Announcements
Crew Picnic: Our Crew Picnic is TONIGHT 9/15 from 5-7pm at Bison Park. Bring your own dinner! This is a great time to connect with other families and see who your child is playing with at school. It is a wonderful way for our families to build CREW!
*Bison Park Address: 1390 Clear Sky Way, Castle Rock, CO 80109
*In the event of pouring rain or thunder, we will have to postpone. I will try to notify you by 4:30pm if that is the case.
Take Home Folders: Check out a few notable items in Take Home Folders. There is a phonics assessment, a flier fo RAD (Renaissance Adventure Day), a heart map of what brings your child joy, a math family letter, an emergent reader to practice our sight words, and a "published piece" of writing. Also check out the beautiful watercolor dot that your child worked on with 4th grade buddies.
Spirit Sticks
Last week during The Beat students were introduced to a new initiative- Spirit Sticks. Spirit Sticks are small tags each identifying one core value which can be collected on a ring that is given to the student with their first stick. Students will be given Spirit Sticks when they have gone above and beyond to show our core value of the month(ish) or when they are exhibiting the core value consistently. Our core value for September/October is Integrity. Our crew has defined integrity as doing the right thing all the time, even when no one is looking.
Crew Directory: If you would like to add your personal information so that families can connect with you, feel free to add your contact info to the following Crew Directory. This is completely optional and only intended to connect for playdates/ birthday parties.
Renaissance Adventure Day: At Renaissance, we have TWO awesome fundraising events. The first is RAD (Renaissance Adventure Day) in the fall and then the second is a live auction, parent-only event in the spring. We are kicking off RAD, and in the following weeks you will be seeing a lot of information to keep the excitement level high. RAD is October 6th. All crews will get to participate in a Fun Run, service project, and dance-athon. This day stands out as a highlight to everyone at REMS! And we are in need of your help! We need volunteers to help run the different stations. If you would like to know more or are interested in volunteering, please check out the Parent Crew RAD Info Page. There are lots of great prizes and incentives to collection donations this year. Get registered right away so that your child can be entered for raffle prizes.
Volunteers Opportunities
-Volunteer Training: Virtual Module
-Classroom Volunteers: sign up
-If you attended the literacy training, please sign up to be a letter formation volunteer M, Tu, & Th morning from 8:30-9am. This is incredibly important, and I cannot thank you enough for supporting our writers to learn the proper formation of their letters. -If you are interested in being a classroom volunteer to support learning on M, Tu, Th, or Fri from 9:25-9:40 (literacy), 10:30-11 (literacy), or 1-1:30 (math), please email me. I need at least 24 hours of notice to confirm to make sure I have materials for literacy or math games ready. Thanks! I look forward to opening the doors to have more classroom volunteers!
Calendar
September 15th: Community Reading 8:30-9am; Ms. Lauren's Crew Picnic at Bison Park 5-7pm
September 21st: PCF Movie Night: The Super Mario Brothers Movie (starts at 6:30pm)
*No Community Reading next week, since there is no school Friday.
September 22nd: Teacher Professional Development Day- No School for Students
September 29th: Ms. Lauren's Crew Hike (regular drop off at 8:30 and pick up at 4pm)
October 6th: Renaissance Adventure Day (RAD)- Check Take Home Folders for Info
October 9-20th: Fall Break- No School
Crew Highlights
In Phonics, we have been working on the letter S and have added the and we to our sight word list. Students have been practicing hearing /s/ at the beginning of words like sun, sock, and sail, as well as /s/ at the end of words such as bus, miss, and animals. Additionally, we have been blending sounds together, such as /s/, /a/, /m/, makes sam. We call these decodable words that they can sound out and spell. I have noticed that students are doing excellent in these lessons, in which we practice verbally, on white boards, and in their phonics books; however, they are having difficulty retaining this learning for my phonics assessments.
*Please review your child's phonics assessment together and practice together with shaving foam, chalk, or out loud on the way to school.
In writing, we have been working on the "publishing process" of writing. Students have been selecting a piece of writing to revise and edit with more details in the pictures and the words. This is their first experience with this, and they will get to experience this every 6 weeks or so. Today, they selected a piece of writing that they feel proud that they added more details to the pictures and words. We are note looking for perfection, but for growth, and I have seen TREMENDOUS growth since August.
*Celebrate your child's writing! Ask what they added in their pictures? In words? What are you most proud of? What makes this your best work? What is a goal that you have for next time?
In reading, we are wrapping up our first unit on the needs of plants and animals. We looked at three mentor texts, in which we learned about nonfiction and personal narrative text features. Students practiced looking at the central idea and important details, as well as how illustrations can help us understand what is happening in the text. Today students took an online reading comprehension quiz to demonstrate their learning of these topics about two new texts (which are read to them). We will continue to practice these skills all year. Our Benchmark reading program does an excellent job teaching higher reading comprehension skills to our kindergartners!
*Continue nightly reading. Mix it up with fiction and nonfiction! Have your child help you notice how they are different.
In math, we had a fun week as part of our Unit Review of height, length, sorting, and position words. For the first two days students colored and cut rainforest pictures to do a variety of activities- such as make a forest scene (then use position words to describe them), sort the cards three times (finding a new "rule" or attribute to sort by), and looking at height & length. Then they completed a unit review in their math books and on iReady math, which demonstrated their mastery of the subject.
*Ask your child to recreate the rainforest activity. It could be with the rainforest cards, buttons, or just a variety of objects in your play room- use position words to describe (above, below, beside, next to, in front of, in back of, behind, and so on) and sort the objects in a variety of ways.
In expedition, we continue our learning about We Are Crew. Our focus this week was on how FAMLILIES work together as crew. Examples that we noticed included families eat together, families travel together, families work together, families play together, families are creative together, and families love each other.
*As you go through your weekend, notice (out loud) times that your families is working as a crew. Invite conversation about this to make real-life connections for your child. Feel free to post these on See Saw so that I can share them with the crew next week.
Tuesday was a special day! Our crew got to dye their drumheads.
A big thank you to all of our volunteers and helpers!
Our drums will be ready for us next week- we are so excited!
In Crew Skills, Ms. Halle focused on the emotion of Happiness. What does it look like for you to be happy? What does it look like on others to be happy? What makes you happy? Students filled out heartmaps to showcase a few things that make them happy.
*Please have your child share this with you at home! Their pictures were very sweet!
Families work as CREW!
How does your family work together? Please share your answers on Seesaw.
"The bat is above the ant. The spider is below the leaf. The ant is next to the rock."
Our rainforest activity was full of math language!
Students sorted their cards several times to different rules to sort by, such as animals and plants.
This student recorded sorting their cards with animals with shells, animals that fly, animals that walk on two feet, and animals that walk on four feet. Very creative!
Today, September 15th, is International Dot Day based on the bestselling book called
The Dot by Peter Reynolds. It inspires students to "make their mark." We connected it to our crew values of courage and perseverance.Here is a
message from Peter Reynolds about Dot Day.
As a fun activity, we did a water color dot with 4th grade buddies. I took pictures on Seesaw and will share those with you soon.
Happy Birthday Austin!
Looking forward to seeing you tonight at our Crew Picnic.
Warmly,
~Ms. Lauren
