KC January Newsletter!

Hello! KC Families! We had an AWESOME first week back to school after a long break! KC students were so happy to see each other again, and we had a lot of fun in the classroom comparing different versions of the folktale: The Gingerbread Man. Students even made their own paper gingerbread people and homes, and then they created maps to help guide their gingerbread person back to his or her home. Students will use these maps as inspiration for their own gingerbread stories!

In fact, all this fun integrated learning led our students to come up with idea of turning our Dramatic Play area into a Gingerbread House! Students came up with several great ideas for how to transform this space. Students voted, and the gingerbread house idea won with the majority of votes. Students got to work making plans for the space, helping Nicole to collect items from the Makerspace, and designing, creating, and decorating our Gingerbread Door. Next week, we’ll continue to build this space together – looking forward to sharing our work with you!

Here are some reminders and curriculum information for the upcoming month:

No School: Monday January 20th (MLK Day)

SAVE THE DATE!!

KC Family Breakfast Work ShareFriday January 31st from 7:55-8:30amJoin us in KC for some food and a chance to share some of KC’s recent work. Matt and Lori, our KC Room parents, will send out a sign-up genius link within the week so families can sign-up to bring something yummy to the breakfast. Looking forward to seeing you all at the end of January!

Winter Gear:I know today is unseasonably warm, but for when it gets cold again – I wanted to send along this reminder:

We go outside EVERY DAY. Indoor recess is called when it is raining, or if the temperature is below 20 degrees. Now is a good time to check your child’s extra clothes, he or she may need some more substantial clothing for the winter. During the winter, all children should come to school with:

- a warm jacket- gloves/mittens- snow pants & boots (if it has snowed)- hats/earmuffs- extra socks, pants, long-sleeve shirts- A change of footwear – sneakers on MONDAYS AND FRIDAYS for

P.E.-

Please remember to label EVERYTHING with your child’s initials or name AND KC in Sharpie. We do our best to teach children to be responsible for their gear, and to practice with putting items on (zipping, tying, etc.) independently. When items get lost (which many of them do) on the playground or when we transition from playground to Art or PE, it will make our ability to find them so much easier if they are labeled.

Kindergarten Progress Reports being emailed out in late January Nicole will be completing mid-year progress reports for each student. You can access these reports online is Aspen at the end of January and you will receive as email from the district when the reports are published. Please be aware that we are just about 1/3 of the way through Kindergarten, and most children are with Beginning or Developing skills and practices that we hope to qualify as Established by the end of the Kindergarten year.

Classroom Website and Shutterfly site:Check out important dates, and all the fun learning going on in KC!http://devotionkc.weebly.com/

Curriculum:Over the course of January and early February, we will delve into some really interesting units of study across our curriculum. Here are some of the topics we will be exploring together in KC:

Science: Structures and EngineeringOver the course of the next 4-6 weeks of school, KC students will be building, planning, deconstructing, planning again, and re-building! The first week of this work will be some open exploration of various building materials as well as some rich group conversations about structure and stability (in relation to the different materials we are using). We will also be drawing our buildings, making plans and then testing them out, and revising our plans based on our experiences. We will be learning 3D shapes as part of this study, and we’ll be cycling back to our recent work with 2D shapes.

If you are a builder, contractor, engineer, architect, or if you have any other job that seems relevant to this study, please consider coming in to share your expertise with our class!

Vocabulary: structure, construction, builder, architect, engineer, foundation, walls, roof, windows, doors, ramp, stable, unstable, cylinder, cone, prism, rectangular prism, cube, sphere, pyramid

Just some of the books we’ll be reading during this study:

BIG IDEAS (Concepts) The materials used (and their properties) and the way materials are put

together affect the stability and strength of a structure. Things can be described and sorted in many ways by their observable

properties (e.g., shape, size, color, weight, how it feels, how it sounds, what it is made of, what it is used for, whether it occurs naturally or is manufactured, etc.).

Different building materials have different properties. The properties of building materials affect how they can be used. A great variety of objects (including structures) can be built up from a small

set of pieces. Engineers make drawings of their designs in order to learn how to build more

stable structures and for use in construction.

FOCUS QUESTIONS What can you build?

What challenges did you face as you were building? What makes your building strong? How might you make it stronger? What are its weaknesses? How tall can you make your structure? What makes it stable? How can you represent your work? What challenges did you face representing

your structure? What questions do you have? Which of these questions could be answered by more investigation?

Social Studies: -Learn about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – his life and work. We will also learn about Rosa Parks, and how many, many people worked tirelessly to bring change and justice to our country. We will be reading several books about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We will think about issues of justice as they apply to the lives of the 5 and 6 year olds in our classroom, as well as the greater school, national, and global communities in which we belong.

We will be reading: Happy Birthday Martin Luther King Jr. by Jean Marzollo, Martin’s Big Words by Doreen Rappaport and My Brother Martin by Christine King Farris in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day (1/20). As a class, we will discuss justice, and learn a bit about American history in regards to civil rights. We will act out different scenarios that happen in Kindergarten that often cause children to feel excluded, or small. We will do the same for acts of bravery and inclusion. Children can brainstorm solutions to these problems, and also discuss other instances of injustice, and examples of courage they have noticed.

This is just the start of this learning. Throughout the school year, we will continue to learn about people who were (and are) activists, scientists, athletes, authors, teachers, musicians, and many more who worked for social justice in our country and in our world.

This mini-unit on Dr. King’s life and the Civil Rights Movement will set the foundation for our upcoming History Unit in February.

Literacy

Piggie and Elephant series by Mo Willems: Big Ideas:Our Mo Willems author/illustrator study will focus on his many Piggie and Elephant books, and also the books in his Pigeon series and Knuffle Bunny Series. In these books Willems implements simple illustrations and simple word bubbles to evoke major emotion and humor. Children just love these books.

For our study, we will focus on teaching how Willems and author in general:

- We will be finding the sight words: yes, no, me, you, love, the, & and. We have been studying these words in song and in games, and now we will search for them in print.

- Uses punctuation. What are a question mark, an exclamation point, and a period? How do these marks change the meaning of a word or sentence?

- Some conventions of print. Why does Willem use bold words, italicized words, and words with very small and very BIG font? What effect do these choices have on how readers read his words?

- Friendship. Piggie and Elephant are very good friends, and each story demonstrates how they care for each other. We will revisit friendship as a class, now that we know each other a little better than we did in September. What is friend? How do friends disagree, solve problems, and remain friends?

- Integrate our history work with his Knuffle Bunny Series. How does time pass for the Trixie in these books? How does Mo Willems show time passing?

Math: we will continue some work with shapes. We will discuss the attributes of different shapes, and think about how we can build certain shapes with other shapes. We will also begin to sort items based on attributes and learn to recognize and create repeating and growing patterns.

Vocabulary:- History: yesterday, today, tomorrow, present, past, timeline,

history- Mo Willems: Author, illustrator, character, word bubble, italics,

slanted, bold, punctuation, exclamation point, question mark, ellipsis, period

- Civil Rights: justice, courage, inclusion, race, racism, gender, civil rights

- Patterns – repeating patterns, growing patterns

Songs and Chants for the MonthShapesA square was sitting quietlyOutside his rectangular shack,When a triangle came down,“KERPLUNK!”and struck him in the back!

“I must go to the hospital,”Cried the wounded square.So a passing, rolling circle,Picked him up and took him there.By Shel Silverstein

The Sight Work SongY-E-S spells “Yes!”N-O spells “No!”Y-O-U spells “You,”AndM-E spells “Me.”

L-O-V-E spells “love.”L-O-V-E spells “love.”L-O-V-E, L-O-V-E, L-O-V-E spells “love!”(sometimes we will substitute “love,” for “like.”)

Thanks again for all of your supportHave a great month!

Nicole, Emily, and Taylor