The Countdown begins until the end of the school year, and we still have so many things to do! I would like to begin by giving an updated list of upcoming events as a reminder.

–Field Day Hike to the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center, Afternoon, Thursday April 22. Parents are welcome on the hike. Please dress your child for the weather with appropriate shoes for mud.
–Donuts with Dad, 11:00-11:45 on Wednesday, April 28. If you have a preschooler as well, please come to the kindergarten room first for our story and gift. Then you will take your child to the preschool classroom to have both your children together for the rest of the time. We overlapped this time for Donuts with Dad because many dads might not be able to fit several afternoons into their schedules.

–Basketball field trip to the All Pro Fitness Center, Thursday morning, April 29. Please dress your child in appropriate gym attire.
–Scholastic Book Fair Week will be May 3.
–Severance Hall Field Trip, Friday May 7.
–Child Led Conferences will be on Tuesday May 11, and Wednesday May 12. We will be having a conference showcasing the child portfolios. Your child will be explaining their work and their accomplishments thus far in the year.

REPORT CARD TIME AGAIN: We will be sending home report cards again within the next week. We realize that this time does not overlap with an upcoming conference. If you would like to review the report card with me the following week, please contact me to set up a time in the afternoon. Our next conference will be child led, and thus we did not want to disrupt it with talk of grades. Report cards will go out one following time the last week of school.

SUBBING: This upcoming week, Miss Jackie will be subbing for me in the afternoons.

EGG INCUBATOR: As many of you know, we have received an egg incubator in the classroom. We have one dozen eggs that we are caring for. The children have been making daily observations and documenting any changes. Please feel free to come into the classroom at the end of the day to check out their calendar countdown and incubator. We have also been looking at real photos of what is going on in the eggs. Please feel free to look at this website with your children at home as well. (http://chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/explore/embryology/)

POETRY: We began our unit on poetry this week. We began our unit by writing descriptive poetry. Students selected objects or pets from the classroom to write about. On Thursday, we moved our lesson outdoors and children wrote about nature. We wrote in a new format on Friday by making a poetry list. Students selected a topic and came up with one word descriptions for each line. They used long thin paper for this to help motivate their work.

STORY PROBLEMS: In math this week, we began solving story problems. Students were given a problem about 6 crayons. Some crayons are red and some are blue. Students were to write out their color possibilities. Children were very eager to use the crayon manipulatives and create their own color combinations.

Next week, we will begin our math unit on Sorting and Surveys. We will begin this unit on learning various ways to take and collect data. In this math study, children are really fine tuning their problem solving skills.

This week at school, we will begin our unit on Spring! This thematic unit will include gardening, the water cycle, and our incubator with eggs. Spring is such an amazing time of year, and we will learn about it through various hands on gardening activities and water cycle experiments. I just hope this weather starts cooperating soon!