Weekly Newsletter for 2/7/14

Dear Room 4 Families,

Progress reports have gone home today. Please check your child’s backpack for their progress report. If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me to arrange a time to discuss your concerns.

We came in 2nd place for the canned food drive with 160 items! Our class will celebrate with an ice cream party. Thank you for your donations!

Our Room 4 students enjoyed their Chinese New Year rotations this week with Mr. Chen, Mrs. Murayama, and in Room 4. They experienced a live demo of making green onion pancakes (chong you bing), using chopsticks, watching a video about the new year and it’s customs/traditions, learning about an abacus, and singing songs. We also celebrated the 100th day of school on Wednesday and did many activties, including counting out a 100’s day snack in Mandarin with their kindergarten buddies, writing about what they would do with 100 dollars, and searching for 100 Chinese character.

Our Valentine’s day celebration will be held next Wednesday, February 12th, which is a minimum day. It is requested that each family bring ONE piece of fruit that is prepared (washed, cut into bite sized pieces, and placed into a ziplock bag) to be contributed toward a friendship fruit salad that will be served at the end of the day.

There is no school on Thursday, Friday, and the following Monday from 2/13-2/17.  We resume school on Tuesday, February 18th. There will be NO homework next week due to the nature of the short week. Please use this time to read with your child and review math facts and learned skills.

Our weekly homework packet will include an online portion from here on out. If you are having trouble configuring your computer, please let me know and I will be happy to help. 

English Language Arts

Working on: -ful/-less suffixes,  homophones, /oo/ spelling blends, problem/solution/plot, brainstorming ideas for writer’s workshop, and writing a narrative paragraph.

Math
Currently on: Topic 13 – Time. Many students are struggling in this topic. Please help your child by reviewing how to tell time to the hour and to 5 minutes. Review counting by 5’s.

Chinese
Current Textbook Lessons: Shuang Shuang 2.9,
Things we did:

• Practiced our reading with cooperative groups to record Vokis. Individual recordings will be e-mailed to you.
• Recorded ourselves reading our text like a skit.
• How to tell time in Chinese
• Saying fractions in Mandarin and how the numerator/denominator are said in reverse in Mandarin
• Using flash cards to review and maintain our past dictation words.
• Practiced our dictation words, different variations of reading aloud, writing, singing songs, searching for our vocabulary words in our text.

Etcetera

Room 4 could use some:

• Reams of white copy paper
• Gallon size ziplock bags
• Boxes of tissues
• A can of compressed air
• Any new or gently used items to be given away as prizes for our raffle
• Cardboard paper towel and toilet paper tubes
• Intact egg crate boxes
• Soft plastic lids from any large tubs/containers (yogurt, butter, ice cream, hummus, sour cream, etc.)

Have a great weekend!

-Ms. You