Miss Hutchison's Class Blog

Today your kindergarteners are bringing home their very first TAKE-HOME books. They were all so excited when they found out they were taking books home to read today!! You will find inside their bag a white note with more details about this exciting learning adventure.  Their bag is labeled with their name and days to return their books. In your child’s bag are a step-by-step home directions sheet, a parent comment sheet, a reading superpowers bookmark and a book just right for them to read.  Remember that TAKE-HOME books are not meant to be challenging for your kindergartener to read.  They should feel successful and be able to read these books.  We will save the challenging books for school learning. 🙂 Our goal is to read at a B level by the end of February and a D level by the end of the school year.

Please encourage and support your child when they read their book to you.  It is good to read the book more than one time and on different occasions! 

PLEASE READ & RETURN YOUR CHILD’S BOOK BAG ON MONDAY, JANUARY 21.

On Monday, your kindergartener will read their book with a parent volunteer at school. Then they will pick out a new book to bring home. Happy Reading!!!! 🙂

P.S. If your child was bringing home baggie books earlier in the school year, this class-wide Take-Home Book Program will be replacing that, so you’ll only need to keep up with one bag and one set of instructions.😊

We’ve done it again! Yesterday, we earned our next ten star reward. We earn these stars from class wins and outstandings, so these are big accomplishments!

To celebrate, we will be having a Fort Party tomorrow, Friday, January 18. Please send your child to school with a blanket or sheet that he/she can use to build a fort in our classroom! The kids are super excited to build some forts. 🙂 

Thanks again for encouraging green choices at school! 

I’ve often heard the phrase “It takes a village to raise a child.” Well, here at school, we want your children to be surrounded by a village of people who teach, mentor, and love our kindergarteners. Our classroom is SO lucky to have an AMAZING “village” of teachers and helpers! I wanted to (finally & officially) make sure I introduce them all to you.

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Mrs. Straub is our morning parapro. She helps us on the playground in the mornings; she leads literacy center groups with students; and she helps us during reading and writing workshops. 

Mrs. Jeltema is our lunchroom supervisor. She takes our class out to recess and helps us make sure we can open and eat everything in our lunchboxes or on our trays!

Mrs. DeGroot is our afternoon parapro. She helps during math rotations and pack-up at the end of the day. 

Miss Finley is a student at Baldwin Street Middle School. She comes to help in our classroom for the last hour of each school day, which is SO helpful during pack-up and clean-up times! 

Miss Fewell is an early childhood education major at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. She spends a few hours each week in our classroom to learn more about the role of teaching and learning at the kindergarten level. She has even taught a few lessons to our students! 

Another key part of our classroom family is YOU! We are so grateful for your support, kind words, help at home, volunteering at school, and positive engagement with your child’s learning. Learning starts at home, and your partnership and commitment to your child’s learning and growth here at school means the world to us! 

      

But MOST IMPORTANTLY, our classroom family is made up of 20 of the most thoughtful, sweet, and hard-working kindergarteners a teacher could ask for! How did I get so lucky???

     

I missed your kindergarteners OH SO much over break, and I was so happy to see them all this week! Here’s a snapshot into our new year of learning! 

OUR LEARNING:

Popcorn Words – Our popcorn words this week were “was,” “at,” and “that.” We practiced these words during literacy centers. In lit centers this week, we also started learning about “magic e,” which is a special letter that comes at the end of some words…it makes the vowel say its name and makes a whole new word! (For example: cap –> cape) We are also practicing writing our first AND last name independently by the end of the year! AND….we got out our journals to start some journal writing, too! 

Math – We started a brand new way of learning math this week: MATH ROTATIONS! In math rotations, students are split into groups and they rotate between multiple stations each day (my teacher table, independent practice, math games, etc.) This model allows me to teach every student exactly what he/she needs! During math rotations this week, we learned about number partners, which are two numbers that work together to make a bigger number (ex: 2 and 4 are partners of 6). We also started learning about teen numbers (11-20). 

Writing – We began a new writing unit this week: SMALL MOMENT WRITING. For this unit, students write a story about one small moment from their lives. To start, we learned about the difference between a watermelon story (a big story with lots and lots of events happening in it, like winter break) and a seed story (a little story about one event, like opening a present). We learned to tell these stories in three parts using the words FIRST, NEXT, and LAST. For now, we are practicing these skills as a whole class. Soon, the kindergarteners will begin writing their own small moment stories!

Reading – In reader’s workshop this week, we learned about even more of our READING SUPER POWERS! Our powers help us read tricky words and stories. Here are the powers we have “activated” so far: Pointer Power: We point to each word as we read so we don’t miss any words. Re-Read Power: We “rewind” and go back to reread a sentence once we’ve figured out the tricky part. Partner Power: Our partner can help us read tricky words together. Picture Power: We look at the pictures to give us clues about what the words might say. Snap Word Power: We find words in the book that we can read in a “snap” (like popcorn words). 

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CELEBRATIONS:

Top Frog – Christian will be our next top frog this coming week!  

Birthdays: We loved celebrating Jayce’s and Elise’s birthdays this week, too! 

Happy New Year: On our first day back from break, we learned all about the new calendar year – 2019! We even wrote our own New Year’s Resolutions for things we’d like to really do better this year. With the new year, some special new perks came to our classroom: sand table, trampoline, fidget tools, a magnetic marble track, and INDEPENDENCE! My biggest goal is to foster independence and self-responsibility within your kindergartener in the coming months. This means he/she is responsible for making their own lunch choice, packing their own frog folder and backpack, etc. I can’t believe how much they’ve grown already!

 

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Notes for Parents:

• Take-Home Book Volunteers: If you are able to help weekly in our classroom for 45 minutes-1 hour, please sign up to be a take-home book volunteer! Our program begins on January 21 and we are still in need of more volunteers to make this possible. Please pass this along to grandparents or other family members who may be willing to help as well! Thank you for supporting our little readers by signing up on this site! 
• Mystery Readers: If you would like to be a mystery reader in our classroom, please sign up on this site. 
• Winter Gear: Please make sure your child is all bundled up and ready for the cold winter weather! We play out in the fields, and our playground does not get plowed, so please make sure to send your kindergartener in snow pants, boots, mittens, a hat, and a coat on cold winter days! Thanks for your help. 🙂 

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Upcoming Dates:

• Monday, January 14 – STEAM
• Tuesday, January 15 – Music, Library
• Wednesday, January 16 – P.E.
• Thursday, January 17 – Art
• Friday, January 18 – STEAM

Flash back to the week before break…which seems like ages ago! We had a week full of fun leading up to this year’s winter break. Take a look! (Caution: Picture Overload!!! 😊)

MONDAY – GINGERBREAD DAY

Throughout the month of December, our class has been reading a variety of books about the Gingerbread Man. We’ve compared different versions of the books and discussed how they’re similar to and different from one another. We read books like The Gingerbread Man, The Gingerbread Girl, Gingerbread Friends, The Gingerbread Cowboy, and more! On Monday, we re-read a couple of our favorite gingerbread books and practiced our retelling skills by sequencing the stories and putting the events in order. We also tried Gingerbread Cookies and graphed which part of the gingerbread man we ate first! 

 

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TUESDAY – AROUND THE WORLD DAY

On Tuesday, we wrapped up our study of Holidays Around the World. We traveled to 12 different countries throughout our exploration! After coming back to the United States, students got to pick their favorite country that they visited and draw/write about it. This was a great way to review our writing skills and practice sounding out words we may not know how to spell. Students took home their suitcases, passports, and journals to share with you!! We also did our class book exchange on Tuesday….which was a HUGE success! 

       

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WEDNESDAY – GRINCH DAY

Our room was full of green, grinchy outfits on Wednesday! We had a jam-packed day of learning and fun, all keeping with the Grinch theme. We read the original Dr. Seuss book, listened to the Grinch song, came up with adjectives to describe the Grinch, did a rhyming activity, labeled the Grinch, made an adorable Grinch craft, and more!! In the afternoon, we even got to snack on some green candy canes and Grinch juice while we watched the cartoon version of the movie.

   

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THURSDAY – PARTY DAY

The kids had a blast at our holiday party on Thursday! At the party, they got to make some awesome crafts (Photo Booth Picture Frames & Foam Picture Ornaments) and play some fun games (Pin the Nose on the Snowman, Snowball Toss, & Candy Cane Fishing). A huge thank you to our parent volunteers who planned and led an amazing party! We appreciate you lots!!!

          

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FRIDAY – POLAR EXPRESS DAY

To finish off our week, we lounged in our PJs and enjoyed all things Polar Express! When the kids came into the classroom, they were surprised to see train tracks on the floor and their tables transformed into train cars! We began our day by reading the Polar Express book before we got our tickets and boarded the train. We traveled to each kindergarten classroom and stamped our tickets while we watched different parts of the movie. In the afternoon, we  enjoyed some hot cocoa and candy canes while we finished the movie.

To top it all off, Micah’s mom visited our classroom on Friday and taught us a little bit about the holiday their family celebrates: Hanukkah! She read us a story, showed us a menorah and some dreidels, and then she & Micah taught us how to play our own dreidel game! Our class had so much fun learning about Hanukkah and playing the dreidel game – I hope they showed you how to play over break. 🙂 

       

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UPCOMING DATES:

• Monday, January 7 – Back to School!, STEAM, Celebrating Jayce’s Birthday!! (Jan. 6)
• Tuesday, January 8 –  Music, Library Books due
• Wednesday, January 9 – P.E., Elise’s Birthday!
• Thursday, January 10 – Art
• Friday, January 11 – Music, Early Release @ 12:15 pm

January calendars will be sent home tomorrow, along with January Pizza Hut “book-it” calendars! Excited to see your kindergarteners tomorrow!! 🙂 

These three items will be coming home with your kindergartener today:

1 – Holidays Around the World Suitcase

We finally made it back to America after our last pit-stop in France yesterday! We reviewed all of the amazing things we learned about other holiday celebrations, and the kids are so excited to share their suitcases, passports, and journals with you! Interested in seeing some of the pictures and maps from our trip? Here is a link to the slideshow I created to go along with our Holidays Around the World! 

2 – Book Exchange Book

We had an amazing book exchange celebration this afternoon! We learned the joy of giving to those we care about and the importance of showing appreciation for a gift even if it’s not our most favorite thing. ❤️ Our kindergarteners did an amazing job of patiently waiting to open their gifts, saying thank you, and helping clean up all of the wrapping paper. The books you sent in were all AMAZING, and the every single kid is SO excited to bring them home to read for weeks and months to come. 🙂 Thank you so much for participating in this fun holiday exchange. 

3 – Math Test

Your child’s unit 2 math assessment is coming home today with a peach scoring sheet on top. They did a stellar job on their tests, and they continue to learn more and more every day! If you have any questions about this assessment, please do not hesitate to contact me. 

 

Here’s to three more days of fun before break!

Wednesday – Grinch Day (dress in Grinch theme or green)

Thursday – Party Day (1:50-3:00 pm)

Friday – Polar Express Day (wear pajamas)

Our kindergarteners did an INCREDIBLE job at the Holiday Music Program on Thursday night! Here is a compilation of a bunch of pictures from rehearsals and the show that I wanted to pass along to you.❤️

Also, here is a Google Drive folder full of all of the nice pictures from before the program! Feel free to download and use them as you’d like! 

Gym Rehearsal:

Rehearsal at Fairhaven:

Holiday Program Night:

 

OUR LEARNING:

Popcorn Words – Our popcorn words this week were “what” and “it.” 

 

Math – We started unit 3 this week by practicing writing our numbers from 1-10 in order. We also counted and colored groups of 1-10 in pictures. We will review our learning with some fun math activities next week before break!

 

Writing – We continued writing pattern books this week. Your kindergartener wrote their OWN pattern books this week, focusing on patterns that have different words in the middle of each sentence! (“What ____ is it?” and “The ____ is red.”) Some of these special books came home last week when we organized our book boxes. 🙂

Reading – We started a new unit of reader’s workshop this week: Super Readers! Throughout the next few weeks, we are going to use our reading super powers to help us read tricky words and sentences. We started by learning about our pointer power. This power reminds us to point to each word as we read. When we point to it, we make sure we don’t miss it! 

Holidays Around the World – This week, we visited four more countries on our “Holidays Around the World” trip! On Monday, we went to India and learned about one of their popular holidays: Diwali. We tried coloring our own “rangoli” designs on paper, even though rangoli art is usually done with sand or rice. 

On Tuesday, our trip brought us to Sweden, where we learned about Lucia day. We made a traditional Lucia day crown of candles to celebrate! 

On Wednesday, we learned about Mexico’s common holiday celebrations for Las Posadas. Since poinsettias are one of the most common decorations for their celebrations, our kinders made their own paper poinsettias!

On Friday, we stopped back in America to learn about a holiday that some African Americans celebrate right here in the same country we live in: Kwanzaa! We made kinara bracelets to remind us of the 7 pillars from the 7 days of Kwanzaa. 

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CELEBRATIONS:

Top Frog – We loved having Claire as our top frog this past week! Sadie will be our next top frog. Your child will have a chance to be our top frog soon, too. 

Mystery Reader: On Thursday, Dominic’s grandma and grandpa surprised our class as our mystery readers! Dominic’s grandma is hard of hearing, so she read the book in sign language while Dominic’s grandpa read the words out loud. Some of the class even tried to sign along with her. What a special learning moment for our kindergarteners! Thanks sharing your love of reading with our class! 

Outstanding Kindergarteners: When Mrs. Reagan recognizes students making green choices, working hard, or being kind friends, she gives them an “Oustanding” award. This week, both Harper and Evan received Outstandings! I’m so proud of all of our little learners. 🙂 

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Notes for Parents:

• Please check out this blog post to read about all of our Busy December events and details! 
• BOOK EXCHANGE BOOKS are due MONDAY! We will be swapping them first thing on Tuesday morning. 🙂
• Our class party will be this Thursday, December 20 from 1:50-3:00. If you are planning to volunteer or attend this party, be on the lookout for an email from me shortly!

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Upcoming Dates:

• Monday, December 17 – Art
• Tuesday, December 18 – STEAM, Library
• Wednesday, December 19 – Music, GRINCH DAY – wear green!
• Thursday, December 20 – P.E., Holiday Party from 1:50-3pm
• Friday, December 21 – Art, POLAR EXPRESS DAY – wear pajamas!
• Monday, December 24 – Sunday, January 6 – Winter Break, No School 🙂 

If you have not yet sent in a wrapped book with your kindergartener for our Holiday Book Exchange, please do so on MONDAY! As of right now, we have only received 5 books for our exchange, and it would be amazing if all of the kindergarteners could participate in this fun sharing event. 

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Details about the Book Exchange

What: A gender-neutral book that any kindergartener might enjoy (such as Elephant & Piggie, Pete the Cat, Fly Guy, Clifford, etc.)

How Much: $5 or less

Wrapping: Please wrap the book and label it: “To: a friend….From: ____.”

When: Send it to school with your child on Monday! We will be exchanging them on Tuesday morning. 

Your kindergartener’s Georgetown Holiday Music Program is tomorrow, Thursday, December 13! They are SO excited to perform for you!! Here are all of the details regarding this year’s program:

December 13, 2018

Fair Haven Church

6:30 – 7:00   Kindergarten-2nd     
(Students report at 6:15)

7:45 – 8:15   3rd-5th   
(Students report at 7:30)

What time do students need to be at the church?
Students need to report to their assigned classroom 15 MINUTES PRIOR TO THE PROGRAM. 

It is very important not to be late so teachers have enough time to line students up in their riser orders, pass out props and make sure everyone who has a special part is accounted for. Please do not send your child to the classroom unsupervised or prior to their scheduled time.

Where does my child need to go when they get to the church?
There will be signs at the church directing you to your child’s classroom.
Below are the room assignments by grade:

K – Family Life Center
1st – 100 Wing
2nd – 400 Middle
3rd – 100 Wing
4th – 400 Middle
5th – Family Life Center

How long will the program be?
Each group will perform for about 30 minutes. There will be 45 minutes between the two programs for K-2nd grade students to leave and upper elementary students to arrive for the next program.

What order are the grades singing?
The grades are singing in order of age: Kindergarten perform first, then 1st/2nd grade, then 3rd grade and finally 4th/5th grade.

Can we save seats early in the day?
No. The only reserved seats will be for the directors, videographers, and teachers. 
Doors will open at 5:30 and seating is first come first served at that time. 
PLEASE be respectful and courteous to other families. Everyone wants a good seat and we will do our best to fit everyone into the auditorium.  Please try to keep young children on your laps and not to take up unnecessary seats in order to leave more space for others.  

Is food or drink allowed in the church?
No food or drink is allowed in the church. This is strictly enforced.
We are so gracious to Fair Haven for allowing us to rent their facility and we need to abide by their rules.
 
Do the students need to wear anything special?
No. Most students love to dress up and will wear special holiday dresses or outfits, but there is no requirement.
The exception to this is if your child has a special part. Some parts require special costumes. Many costumes are provided, but some may have to be brought from home. If your child has a special part, they should have brought home a “congratulations” letter that would say if they need to wear or bring anything special. Please note that if your child has a special part that requires a costume, they will NOT have time to change in between songs and will need to wear their costume for the entire performance.

How do students get special parts?
For most parts, students audition during the school day. Sometimes if I have simple parts I randomly choose students or choose random class numbers. I also keep track of every student who has ever had a Christmas program part from Kindergarten through 5th grade. Whenever possible, I try to give parts to students who have not ever had parts or who have not had parts in the past couple years. Typically, I will have about 50-100 students audition for one part! I narrow the students down to about 20 and put those names in a bowl and draw a lucky winner. Although I would love everyone to have a part, having almost 600 students and only a handful of parts each year is very difficult. I discuss this with the students and they realize everyone cannot have a solo part, but that EVERY single person is important to the success of the program. Most songs have special props or motions that involve everyone as well.

Who do I contact if I have questions?
Please email Mrs. Bretz (our music teacher and holiday program director) at abretz@hpseagles.net.