November 1, 2010 Knowing Jesus, Growing in Faith, Serving God’s Children
Dear Parents,

We are beginning our second quarter today! Your conference times should be in your oldest child’s folder. If the time doesn’t work please let me know and we’ll pick a time that will! Remember next week is a short week with conferences. This Tuesday don’t forget to vote! We’ll be voting at school, too. Wear red, white and blue!
Today we began using the new morning routine for dropping off children at the newly opened turn around. Pull up and let your child off, then circle around through the back of the lot and out. If you’re parking and walking in with your child be sure to help them cross there. Thank you! The afternoon is the same as before.
Thank you for the wonderful response for playing bells Sunday, Nov. 14th, at 4PM for our new pastor’s installation. We will collect the children in our classrooms about 3:45 or so, then walk them down as a group. After they play we will walk them back out into the narthex and you can collect them, since it will be hard finding everyone. They are so excited! It is a fun way to praise God!
Now we will learn about Ruth, from the book of Ruth. It is the story of God’s love for all people, how that love blesses us, and how He can use us to bless the lives of others. Our Bible verse is Ephesians 4:32 “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” This month’s offering is for the local meals on wheels program.
We had fun with all the wonderful dried leaves. Our bookmarks turned out lovely and the ones for their church buddies are in the mail! Each month the children send something to someone from our church or the community, sharing a little bit of our school learning with them. Many are home bound and love hearing about them and the school.
We will have more fun with counting sets and comparing them. We also compare items in the room to see which is longer, shorter, etc. We’ll compare the length of our names this week. In the reading bag is a short homework activity using the names in your family! Send it back in the bag as soon as you are done. Math binders can stay home this week. There are two games, the one with the farm, and What’s Next, that they need to play often. Try to get these played. It makes such a difference.

We add “Ii” to our letters and sounds learned. Since “I” is a vowel we’ll learn both sounds it usually makes. We’ll spend much more time on vowel sounds in the spring, but it helps to learn them as we go, so they can begin to stretch out words. Encourage all kinds of writing experiences at home, including lists, thank yous, labeling things, etc. Our oldest daughter discovered post it notes in Kindergarten and labeled the whole house one time! In our writing center the children are having fun making several types of lists. Even if they can’t read their list later, it’s still a great way to practice writing lowercase letters in a meaningful way. I didn’t get the sentence homework in the reading bags last week, so I’ll try to get that in, too. The sentence writing is still a great way to see how your child is progressing and it gets easier the more they do it. They are really enjoying writing workshop now and don’t like if we miss it!
This week we begin working on our songs, etc. for our Christmas service, “Angel, Angel.” Our Preschool/Kindergarten service will be Sunday, December 5th, at 4PM. We’ll be playing bells for this, too. We look forward to sharing Jesus’ birth with you!
Grandparents Day is Wed., November 24th, from 8:30 to 11:15AM, when school ends for the Thanksgiving holiday. More on this next week!
Enclosed are book orders for November, December and one called Virtues. I have attached a sticker with our class code on it. If you want to order online, but haven’t yet, you can use that code to get to our class page. You go to Scholastic.com and then to the parent section. Then you can order from all three is you want and pay by credit card. We get free class books for every order done online. I decided to do them all right now. December gets too busy and there are too many other things to buy! There are great gift selections and I’ll post some of my favorites, especially from the Virtues catalog. Send the paper orders back by next Wednesday.

Have a blessed week! Don’t forget PTL Skating from 1:30 to 3:30PM this Sunday.

Roxi Withee