Ms. Nicky’s Update 2-3-2020

Ms. Nicky’s and Ms. Julie’s News Happy February! I just can’t believe how fast time is going! We just finished our STEM Unit on Nursery Rhymes. Hopefully, your child has been reading their Nursery Rhyme book with you at home, and they have told you about our Humpty Dumpty Design Challenge. We are now moving on to our STEM Unit on Robotics. We will start the unit exploring our 5 senses, and then work with different robotsto see how they use senses to perform actions. The robots we will focus on will be Bee Bot, Cubelets, and Dash. If you have any expertise with Robotics that you would like to share with us, we would love to have you come in! Parent-Teacher ConferencesPlease don’t forget Parent-Teacher Conferences February 3 and 5. You should have received a confirmation letter indicating the day and time that yours is scheduled. If you didn’t, please let me know. I look forward to speaking with you about your child’s progress! Valentine’s Day CelebrationWe will be celebrating Valentine’s Day with fun math activities in our class on Thursday, February 13 at 2:00. If you would like your child to give out Valentines in class, please leave the “To” portion of the Valentines blank and just have your child sign their name on their Valentines. We hope you will be able to join us! Working With Your Child At HomeWe just finished our second round of GOLD assessments and it has been fun to see the growth that has been made since the Fall Checkpoint! I hope you are seeing the progress, as well! As we work through the second half of the year, we will start focusing more on how the letters and sounds that they have learned can combine to make words. We will mostly explore words that have a CVC (consonant vowel consonant) pattern, like cat or dog. You can work with your child at home on this by saying words slowly and asking them what sounds they hear. In math, we will continue to focus on numeral identification, particularly numerals 11-20, because this is still tricky for most students. If you see numerals in your environment, ask your child if they can identify them. We will also be working on counting on. One way to do this at home is to play dice games involving 2 die. Have your child identify the amount on 1 dice instantly and then count on from there with the 2nd dice. Change to date of Gymnastics Center VisitPlease take note–I have been asked to attend a conference on the date of our originally scheduled February gymnastics center visit, so we have had to move our visit to a week earlier, which will be February 12. Thunder Valley VisitOn Thursday, February 27, to go along with our Robotics Unit, we will be going next door to Thunder Valley K-8 to see a Robotics Demonstration. We will get to see their Vex Robots in action, which is what their students use to compete with other schools around the district. It should be a lot of fun! Important DatesFebruary 3: Please return all Dental forms for the dental screening, even if you wish to opt out.February 3 and 5: Parent-Teacher ConferencesFebruary 12: Gymnastics Center visitFebruary 13: Valentine’s Day celebration (2:00 p.m.)February 17: NO SCHOOL-President’s DayFebruary 20: PJ Day-Bring $1 and wear your pajamas to school!February 20: PTO Meeting (6:00 p.m.-7:30 p.m.) FREE childcare providedFebruary 25: Dental ScreeningsFebruary 27: Visit to Thunder Valley for a Robotics PresentationFebruary 27: PBIS Reward