Wow! It’s hard to believe the school year is coming to an end! We have started our last STEM unit of study, which is Nursery Rhymes. We have a puppet theater in our dramatic play area and the students have really been enjoying acting out the nursery rhymes. We have really been able to target literacy skills like rhyming and alliteration, as well as story retell. We will end the unit with a Design Challenge where students will work together to keep Humpty Dumpty safe when he falls.
Library
Please make sure your child has turned in their library book. If you have lost a library book, please contact Ms. Laura to work out a plan to replace it.
STEM Profile of the Month: Reflective
“I think and share what I have learned, what I am good at, and what I can I improve the next time. I take the time to think about my actions and their effects. I give and take feedback from others.”
Some books that encourage being reflective:
The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes by Mark Pett
What Do You Do With An Idea? By Kobi Yamada
Working With Your Child At Home
We really appreciate your efforts this year with helping your child to complete and return their homework! With the exception of the May reading log, we will not be sending any homework home during the month of May. We hope you will take that extra time and enjoy playing a game outside with your child. Physical activity is great for brain development! We are working on creating a packet to send home that will give you some ideas for activities you can do with your child this summer to keep their skills sharp for kindergarten.
Our Big Idea for Math for the month of May is Shapes. Although you may feel like your child has already mastered his/her knowledge of shapes, many students are still getting confused with some of them. Some ideas of things you can do at home to work on this skill are:
-Play “I Spy” shape games.
-Have a Shape Scavenger Hunt.
-Impress 3D solids in play dough to allow your child to see the 2D shape that it is made from.
-Draw pictures of things that contain many shapes (e.g. a house is a square with a triangle for a roof) and discuss all of the shapes within the picture.
Assessments
We have been working hard to finish our final round of GOLD assessments. It’s exciting to see how much growth has occurred over the course of the school year! I will be sending the Individual Learning Plans home within the next couple of weeks that will share your child’s progress with you. If you have any questions after looking it over, please let me know.
All students going on to Kindergarten have also been assessed on PALS (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening). This is a tool that will be used in Kindergarten to determine your child’s literacy needs. Implementing the screening at the end of preschool helps us to review our practices to make sure we are targeting the correct literacy skills that students will need to be successful in kindergarten. It also assists us in tracking regression over the summer since the test will be administered again right at the beginning of kindergarten. If we do see that trend, we are hoping to be able to allow programming that would help prevent that loss.
Field Day
We are excited to implement our first Field Day this year. Our class will be participating on Monday, May 16. The morning class will take part from 9:25-10:10, and the afternoon class will take part from 1:20-2:05. Parents are welcome to come and share in this fun event. However, since several classes will be participating at the same time, we ask that you please keep younger siblings at home. Students will need to wear clothes that can get wet and bring a change of clothes in their backpacks. Students and teachers are not allowed to have sunscreen, so this will need to be applied before school. We recommend a hat to protect eyes and heads from the sun.
Important Dates
May 9: All-School Movement
May 12: P.J. Day-Bring $1 and wear your pajamas to school
May 12: Harvest of the Month snack-Strawberries
May 12: PTO Meeting (6-7:30)
May 16: Field Day
May 25: LAST DAY OF SCHOOL