Important dates.....

Scholastic book order is due April 17th.
No school April 18th.
Family fun night April 24th 5:30-7:30
Saturday school make up day and our class field day April 26th .
Saturday school make up day and rain date for field day May 3rd.
Last day of school May 30th
Family fancy dance May 30th

Pictures from science is fun for everyone!!

100 Days Smarter.....

It has been a busy two weeks in Kindergarten. We celebrated our 100th day of school on January 14th. The students participated in math and literacy centers incorporating the number 100. The theme for the day was 100 days smarter. In math we have finished up our unit on shapes. We worked on naming and describing 2D and 3d shapes. We will now focus on addition/subtraction and solving math stories. Third quarter students need to count to 70 by tens and ones. In science we will start a unit on weather. In social studies we will learn about needs and wants. In writing we are still working on how to stories. Students should be able to write three sentences with the correct punctuation, spacing , capital letter to start sentence and basic phonetic spelling (ranbo/rainbow). In reading groups we are focusing on reading strategies and sight words. The Banks Road Art Room hosted artist Bryant Holsenbeck for this year’s Artist in Residency program. Together, Ms. Holsenbeck and the students created random weave forms that will become a beautiful new art installation for our school. The kindergarten team will be sending home information about our next field trip. We are in need of snacks for the classroom,erasers,empty plastic water bottles, clorox wipes and baby wipes. Please make sure that your child has a change of clothes at school. I hope everyone has a great week and try to stay warm!!

Skate Night Tuesday January 28th

PTA Spirit Night: Interskate Night 5300 Fayettewille Road, Raleigh (Hwy 401) FROM 6-8 P.M. The cost is $3.00 and includes: skate rental, bounce house fun, exciting games and activities, slice of pizza and a drink! It’s going to be a great night. I hope to see everyone Tuesday night!!

Coin Drive This Week

Banks Road Families, This is just a reminder that our "All for Books" coin drive will be starting on Monday, January 27th and will be running through Friday, January 31st! We will be having a grade level competition to collect coins in an effort to make sure that EVERY student at Banks Road can get a new book from this year's Scholastic Book Fair! Monday - Penny Day Tuesday - Nickel Day Wednesday - Dime Day Thursday - Quarter Day Friday - ANY COIN Day Coins will be collected from classrooms each morning and counted before the end of the day! An update will be sent out each night so you can see how your child's grade level is doing! Remember, ALL classes at the winning grade level receive a piñata party!

Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. The students did a great job getting back into the routines despite the long break. This week we will read and listen to different variations of the story The Three Little Pigs we are asking and answering questions about key details from the story. We have been learning about characters and setting as well as retelling details from the beginning, middle and end of the story. During writing time we are continuing to add words to our word wall. Please keep practicing your words at home. You can look for the words in books you read, use them in a sentence or practice writing them. Last week we began working on writing about our opinions and we will continued to practice opinion writing this week. We are writing about things we like or do not like and then explaining why we like it or don't. As a class we have been using these sentence frames to help guide us during writing time. I like ___________ because _____________. I do not like ____________ because _____________. I like to __________ because ___________. I do not like to ___________ because __________. During our math time we are working on identifying, drawing and comparing the following shapes: square, triangle, rectangle, circle and hexagon. We have been learning how to identify shapes by counting the number of sides and vertices each shape has. This week we will begin to learn about the following three dimensional shapes: sphere, cone, and cube. We are still working on counting 1-70 by ones and tens and reading, writing and counting objects 11-20. Please remember to send in a change of clothes labeled in a baggie. If you want to order a yearbook the deadline is January 8th. We also have PAC literacy night this Thursday January 9th. Teachers will be reviewing websites that are used with the students throughout their school day.

Almost the end of the Quarter.....

Can you believe we are almost through the second quarter? It feels like just yesterday I was meeting all the kiddos for 'Meet the Teacher', showing them where their cubbies were going to be. They have made a lot of growth from that first day and we have been working hard to master our quarter2 goals. Language Arts In reading, we have been working on identifying the story elements (character and setting) in fiction books. You can support this goal by asking your child to identify the character and setting in their favorite story. Heck, you can even ask them to identify the characters/setting in their favorite TV show! We have also been working on phoneme segmentation (being able to break a word into basic sounds) and nonsense word fluency (sounding out and reading made-up words). Your child will be assessed on these objectives at the end of the quarter with the goal for phoneme segmentation being 20 words a min and the goal for nonsense word fluency being 17 words a minute. In Letterland this week, we introduced "ck" words. In addition, we have been using the 'roller coaster trick' (using our shoulder, elbow, and wrist) to sound out CVC (simple 3 letter words made up of a consonant letter, vowel, and consonant letter). Sight Words: come, from As you know, the amount of sight words your child can read corresponds positively to the books they can read independently. To support this goal, ask your child to name all the sight words they can identify in a toy catalogue. If they name a specific amount (you can set an achievable goal), tell them you will put in a good word with Santa/grandma/grandpa about a special toy they want....just an idea:-) In writing, our focus is on creating 'pattern books'. That is, creating books that use the same language pattern (usually consisting of sight words) on each page. This week, we created books using the pattern, "I like to...". Math In math we finished up our following unit with numbers 11-20. Specifically, -identifying and correctly writing numbers 11-20 -creating groups that represent numbers 11-20 using our tens frame For example the number 16 would be XXXXX. XXXXX XXXXX. X -decomposing numbers 11-20 into a group of ten and some extra. For example, using the tens frame above, 16 would be 10 and 6 extra make 16 or 10 and 6 are partners that make 16. Homework I will not be sending a homework packet home this Friday. I will send some math activities to help reinforce concepts and continue reading to earn a book it certificate for a free pizza. These will be due December 2nd. The Most Wonderful Volunteers I just want to take a moment and thank the wonderful moms who help our class each and every week. They do everything from pulling small groups of kids to help them master various skills, to doing the down and dirty job of organizing/preparing all of our 'paperwork' .