January 18, 2010 Knowing Jesus, Growing in Faith, Serving God’s Children
Dear Parents,

The last half of our school year has begun! Report cards will be in next week’s folder. Everyone is working hard and using the talents God has given them. Keep encouraging them at home to practice their new skills! Our daily journals are really popular right now and some like to add to them in the mornings on their own time, even! Don’t forget PTL night at Chuck E. Cheese this Thursday, from 3 to 9PM. On Saturday at 10AM Zion has a MOM’s Bible study group and they’d love to have more moms! I’ve been invited to share tips on childrearing!
We are working with “Ss” and “Tt” this week. Try to find things for tomorrow that begin with either one. They discovered last week on their own that many words end with “er.” Of course the first word they came up with as an example was “Pastor!” Oh, the joys of explaining the English language! In Writing Workshop they are learning to put space between words, use capitals at the beginning of sentences, and punctuation at the end. I’m sorry I didn’t get the fast word lists in every reading homework bag. I will next week! Whenever you have a chance play games with these. Read them and write them. Write them on paper or use refrigerator magnets. You could highlight those they can read and write. Just have fun! For those who want a challenge I have other lists, so let me know! These words free them up so they don’t have to stretch out every word. Please make sure your child has their homework bag in their backpack every day!
Last week we learned about Jesus disciples. This week our Bible lessons are about Peter and others catching fish, with Jesus’ help, from Luke 5. We’ll learn that Jesus helps us, too, in many ways, and He helps us help each other. Our Bible words to learn are Ephesians 5:20 “Always give thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Our offerings this month go to LWML’s Mission Adventure. These will be used all around the world to help children learn about Jesus. It is affiliated with our church’s women’s ministry. Our winter community project is “Pennies for Patients.” Last week we sent home paper banks to save our coins and bills in to help families dealing with childhood cancer and to help fund research. Noah’s sister is an Honored Hero this year. You can find her picture on the posters in the hall. We will see which classroom can bring in the most, as they find that fun.
We’ll begin our water experiments this week. The children discover that water flows down and takes the shape of the container it is in. We’ll become water molecules and learn that water can be a solid, liquid, or a gas. We’ll find out which objects float and which sink. We’ll freeze water outside and bring it in to watch it melt, adding salt to one to see just why they do that on the streets and sidewalk. We’ll probably come up with others, too. Last week our puddle players were seeing how to displace water!
I couldn’t find a math game that lent itself to our measuring unit last week, so I didn’t send it back. We have another two person game that involves using numbers up to 20 and seeing the relationships, what is one more or one less. I’ll send that on Tuesday. Now we go back to counting, counting, counting! They love taking huge handfuls of cubes and then snapping them into groups of ten to see how many they have! There is a method to all our games. They are learning to internalize combinations, especially combinations up to 6 this week. When they play Collect 10 and Build It they are learning all those ways to make 10. This way they learn to add on quickly and begin to internalize combinations, even if they don’t write these as addition facts yet. When the time comes they will find them so easy because the foundation has been set. We’ll use the abacuses, too. They are measuring and comparing all the time, also.
Enclosed is a form so you can order the classroom book that our class is working very hard to create. Every child will soon have written and illustrated a page in the book. They wrote what they want to be when they grow up. It really is a keepsake! Check out the ones from the last few years outside our classroom. This is the only opportunity to order the book. Please return these by next Tuesday, January 25th.
If you need summer daycare, be sure to get your spot. Return that sheet Mrs. Green sent last week.
God’s blessings,

Roxi Withee