Week of February 3rd

Mrs. Preskill
Feb 7
4 min read

Happy Friday Pandas!

General Updates:

Valentine's Day Celebration
1. Our class will be celebrating Valentine’s Day on Thursday, February 13th, due to the half-day schedule on Friday, February 14th.
  
  There will be a dancing activity with a DJ and a PTO classroom party as well as the traditional exchange of valentines! Your child may choose to bring in valentines to pass out to each student. This is completely optional. Please remember candy and/or food valentines are not allowed in the classroom.
  
  There are 18 students total in the Panda class. Please only put your child's name on the Valentine to help with passing out.
  
  Completed valentines can be brought to school starting Monday, February 10th. The children can make their own valentine bags at school to collect all their valentines. Your child is also able to make a box or bag at home to bring into the classroom. I am so excited!
Please check out the specials classes update here!
If you have already signed up to be a mystery guest, I would love to welcome you back to the classroom for a second time!
1. This is a fifteen minute time slot that you are able to sign up for to either be a mystery reader or to teach us about your beautiful cultures! Please note, there are only two adults over the age of 18 allowed into the building for this volunteer opportunity at a time.
2. Some ideas of things you could share related to your culture (but are not limited to) are: photos (holidays, travels, clothing, etc), videos, music, games, stories, puppet show, art project, etc. You are also welcome to bring in any stories and read them to the class for enjoyment! If you are bringing in books, please bring 2-3 books to share during this time. Cultural connections are totally up to you and what you are comfortable with. We can't wait to welcome you into our classroom this year! If your work schedules are tight and the time slots available do not work for you, please reach out and we are able to plan this over Zoom or you are able to send a video in that we can share with the class!

This week in literacy...

Phonics: This week we continued learning new heart words. The heart words we focused on include: said, come, down. The pandas were also introduced to digraphs. A digraph is a pair of letters that represent a single sound. A digraph typically consists of two letters that together make one distinct sound. This week we learend the digraph "sh." For example:
- ch in "chip"
- sh in "ship"
- th in "thumb"
- wh in "whale"We also practiced hearing the difference between short and long vowels.
- We also continued to identify short and long vowels in words.
  - Short Vowels
    - cat (short "a")
    - pen (short "e")
    - bit (short "i")
    - pot (short "o")
    - cup (short "u")
  - Long Vowels
    - cake (long "a")
    - feet (long "e")
    - bike (long "i")
    - note (long "o")
    - cute (long "u")

Sound Collection: /m/, /s/, /l/, /n/, /f/, /r/, /v/, /z/, /p/, /g/, /d/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /w/, /h/, /kw/, /j/, /y/, /ks/, /z/, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/,

Letter Collection: m, t, p, a, s, c, h, i, d, f, r, o, g, l, n, u, b, k, v, e, j, w, z, q, x, y

Heart Word Collection: the, in, my, a, is, for, I, am, here, and, at, go, it, like, be, to, can, not, you, are, do, will, did, too, with, me, all, was, no, so, say, now, have, said,

down, come

Reading: We continued our literacy cycle Living Together: This is Home. In this unit, our goal is for learners to understand that home is an important concept to all living things and that the environment affects living things. This week we read a new informational text, A Bed for the Winter. Using this text, we used the text features to determine the main topic and the key details.
Writing: The pandas continued focusing on informative writing. Informative writing is about facts and teaches the reader something. This week we researched about bears. After becoming experts, each panda wrote their own informative book all about bears. The pandas were expected to write a topic sentence and facts to support the topic.

This week in math...

The pandas continued to learn about two-dimensional (2D) shapes. The two-dimensional (2D) shapes our class will focus on include: squares, circles, triangles, rectangles, hexagons, trapezoids, and rhombuses. We learned new games help support 2D shape identification and compare how many of each shape we have.

Reminders

Please label your child's snack daily and pack this separately from the lunchbox.
Water bottles stay in the classroom, if you want your child to have a drink for lunch, please send a separate drink.
If you would like your child to buy a drink at lunch, please make sure there is money in the account for the lunch card.
Extra clothes and PE shoes should be labeled and stored in your child's cubby.
Please see Mrs. Smith's Principal's Message for further information about Willow Grove: principal's message