapes, identifying numbers 0-10, and counting for accuracy to ten. Of course, these are all on an introductory basis, and the students are just simply being exposed and introduced to the many fundamentals of math skills at this early age so there will be plenty of time for them to grow, develop, and master these tasks as they grow older.
We are so proud of each of our students for the many social and emotional milestones they have encountered. The children are learning how to work like a team through cooperation, sharing, kind words, and friendships. Our Investigator Club lessons have opened our eyes to the world of learning through the investigation approach. In doing so, we are learning that school work and learning are investigation that we must ‘see, hear, taste, touch, and question’ in order to be successful in our learning. We will continue to build upon these life skills here in a classroom setting to help for transitions along the way as they climb the ladder toward the ‘big kid hallway’. As you can see there is never a dull moment in our classroom, and we look forward to the Spring to help put the icing on the cake for our preschool skills! We are getting Spring fever in our classroom and can guess that you are too! Happy Spring, everyone!
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Mrs. Porter – Pre KA
Posted on January 27, 2012, by Pamela Porter, under Pre-kindergarten.
PrintThis is my FAVORITE time of the school year when everyone already knows one another, the little quirks have been ironed out, and the children already have a sense of what the expectations are in the classroom. So now we can spread our wings and FLY! We will be doing just that in the next few months. Now that we have the basic skills to use the many classroom tools we need to accomplish our lessons, the students will start rolling all their prior knowledge and lessons into making things happen for them academically.
We will continue our trek through the alphabet sounds, move on to number recognition 5-10, introduce the vowel sounds, and begin talking about the various letters in our alphabet that come together to make unexpected sounds. We will continue sorting by color, objects and begin to make 2 color patterns in Math. The students will have daily activities that will teach them to recognize their name in print. The Investigator Club is teaching us some good study skills ’investigate’ and look deeper into our world through the use of environmental sounds and clues, writing tools such as list, graphs, and picture cues when we need to find out something we do not already understand. The characters will lead us through many fun activities of investigation helping to build an awareness of the very basics of discovery and learning as we try new things.
Of course this is all at an introductory level, however, research shows that students who have learned the letter sounds initially, even before the name of the letter, and can easily ‘manipulate’ the letters in the alphabet, will be stronger emergent readers. With the help of the Open Court program and the Sadlier Investigator Club program, the students will be building a solid foundation of fundamentals to learning that will help them for many years to come. That is my goal here in our Language Arts for the remaining school year, to help my students learn to manipulate the alphabet in fun and exciting ways!
Please stay tuned to our weekly classroom newsletter for details of each week and the plans I have for our classroom. We are looking forward to the upcoming In-House Field trips that Mrs. Bowan has scheduled for us and appreciate your prompt response when we send requests for assistance from the home. These programs and visitors are used as extended lessons to our classroom activities and are an important element to our curriculum. Have a happy beginning to what is sure to be an AMAZING year for your preschooler!
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Mrs. Strunk – PKB
Posted on October 14, 2011, by Kathy Strunk, under Pre-kindergarten.
PrintOctober/November Blurb
October did bring some cooler weather at last! We have many things going on in October.
LANGUAGE ARTS
In Our Investigator Club program we will finish meeting all of the characters, Chuck Wood, Manny Salamander and Bruno Buzzbee. The children will be asked if they would like to join the Investigator Club.
In our Open Court Program we will be discussing families. We will learn finger plays about families and read books about families and do activities about families. We are counting letters in words and will begin to count words in sentences.
We are talking about what is first and last in a row.
We will be sequencing story lines for what happens first, second. We discuss characters and where the action takes place.
MATH
We are working with shapes and sequencing numbers one to five. We are making graphs, too.
We do different activities to reinforce these concepts.
RELIGION
We are talking about the Garden of Eden. We will talk about Angels and Noah’s Ark. We do different activities with these stories. October is the month of the Rosary. We will be introduced to saying the Rosary. The class makes a big rosary together.
EVENTS IN OCTOBER
October 14, 2011 – Teddy Bear Day and Picnic
October 31, 2011 – Halloween Parade children will wear a costume
Trip through Heaven
More information will be sent home about these events.
During November we will be having lots of fun!
LANGUAGE ARTS
In the Investigator Club we will be investigating our “Under Construction Unit.”
In the Open Court Program we will begin our “All Kinds of Friends Unit.”
We will be learning about the Pilgrims and Indians.
MATH
We will be sequencing numbers 1 -10, one-to-one correspondence with numbers 1 – 10. We will continue to work with shapes. We will also do some simple equations.
RELIGION
We will be discussing different kinds of prayers: Praising, Thanking, Asking and Forgiving. We will also be reading Old Testament stories.
EVENTS for NOVEMBER
November 1, 2011 – All Saints Day
Children come dressed as their favorite Saint
November 4, 2011 – Parent Conferences
November 22, 2011 – Half Day – Noon Dismissal
Thanksgiving Feast
More information will be sent home about these events.
Happy Thanksgiving and may God bless each one of your families this Thanksgiving in an awesome way! Mrs. Strunk & Ms. Martinez
Check out out the city we made!
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Mrs. Jurik- Second Grade
Posted on October 21, 2011, by Linda Jurik, under Second Grade.
PrintFall is officially here, and the weather has gotten cooler. We have many exciting things to learn over the next couple of months. The following is a summary of the planned topics for October and November.
Math
In Math, place value and number words up to 100 will be introduced. The functions of “greater than” and “less than” will be utilized along with numbers in expanded form. We will also go over ordinal numbers, graphs, and tables. The students will also learn the definitions of range, mode, and median.
Spelling
We will learn spelling words with gl, bl, tr, dr, sk, mp, ng and long a.
Reading
We will begin vocabulary tests on Fridays. These words are introduced from the Open Court story of the week. We will read folktales, fantasy, and true adventure stories. Comprehension skills will include clarifying, predicting, summarizing, classifying, and sequencing.
English/Writing
The class will continue daily journals and they will learn the writing process. We will continue with the Shurley method and coding sentences.
Religion
We will learn about the story of Adam and Eve and Original Sin. We will introduce several bible stories from the Old Testament, and learn about the Ten Commandments. We will also discuss how Catholics are given a saint’s name, a patron saint. We will discuss All Saints Day which is November 1st. November 17th we will celebrate Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Feast day. Second Grade will also lead the Thanksgiving Prayer Service on Tuesday, November 22nd.
Science
In Science, we will observe the different states of matter. We will also identify properties of solids, liquids, and gases. We will classify rocks and discover the physical properties of rocks and minerals.
Social Studies
Students will describe the free enterprise system, identify goods and services, and compare wants and needs. As different work environments are identified, students will be able to explain bartering and trade. Students will begin to learn about Native Americans, European Explorers, English Pilgrims and American Pioneers.
Health
Students will learn the importance of fire safety. They will learn about behaviors that help a person stay healthy. They will also learn major body organs.
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Mrs. Strunk PKB
Posted on September 19, 2011, by Kathy Strunk, under Pre-kindergarten.
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PK B has been moving right along. The children had so many procedures to learn in many different areas. They are doing a fantastic job.
Language Arts
This month in our Open Court Program we have been working with the “I’m Special” Unit. The children have learned many finger plays and songs. They have listened to and discussed many books. At the end of September and in to October we will begin a new unit about “Families Everywhere”. The children will learn finger plays and songs about different types of families and will listen to and discuss books about families.
We are also using a new program The Investigator Club which creates a community of curious children who will explore, discover, and learn together. The first unit is “Let’s Investigate” and it is eight weeks of introducing the children to the characters and what it means to investigate.
Religion
We have been working on the sign of the cross and the prayers: Our Father, Hail Mary, and the Glory Be. We have learned about the Blessed Trinity. We are discussing how and why God made each of us special. We will also be learning the story of Creation.
Math
The children have been exploring the math center. We have also been working with shapes and numbers 1 – 5. We have been working with one-to-one correspondence.
We do the calendar every day. We have been singing the days of the week song and the months of the year.
We sing the weatherman song every day.
Social-Emotional Growth
We have been working on following classroom and playground rules, and becoming aware of our class schedules and routines.
The students are working with other children in groups, and sharing.
Actually, we have been having lots of fun because kids just want to have fun! Please refer to the parent letters for any news and upcoming events.
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Mrs. Fabian – Third Grade
Posted on September 19, 2011, by Betty Fabian, under Third Grade.
PrintWelcome back to a new school year. I hope everyone had a exciting summer. But now back to work!
Reading – Both classes started off reading the Unit of Friendship in the Open Court reading program. Phonics was a review of last year and will continue throughout the month. Staying with the concept of friendship, both classes will read, The Kids in Ms. Coleman’s Class – Spelling Bee. If I could have 7 parents volunteer to purchase one book it would complete the set. As the years have gone by, 7 of the books have grown legs and walked out the door. If you would like to help out the class, please email me. We will need them by the 19th of this month. Starting next month, I will set up small group reading and one whole group read.
Handwriting and Creative Writing – Well, we started cursive, but have had to slow down. We are taking baby steps until we accomplish simple motions. In creative writing, the classes will start their Treasure Book of Poetry. They will be learn about drafts, editing, and publishing over the next couple of months.
English – Hooray! We received NEW Shurley books. The students will enjoy the concepts that are taught throughout the book. Again, we started with baby steps and will end the year with a bang. Chapter 1 started off with organizational skills and we went into Chapter 2 with sentences labeling. Next test: September 14, 2011 (Chapter 2).
Thanks to all the parents who took time on the night of the 8th and came to school for Third Grade Parent Night. We hope you enjoyed learning the day of a 3rd grader!
Keep up with new and exciting updates on the web site. Over and Out………………………………….
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Mrs. Guerrero – Kindergarten
Posted on September 29, 2010, by Melissa Guerrero, under Kindergarten.
PrintKindergarten has gotten off to a great start! We enjoyed our bear unit and ended our unit with a teddy bear picnic. We had a great time!
In Religion, we are learning about the story of Creation. We are making a really cute book about Creation and are acting out the story in class. Next, we will learn about the Garden of Eden. At the end of September, we will learn about angels and learn our prayer, “Guardian Angel”. In October, we will learn about the rosary and how to pray the rosary.
We have now begun a new unit in Open Court (Language Arts) on “school”. Our goal in this unit is to have children see books as a valuable resource for learning about school – activities, routines, and people. A second goal is to have children learn about the literary features of narrative – audience, reader, writer, and features of books – title, author, and illustrator. Our third goal is to begin to learn how to create literary works themselves. Each day, the students will listen to poems, read books, review letters and sounds, listen for first, middle, and last sounds, listen for missing sounds, and work on rhyming.
In Math, we have been working on numbers 1, 2, and 3. We have worked on the shape – circle. We will continue to work on our numerals 1 – 10. We will learn about the number line, make finger representations for 1 – 10, make tallies thru 10, look at base ten blocks thru 10, and count and sequence numerals to 10. We will learn about these shapes: circle, triangle, and square. We will also make patterns AB, AABB, ABC. We will learn about the following vocabulary: same, different, equal, more, less, and next.
In Science, we have been learning about the parts of our body. We will explore the five senses and do various activities related to our five senses. We will also learn about nutrition, healthy snacks, exercise, and how to keep our body healthy.
In Social Studies, we are having a “star” of the week. Each child will get a turn to be a star of the week. On your child’s turn, your child will receive a book of compliments. On Friday, of that week, your child may bring a book, show and tell, and picture to share with the class.
Please remember to continue to review the weekly newsletters for more information! Thank you and have a great month!
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