Friday Cooking

A BIG thank you goes to Lauren's mom for coming to our classroom this past Friday for cooking.  Our cooking friends made Peppermint Play Dough for all of us to enjoy:)  Each child came home with yummy smelling play dough and a list of our kindergarten sight words so each child could practice rolling out the words and letters.  We LOVE our cooking volunteers!

Our New January Mystery Bag!

Nina has been hard at work again and sent us a January Mystery Bag!  She even included some Snowman Peeps and the children cannot wait to have one but I told them that they would have to wait until January.  We wrote another thank you note to Nina.  The children told her that she is a giver and a bucket-filler!  The fact that they realize those qualities in her makes me tear up...I just love my little friends:)

Can you believe it.....Day 70!

Zero the Hero came this past Monday to celebrate the 70th day of school!  He even told us his last name!  Ask your child if he or she remembers:)

Kids' Food Basket Collection ~ Dec. 17- Jan. 18

  Spreading kindness in our community! 

The Kids’ Food Basket is dedicated to attacking childhood hunger.  They currently provide sack suppers to more than 4,800 kids every day during the school year!  For several years, Lakeside Elementary has supported the Grand Rapids Kids’ Food Basket with our spring “Hike For Kids”.  We are continuing our efforts in support of our local Kids’ Food Basket 

with a winter food collection.

January 21^st is Martin Luther King Day.  On that day, we will remember the courage, love and service of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in an all-school assembly.  Following the assembly, students will make Breakfast Bundles, as well as decorate “supper sacks” for Kids’ Food Basket.

Thank you in advance for your support to our 

local Kids’ Food Basket!

Please see below the food item requested for your child’s grade level:

Young Fives & Kindergarten                                            

single-serving cereal boxes                                                                                                                                   

First Grade                                                                                  100% juice boxes (less than 7 oz.)

                                                                    

Second Grade                                                                     

100% Vitamin C fruit snacks                                                   

Third grade

Pop Tarts                                                                               

Fourth grade

Pop Tarts

Fifth grade

single-serving cereal boxes

* Collections begin: December 17^th and ends January 18^th.

Our Latest Chapter Book Read Alouds

Life after Mercy Watson...hard to believe! The Mercy Watson series is a hard act to follow but we are surviving:)  We have enjoyed The Giggler Treatment by Roddy Doyle and recently finished The Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling.  Just this week we began reading Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald.  Ask you child about these books and see what they have to say!

All School Holiday Concert

Our all school Holiday concert is next week Wednesday, December 19th at 2:30 in our gym.  All of the children will be singing songs that they have learned in music class and the 4th grade and 5th grade choir will be performing as well.  Our music teacher, Mrs. Larson, does a wonderful job with this program.  Hope to see you there!

Our Holiday Party

Our Holiday Party will be next week on Friday, December 21st from 2:00-3:15.  Please know that all of you are welcome to come.  Plan to stop by for 5 minutes or stay for the whole time, we would love to have you with us.  Our party committee has been busy planning the activities for next Friday so it will be chock-full of fun! 

Gingerbread, gingerbread, gingerbread...

We have been busy creating with gingerbread play dough and making gingerbread people.  We have read many, many versions of The Gingerbread Man and are having fun comparing and contrasting the stories.  We enjoyed some gingerbread cookies that Zac's Nina sent to us in our gingerbread mystery bag.  Last Friday, we sampled gingerbread boy and girl cookies that our very own cooking friends made for us.  Most of us really liked them!  We even have gingerbread scented hand sanitizer!!!!  Letter detectives have been searching our room for words that begin with the same letters as in the word GINGERBREAD.  We have also been word detectives and have found small words inside of the word GINGERBREAD.  Some words are: grin, red, bed, read, bad, a, I, in, ring, bring, and more!  We worked on our fine motor by cutting out gingerbread people, hole punched them and then laced them!  That was a lot of work!  We are keeping VERY busy in here so we can all stay out of trouble:)

A Gingerbread Masterpiece!

Max brought in the gingerbread house that he made with his family for all of us to see.  He said that it is a tradition in his family to make a gingerbread house each December.  We were so excited to get a closer look at a real gingerbread house since we have been reading so many books about gingerbread!  We were thankful that he shared his gingerbread creation with us today:)

Birthday Fun!

I LOVE my Birthday Book!  I would like to extend a BIG thank you to all of you for such a wonderful surprise!  I enjoyed reading each page to my Kindergarten friends and seeing the pride in each child's face as I read his or her special page to the class.  Thank you for all of your kind birthday wishes!  We enjoyed root beer floats and A LOT of counting on Monday:)

Friday Cooking

A BIG thank you goes to Olivia's mom and dad for coming to our classroom this past Friday for cooking.  Our cooking friends made yummy gingerbread cookies for all of us to enjoy:)  We LOVE our cooking volunteers!

Library is tomorrow!

Please be sure to return your library book tomorrow if you have not already done so!  We will be going to library at 12:30 on Thursday.  If any parent is able to join us to help the children choose his/her book or assist with book check-out, please email me. 
Thank you:)

Gingerbread Play Dough FUN!

A gingerbread python! 

 

 Cookie cutter creations!

The children have been busy at work making all kinds of goodies using our gingerbread play dough.  Thank you to all of the parents who made a batch of play dough for our classroom.  The children are really loving it.  They are also trying hard to remember that it is play dough and not cookie dough because it smells good enough to want to eat it!

Zero Celebrated Day 60 with us!

Once again, we enjoyed a visit from Zero the Hero on Monday.  

He helped us celebrate our 60th day of school!

December Sharing Homework

Homework for the week of Dec. 3-7:       Decorate your gingerbread person!  Please turn in your decorated gingerbread person anytime during the week of Dec. 3^rd for our gingerbread display!  You will find your child’s gingerbread person in his/her Friday Folder.  Your child chose this colorful gingerbread person and he/she may choose either side to decorate.  Be sure to cut it out and have your child write his/her name on the back.  Be creative and use glitter, cotton balls, fabric, paint, pipe cleaners…

Homework for the week of Dec. 10-14:        Family Traditions-share a family tradition (special book, activity, cooking/recipe, etc.).

Homework for the week of Dec. 17-21:           Bring in one sharing item of your own choosing.

Our Classroom Holiday Party will be on Friday, Dec. 21 from 2:00 - 3:20.

Pajama Day is Thursday, Nov. 29th!

We will have Pajama Day and a special movie on Thursday, Nov. 29th as part of the ROAR reward that we earned as a school for great fundraising!  Plan to have your child wear his/her pajamas to school on Thursday if he/she would like to do so.  If not, have your child wear some comfy clothes to school on Thursday.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Sharing Reminder

In case you need a refresher, next week's sharing homework is...

Homework for the week of Nov. 26 - 30: Mystery Letter!  Choose any letter of the alphabet and choose an object that begins with that letter. Write 3 clues about your object to share with the class. For example: Starts with the letter B. You can bounce it. It is round. Answer: BALL!  Place your object in a bag so your friends cannot see it!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

We wish all of our families a wonderful Thanksgiving!  

We are thankful for each and every one of YOU!

Our New Mystery Book Bag!

His Nina has been busy sewing!  Our friend unveiled our December Mystery Book Bag and we are excited to use it.  Our December theme is Gingerbread so this bag is PERFECT:)  We are so thankful for Nina and her generous spirit!!!!

Thought you might like to see this...

Our 3 Kindergarten classes made this for our Veterans Day assembly.  

This was proudly displayed in the gym for all to see:)

The Author Chair is warming up again!

 I Need a Hug, Please was a new book that this author shared with us:)

 My Candy Wrappers was full of facts!

 Dear and This is Me was shared by this author.

This author is back again with a new treat, A Tooty-Ta!

Short week...

Please note that we only have school on Monday and Tuesday this week due to Thanksgiving break.  There will be NO school on November 21, 22, and 23.

Friday Cooking!

A BIG thank you goes to Emma's mom for coming to our classroom on Friday for cooking.  Our cooking friends made yummy turkey cookies for all of us to enjoy:)  We LOVE our cooking parents!  Please sign-up for an empty date on our cooking calendar.  Please contact me and I will let you know which dates we still need to fill.

Our Field Trip to Calvin College Ecosystem Preserve

Thank you to the moms and dads who drove on our field trip last week.  We are thankful for your help and the giving of your time.  We used 4 of our 5 senses while we explored the trails and wooded area in the preserve.  The children enjoyed using their hand lenses to see things even closer.  I am sure you can guess which sense we did NOT use:)

 

Our hand lenses at work!  There was so much to investigate.

 

 Milkweed seeds were fun to blow all around us and watch them float away!

 Examining some duckweed scooped fresh from the pond!

Veterans Day was GREAT!

Everyone was decked out in variations of red, white, and blue in honor of  Veterans Day.

Our Veterans Day assembly was so meaningful with a record number of 

veterans attending.  All of the children sang some beautiful songs in honor of the veterans.

No School on Nov. 8 and 9!

Don't forget that there is no school on Thursday, Nov. 8 and Friday, Nov. 9 due to conferences.  Enjoy a well-deserved break!  See you back in school on Monday:)

Election Day!

We had many activities that focused around Election Day.  We voted for favorite books, snacks, songs, games, choice time activities, and much more.  We also made T-graphs and asked the question: Which do you prefer?  Some examples were: pink vs. purple, the letter Kk vs. the letter Ll, snakes vs. turtles, pancakes vs. eggs.  The children had fun asking classmates as well as other teachers in our school which item he/she preferred.  We also made Voter Identification Cards and used them when we voted in our voting booth.

 We made Voter Identification Cards!

A friend is voting privately in our voting booth.

 Another friend is casting her ballot into our top-secret voting container.

 The results of our class election! 

Lucky us!

During the month of October, we enjoyed our Halloween Mystery Book bag.  Each day, a new book was revealed and we enjoyed a Halloween inspired read-aloud.  Now that October has come and gone, the children were so sad that the Mystery Book bag was to be put away.  At conferences, I asked if anyone was able to make some new Mystery Book bags for our class and ........this morning our class was surprised by one of our friends.  His grandma worked very hard over the weekend and made this beautiful bag for our class!  Everyone was ecstatic!  There was even a book inside to start us off...

TA DA!

 

Told you we'd be back!!!!

A first time visit from this author:)  She read her non-fiction book, Fruit, to us this afternoon!

She's back.........with At School!  Another gem:)

This author is back with two new books of different sizes!  The smaller book is called, The Little World and the larger book is called, Mercy Watson: M is for Mercy #20!

She has returned with MORE BOOKS!  The books she shared with us are My Picture Book, One Duck Sat on a Gate, and 1,2,3...Two Emmas!

We may need to take reservations...

We have had a record number of books written these past couple weeks!  I am thinking that we may need to take reservations just so we can be sure that the Author's Chair is available!  What a wonderful problem to have!!!!!!

I Went on a Field Trip and Mercy Watson #8

Cookie

On the First Day of Christmas

The Book of the Apple was a first for this author!

This author is back with two new stories: The Job for Witilda and 

Witilda went Sledding and Got a Job at Ding-a-Lings

The Pumpkin Book

The Pumpkin Patch and the Apples

Back again!!!  I Saw East and Other Stuff

and again...No More Nick!  Now it is Funny!

and again...The All Different Sorts of Drawings Book

We have authors coming out of our ears!  All of the authors have had a chance to read their book to the class and to Mr. Rich in the office!  Our Author Basket is OVERFLOWING so be prepared for more posts very soon!