Kindergarten Kids

Our winter party was a huge success thanks to a guest appearance by a jolly man in red and white!  Santa showed up on his motercycle, complete with sidecar, and brought presents for all of our cuties!!!!!

I have also included pictures from our last day (pajama day) and Quinn and Samuel’s birthday.

I wish you and your family a restful, wonderful holiday, and I look forward to seeing your cuties back here on January 5th!!!

Lynsey Howitt

Our third Writing Workshop Publishing Party on “Telling and Writing Stories.”  We worked on writing over three pages, having a beginning, middle and end, and we colored our illustrations.  Our cuties told their stories in front of everyone during our celebration!  I am so proud of them.

Ms. Penny told us about Filippino Christmas celebrations, and Ms. Iqbal talked about Ramadan.  A fun week!

Here are pictures of our winter music concert (our cuties sounded amazing and were incredibly adorable!)  I have also included some individual pictures, class pictures and pictures of us collecting things and making our “Snowballs” book (based on the one by Lois Elhert.)  Be sure to click on the slide show if you want to be taken to all of my pictures in the picassa gallery (I can’t fit them all on the newsletters! :))

Our cuties had a ton of fun making gingerbread, decorating it, and eating it, after we found our gingerbread people, of course!!!!!  We made our yummy gingerbread people one day, only to come back and find that they had run away, right off the baking tray, out of the oven!  They left a note that started an amazing scavenger hunt all over the school!  We ran into many teachers, including Mr. Howitt, Ms. Tucker and even our principal Mr. Bissmeyer who said we just missed our running gingerbread people!  The notes eventually led us back to our classroom where we ate our yummy creations!!!!!  The students told me “that was the BEST day at school ever!”

This slideshow is from Maggie Moon’s visit.  She began our Writing Workshop unit on telling stories.  Our cuties LOVED having her help us with our writing!!!!

Hello!

I am including a picture slideshow from our wonderful Thanksgiving lunch.  I am also including the note that I sent to you today so you have it here as well

Monday, December 01, 2008

Dear Parents:Happy Monday!!! I hope you and your families had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! December is a busy month in Kindergarten!! Here are some things that are going on:

-We are talking about and celebrating holidays around the world. I will be sharing some of what my family does for winter and Christmas with the students. I would LOVE it if some of you would be willing to come in and share a little something about what you and your family do during this holiday time. If you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Id (Islamic New Year), Devali….let me know, and you can come in and share part of your celebration with us.

-During our Writing Workshop on Thursday, we will be talking to our writing partners about something we brought that has a story to it. Can you please help your child pick something that has a story attached to it? (Not a toy, but something such as a leaf, postcard…)

-Next Tuesday, December 9^th  we will be making Gingerbread people here at school. Stay tuned for details as I will be asking for you to send in some ingredients to help us out (and of course you will be welcome to come in and give us a hand if you would like to!!!)

-Next week (December 8^{th-12th) there is a clothing drive for LiMing school (the school in the village we drive through everyday.) The principal said that they would be happy to receive winter clothing for their students. He also mentioned that many of their students are from areas affected by the earthquake and adult clothing (both new and used) would be appreciated as well.}Well, that seems to be all I can think of at this moment! Have a great day!

Lynsey Howitt

HI Parents!!!!

Sorry it has been a little while since the last posting!  Our kinder cuties have been very very busy!!!!!!!!!  What a month!!!!!!  Since I have been e-mailing the newsletters I won’t go on forever here, except to say that I am attaching a slideshow of pictures that includes:  Learning centers, finger painting turkeys, practicing our tricky teen numbers (using partners to demonstrate 10 and some,) writing numbers on each other’s backs, Ms. Pantoja’s healthy teeth talk and Taiga’s birthday!

Our cuties were into all of the fun!!!  We did fun crafts with our grade 5 reading buddies, and then all three kindergarten classes carved pumpkins.  We sang songs, scooped out the “goop,” separated the seeds, and baked them for a yummy treat!

Our Halloween parade was a success, with the cuties looking AMAZING!!!!!  We ended up the the gym for our Halloween assembly, came back for a fun math activity with candy corn, celebrated Eva’s 6th birthday, and then finished up the day with a party!!!!!  We sent these little ones home to you EXHAUSTED but having had a great time!

Hope your week is going well!

Lynsey

We had a wonderful time at the Jin Qiao Fire Station!  We were welcomed by waving firefighters who were so excited to see our cuties!!!!!!  They talked about each of their fire trucks and told us to time them as they got ready for a “pretend” fire.  The came sliding down the poles, got dressed, jumped in their trucks and sped off, only to come back to thunderous kindergarten applause!! 

The students had a turn as a class to spray the heavy fire hose, and had a chance to dress up in firefighter clothes!  To our surprise, all of a sudden the fire bells rang for a real fire and we got to see the firefighters in action!!!  Wow were they fast, and we were incredibly impressed!!!!!!

 What a great day!!  Our cuties have talked about nothing else…except Halloween….coming up next…

Our grade 5 reading buddies came with us to UN Day, and we had a fabulous time!  We visited so many countries, had our passports stamped, sampled food, and found out what makes each country unique!!  What a wonderful way to see the diversity of cultures in our school!  We learned so much about each other!  Stay tuned for our Travel Project in the spring…