Dec. 6, 2010 Knowing Jesus, Growing in Faith, Serving God’s Children
Dear Parents,

With our Christmas service over it will be “back to work!” with a regular schedule again! Our room will soon be looking more like Christmas, and this week we’ll work on some gifts and cards, all very secret, you know! There are Advent services this Wednesday at 10 AM and 6PM, and the older students have their service next Sunday at 4PM. There’s a dinner at 5PM before church on Wednesday to make it easier on families. Thanks to our drivers today. Presenting our Christmas story is a fun way to share Jesus with others, and the people of Echo Ridge so appreciate it!

We’ll continue to learn the Christmas story from Luke 2, adding the visit of the angels to the shepherds and their going to worship the new King. No new Bible verse, but we will have fun with our old ones and learn some of Luke 2. We’re also singing many of the wonderful hymns and other Christmas songs. Your children love to sing!

We move on to “Nn” so send something that begins with “n” tomorrow. It’s not as easy as other letters to find things! During phonics and word study time we are spelling short vowel words now such as nap, wag, bed, etc. They are starting to catch on to “stretching out” words. It is really showing up during Writer’s Workshop, too. Most are now able to write simple text, including any word they want. Sometimes it’s just the first and last letter, but often it’s much more. That means they’re not afraid to try interesting words instead of sticking with safe words. This is wonderful! We will learn to do some editing, but right now this is just great. In the car is a great place to have your child try to spell things for you. Short vowel words are the simplest to start with.

We are very busy working with patterns, and now they must be able to see the unit of the pattern and give it a name. We will make cube pattern trains, and then break them apart to show what the unit was, and then put them back together. Please continue to use the new game that went home this week in the binder that requires them to make a set of 20. This is a difficult game and they have more fun as they become familiar with it. Please play with them often. It is still hard to keep track of how many they have. Some still don’t want to line them up. Some now realize that if they have ten in one line and the others below it they can keep track of how many they have and how many they still need. We play that you have to get the exact amount to make 20 at the end, so if you have 19, you must get a one! So you can keep the folder this week and just play this game most nights if possible. Great understanding can come from repetition of this game!!

Our offerings this month go to local Christian radio stations. We are having fun learning about God’s world and where we live on it. At this age it is hard to understand the concepts of city, state, continent, country, etc. We are making a book to help us, and playing with stand-on maps and a big atlas. We’ll learn about the directions, too. We have songs to help us with these concepts.



God’s blessings on your week,

Roxi Withee