We've had a busy month of February and it's not over.  The Friendship Party was fabulous according to all the kids.  Thank you to Natalie Brandon and Katie Spurlock for organizing and to all of the wonderful parent volunteers on that day.  I really appreciate you helping out and making it a great experience for the kids while I was gone.  Thank you for all the kind words and for reaching out to me before and after my trip back home last week.  I truly appreciated it!

In Reading Workshop, we are working on being avid readers.  Ask your child what an avid reader is.  If you see your child being an avid reader at home, please send me a pic via email.  I will print it off and add it to our avid reader wall!

In Math Workshop, we are moving into a new unit on measurement, counting, story problems, and decomposing 10 into different ways.  We've been counting out inventory bags that have more than one type of item in them.  An example of a bag might have 6 glue sticks, 5 paper clips, 2 cubes, and 4 rubber bands.  Students are recording inventories with numbers, words, pictures, and equations and focusing on being accurate by double checking.   They are also working on collecting 20 by rolling a 1-3 die.  Every time they add to their board, they have to think about how many do they have on the board and how many do they need to get to 20.  Playing this game gets them thinking about counting by 5s, 1s, and seeing patterns on the ten frames of combinations of 10 and of 5.  They are getting fast at seeing these combinations.  We've also been looking at coins and relating dimes, nickels, and pennies to our class ten frame during calendar.  For example Friday was the 14th day of school in February.  I asked them what 14 looks like on ten frames and they could tell me it's a whole ten frame and 4 more on another ten frame.  Then another student said it's a dime and 4 pennies.  So now they are looking at numbers and money together.  It's pretty amazing how they are making connections.

In Writing Workshop, we are trying to be avid writers.  It's just like an avid reader, but with writing.  Someone who writes all the time, can write everywhere, always has a pencil in their hand, and their pencil is moving the whole time during writing.  We are increasing our writing stamina.  Kindergarten writers should be able to write about a topic for 30 minutes and be able to write 5 sentences by this time of the year.  Sentences should be easy to read, have spaces, capitals, ending punctuation, sight words, and trickier words should have enough sounds so they can be read.  Writing should be legible.  These are the things we work on every day.  At this point in the year, your child should be filling out their reading log by themselves.   The only parent writing on there should be the signature.  Your child CAN do this - don't let them fool you!

Science projects are starting to come in!  They are due on Monday and will be shared in the classroom.  We've already had one student share his and the kids loved it!  We learned all about WHY cheetahs run so fast.  It was very interesting!  Logan did a great job sharing his research and facts.

Finally Bumblebeelovesyou is coming to Trillium Creek as our Artist in Residence.  We will be learning from him on February 26 and doing some art in his style.  If you would like to help out during our time with him 12:25 - 1:00, let me know!  If you want to see some of his work go to bumblebeelovesyou.com

Upcoming Dates

February 24 - Science projects due & Vision Screening (8 AM)

February 26 - 12:25 Artist in Residence - Is anyone available to volunteer for 35 minutes that day??? Let me know!

February 27 - Trillium Creek Science Fair Open House

March 1 - Community Care Day 12 - 4

March 2 - TCPS OMSI Night 6-8

March 4 - Early Release @ 12:10

March 7 - Adult Social - Oregon Hills Winery - Portlandia Theme 7 PM - I'm looking forward to it!

March 9 - 13 - Forest Flyer Week - M-Th - run, F - charms

March 18 - Early Release @ 12:10

March 18 - 19 - Student Led Spring Conferences - more details to come

March 19 - 29 - No School - Spring Break

Have a great Sunday!

Christine