• Progress Reports Sent: You should have
  

  Thanks Ale and Oscar for making our Room 7 BIG CAKE dreams come true!

  received your child’s report via email on Thursday June 22nd. It was a privilege to teach your children this year! Please email if you have questions or comments. Thanks!

• Room 7 Exit Surveys: If you haven’t filled out my exit survey for your familyplease do so and either email it. IT IS NOT the school survey. It’s specifically for room 7 and for my own betterment as a teacher. I want your feedback! Click the link to download the survey: Exit Survey Parents. Thank you!
• NO Community Snack in First Grade:  A BIG THANK YOU to our Kinder Snack Coordinator, Kudsana (kkizaraly@yahoo.com). She kept this process organized, kept us informed of changes, and was wonderfully attentive to our needs. Job well done!
• Enrichments/Coordinators for FIRST GRADE: WE STILL NEED YOU! Look at openings left and think about what enrichments orclassroom jobs you may want to take on for first grade. I would like to start making plans for curriculum with those volunteers for next year. For definitions of the roles below visit https://discoverykinderworld.wordpress.com/classroom-coordinator-info/:
  

  Cameron left early this past week. We gave her an early send-off for the summer complete with an ice cream!

  1. Classroom Coordinator:  Christina Wayne
  2. Field Trip Coordinator: Arielle Kurtze
  3. Class Librarian/Scholastic Coordinator: Nicole Kerbey and Wendy
  4. Social Events Coordinator:  Jennifer Coscarart
  5. Documentation Parent: Kristel Fritz
  6. Science: Christine Ging and _______________
  7. Cooking:  Arielle Kurtze and ______________ (we really need 2 here)
  8. Arts & Crafts: Ale Rincon and Akiko Fukuhara
  9. Gardening: Julie Olsen
  10. Math Enrichments: Sheila Hunter
  11. Music & Movement: Possibly Lonnell Graham (if scheduling works out)
  12. Materials Manager: Doreen
• Classroom Prep for Next Year: We need help between July 12-17! We’re planninga couple prep days to spruce up the classroom for next year. If you’re available between July 12-17, let us know! We need help deep cleaning the classroom, sanding down cabinets, painting, cleaning toys, possibly rearranging furniture, and sprucing up the wall space. More details to come, soon! Note: We usually provide you some light snacks, soda, and adult beverages 🙂 Thanks!
• D2 Summer Vacation: June 24th-August 1st.
• First Day of School This Fall: Wednesday August 2nd for 2017-18.

Memory Cubes: Each side has 1 kinder memory that they thought was important.

Kindergarten Olympic Closing Ceremonies

Cameron left early this past week. We gave her an early send-off for the summer complete with an ice cream!

Weekly Highlights!

• D2 Yearbooks!
• Whole Kinder Pod Hike: Monday June 19th – We went on a nature hike behind the
  

  D2 Yearbooks were distributed!

  school on the trail in the hills and had popsicles at the top!

• Whole-Kinder Pod Water Exploration Celebration: Tuesday June 20, Victoria Tran (Joan’s coordinator) will email details soon.
• Whole-Kinder Pod Arts & Crafts Celebration: Wednesday June 21.
• Kindergarten Olympic Goals Closing Ceremonies: On Friday, June 23 from 11:30-1:10pm we had Closing Ceremonies and a potluck lunch party to follow. We had great year of goal-setting, goal striving, and goal reaching since we began our Olympic Brain & Body Goal Wall! As we brought the Kinder Academic Games of 2016-2017 to a close parents joined us in class on the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL for the Special event. Children planned how they wanted to celebrate their accomplishments, together, which included using finger
  

  Ale reads Quentin’s Birthday Read-aloud!

  lights to process in with the lights off, saying our goals out loud and clapping for one another, a potluck, a BIG cake, “Secret Santa” goodbye cards (each child picked ONE person to make a really nice card for), a “Bucket Filling” time to say nice comments about each other or how we feel about the year, parent gifts, and finally parading around the school passing around “the goal torch”.

• Art – Making Parent Gifts: Children painted special flower pots for parent volunteers and made cards for them. We put a collage of our faces together on the cover and on the planter sign as a memory of our kinder class. We said “Thank you for your THYME!” and gave each parent thyme seeds to plant 🙂
• Teacher Kate’s Gift: I gave each student an impatiens flower with a letter from and picture of me for the summer. Essentially, I talked about how they wouldn’t have been able to reach their goals without a lot of patience -which was hard to learn at this age! Since first grade will require new challenges and skills, we’re going to have
  

  Closing Ceremonies Cake Survey: Ale & Oscar had kids vote on their favorite flavor combinations!

  to dig deeper and find more patience. We can’t give into “I can’t” or “I’m not good at that.” If they did that this year, they wouldn’t have made so much progress. So, I gave them a little place to put their impatience. My hope is they will leave the impatience with the impatiens and focus on learning amazing new things!

• Community Sing: We said goodbye to the 8th graders and led choreography for their special goodbye song, which the whole school sang to them, called “The Climb.“
• Child Read-Alouds: Steele and Byron
• Summer Birthday Read-Alouds: Claudia, Quentin, and Henry
• Skill Share:  Quentin
• Math Workshop: We played a myriad of math games for the last time this year!
• Math/Literacy: We talked about the 3D
• 

  Goodbye Pranav! We will miss your spirit SO much in our community 🙂

  cube shape (how many sides, faces, edges) and then we made memory cubes. They drew/wrote 6 things they remembered from kindergarten this year. It was cool to see what made the cut!

• Just-Right Reading! Each morning, parents can help kids choose leveled books to take home and practice reading with children. Please be sure to return the books and put them in the proper bins!
• Buddy Time:  Exploration together until next year when we pair up, again, as first and fifth graders!
• Fairies: The fairies left! They said they’re on summer vacation and the door short circuited. So, Lou the Maintenance Fairy can’t get in until later this summer,anyway.
• ADULTS-ONLY End of the Year Party: We had a great time BBQing and partying like it was 1999! For those who couldn’t attend, we’re doing it again next year!

Community Sing: Room 7 and 8 leading the school in singing “The Climb” for the 8th graders

Dear Charlotte – Questions About First Grade:

Charlotte (Nicholas’ older sister) Read to us and then answered our questions about first grade and what to expect.

Nicholas’ sister Charlotte read to us on Monday, and we asked her if we could just inquire about a few things kids were wondering in terms of first grade. She just finished first grade, so we thought she was an expert resource! Charlotte was very honest, poised, and helpful.

Is it harder? A little harder in first grade. You do a little more than what you did in kindergarten.

What do you do in kindergarten? Well, we learn take away problems that are a little harder and you learn how to read and read chapter books.

Do you have writers workshop? Yes.

Do you have cases for your special pencils? You can if you want to but you don’t have to

Do you have your own desk? It depends if you need your own space to focus.

Do you have enrichments? Sometimes. Art, science, and stuff.

Do you still get out at 2:50? Yes. I think 3rd grade is when you get out a little later.

Do you still have body goals? I don’t have that much body goals but yes sometimes you do. We’re kind of focusing on other things than body goals.

What’s different? You do a little harder math problems and write sentences. I have to write as many sentences as how old I am each time I do something.

What should we look forward to? Well, I really liked writing. I started to do bigger sentences and started to get what sentences were actually for.

Whole Kinder Hike Field Trip Behind The School!

Whole-Pod Water Exploration

 

Whole-Pod Kinder Celebration

Parent Gifts: Thank You For Your Thyme

Children’s Read-Aloud Schedule!

Steele’s Read-Aloud!

After hearing Ellie Luz read last month, many other children felt inspired to read to the class, too. They begged me to create a sign-up and kept asking when they would read! So, we took time to create this list, below. They chose where on the list they wanted to be (knowing the higher or lower they were meant sooner or later), but please talk with your child about when they’re scheduled to read and whether they’ll be able to prepare their book, in time. This is the list that the kids asked me to put together, because they wanted to read a book to the class themselves. If your child’s goal is to do this, but he/she’s not ready right now, I can definitely have him/her go later! For children who aren’t reading yet but volunteered, too, they could simply do a picture walk (narrating the story orally based on each picture)! The last option is perhaps they can read with a partner, taking turns, or they can read a page and I read a page. The bottom line is that I want them to take as much ownership over this activity as possible 🙂 What type of book?

Byron’s Read-Aloud!

Whatever book they want! From BOB books to picture books. It’s their choice of whatever makes them feel comfortable and CONFIDENT.

Henry’s surprise read-aloud: His birthday book!

List of read-aloud dates and students:

1. Ellie  3/23
2. Genevieve 3/24
3. Logan 3/29
4. Dominic 3/30
5. Jada 4/21
6. Claudia 4/27
7. Maddie S./Izzy 5/4 (reschedule?)
8. Nakiya 5/11
9. Pranav 5/12
10. Tyler 5/18
11. Maddie K.  5/18
12. Sthanika 6/1
13. Sadie 6/7
14. Donovan 6/8
15. Quentin 6/9
16. Oscar 6/13
17. Nadia 6/15
18. Cameron 6/16
19. Steele 6/20
20. Byron 6/21
21. Henry – Read his own birthday book!

Opted Out (Maybe Next Year!)

Nicholas

Cici’s birthday book read-aloud, which she also read herself!

Friday Skill Sharing Schedule (9:15ish-9:50am)

Quentin teaches us how to punch in karate!

Children will have an opportunity to explain, demonstrate and field question/commentson ONE (1) skill of their choice. Some have to decide WHICH SKILL because they thought of two. Those children have an (*) next to their name. They have 5-10 minutes each. You can discuss with them how they may want to show their skill, what props they might need, how they will utilize the space of our classroom safely, and help them prepare for this public speaking opportunity by rehearsing it with them. I will prepare the children to be encouraging, kind, and respectful audience members. Some children already told me what they chose as a skill. So that’s why some names already

Quentin’s Skill Share: Karate!

have a skill in parenthesis. If your child has not chosen a skill, yet, please help them choose and prepare before their debut! Please see the following sign-ups, this week’s in bold:

My gift to the children along with an impatiens plant. Have a great summer!