Rain, rain, go away!

Wow! It has been raining all day! There have been some periods of downpours, but mostly it has rained on and off all day. I wonder if it will turn into snow by tomorrow? Tomorrow one of our student's returns after being away for a month in Canada. It will be fun to hear of his adventures. We will have to see if he wants to share any information from his "Vacation Update" journal. I'm sure some of the questions will be: what was the weather like? Do you have any questions for our friend? Post them in the comment section.


We are half way through kindergarten and are preparing ourselves for first grade. But first we need to prepare for the concert, 100th day of school, and Valentine's Day. A lot of fun things that will be happening all in one week! Then onto more reading and writing. We will be doing a writing sample in February that will be graded and passed onto the first grade teachers. Let's keep practicing!

Tomorrow we will also be getting another new student in our room. Two new children in less than a month! That brings us up to 19 students in our room, when everyone gets back from their trips. I am looking forward to having everyone back in school again. The students are excited about having all of their friends back too. See you soon!

Goodbye to our friend

On Wednesday Mr. Curt surprised us and spent part of the afternoon with us. Mrs. Neff knew he was coming, but didn't tell us. What a surprise to see him walk into the room after lunch time recess! He read a book to us for Storytime, then stayed with us until afternoon recess. He went with us to music and heard the songs we are going to sing for the Friendship Concert. Then he stayed in our room for Math. We learned how to use calculators! They were a lot of fun to use. On Thursday Mrs. Neff had us make "Goodbye" cards for Mr. Curt. We went to Mrs. Zimm's room to deliver them and get final hugs. On Monday he starts his new job teaching 4K. We are all feeling sad that he won't be able to visit us unless he has a day off that is different from our day's off. Mrs. Neff tells us that we will be getting another student teacher in April. We hope she is as nice as Mr. Curt. 

There was no school on Friday. It was Recordkeeping day. Mrs. Neff worked on report cards, cleaned the room, and did some planning with Mrs. Westrick. We took home new themed book backpacks and reading books this week. We are writing more and more on our own. We are learning how use the Word Wall and look for words around the room for our stories. In February we will have a writing test where we will write a story about a friend of ours. The other Kindergarten teachers will score it in April. It will be put it into a file for our first grade teacher.

Today there was a misty rain. It is making everything slippery. The weather people are saying we are to have more snow later this week. Fresh snow would make things look prettier. The teachers are talking about an outside activity day in February and fresh snow would make it a lot of fun!  We hope we have more for that day!

Hat Day

Every year our Student Council plans fun activities for us to do during the day. This is to cheer us up through the long, cold days of winter. This past Friday we were able to wear any type of hat throughout the day. There were baseball and football caps, Grinch hats, dragon hats, construction hats, cowboy/cowgirl hats, and even a Strawberry Shortcake hat. We had a lot of fun! We even wrote about our hats by using descriptive words. Did you know that there are a lot of different ways to describe your hat? You could say: "My hat is a rain hat." You could "fancy it up" by saying: "I have a shiny, yellow rain hat." There are so many ways to say the same thing. Try to come up with two ways to say the same thing. Describing what you are wearing works best.

Learning about other countries

We have enjoyed learning about Thailand. Today we learned how bananas grow and that women wear a different color wedding dress than they do here in the United States. Mrs. Neff showed us another blog today. It is a blog from Guatemala. We saw pictures of children, the marketplace, and people we recognized from town. Through that blog we are learning about Guatemala. What a fun way to learn about different places around the world!

Today in the library Mrs. Fuller read a book by Ezra Jack Keats called "The Snowy Day". It had a medal on the cover. She told us it won an award for the best pictures the year it was written. She said that every year one book is chosen to win the award called the Caldecott medal. It is quite an honor to win it. Mrs. Fuller will be reading more books that have this award.

We will be learning about many different kinds of penguins this week. One site we hope to visit is http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/penguins/index.htm. It has a lot of terrific information about penguins. Tomorrow we will be learning about Macaroni and Rockhopper penguins.

Until next time!

Snow!

We got about 4-5 inches of snow today. It was a lot of fun playing in it! The class came in covered with the fresh new snow. Everything was wet! By evening the wind picked up and was blowing pretty hard.

There was a substitute in Mrs. Westrick's room today. Mrs. Adams came and worked with a few of the students and then played the piano for us. Mrs. Neff and Ally danced to the polka music. A few of the other kids started to dance too. Then she had us guess the song she was playing. One was "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." It was a lot of fun to have her visit while we were working in different stations. Next week we will be learning more about penguins. What do you know about penguins? Which one is the smallest? What do penguins like to eat? Where do penguins live? Which penguin is your favorite? Mine is the Rockhopper. How do you say penguin in Thai? In Spanish penguin is pinguino.

Until next time!

We are back from winter break!

Almost everyone is back in school after our winter break. We have two children out visiting relatives in other countries. One is in Thailand, the other is in Canada. The students miss both friends a lot. We can't wait to hear about their adventures!

It is our week to say the pledge with our principal. Each day Mrs. H. comes into our room and asks if we are ready. We always say "Yes!" She goes to the phone by our classroom door and makes announcements from there. What a funny way to make announcements! We listen carefully and then it is our turn to talk. Mrs. H. takes the phone from her ear and points it at us as we say the pledge. It is a lot of fun! We get to do this all week! (To our friends on adventures: we will have another week to say the pledge in May.)

It has been very cold in Wisconsin. During the weekend the wind chill was below zero. So far this week the children have been able to go outside for all the recesses. Everyone has had a lot of fun playing in the snow.

We have been learning about penguins, polar bears, and snow this week. We will be going into more detail during the next few weeks. We will also be learning about Martin Luther King, Jr., preparing for the Friendship Concert that will take place in February, and answer a lot of questions so Mrs. Neff can prepare report cards again. We also got a new student this week.

To our friends in far away places, we hope this has helped you to keep up with what is happening at school. We miss you and hope to hear from you soon!