December 8-12th 2025

Hello Families!

The class will be going to the Imagatorium 2x this week to begin our STEM lessons based on our Wit and Wisdom story The Three Little Pigs. The students will be constructing houses made with 3 different materials and we will use the wind tunnel as our "Big Bad Wolf" to see which materials can withstand the wind.  I love watching their discoveries!

Thank you so much to Hannah's family for donating the new batch of playdough! We have been using it everyday💖.

Now that winter weather is upon us, there may be the need to bring snow gear to school. As you can imagine, getting a class of 5 and 6 year olds ready for snow play can be quite time consuming. We encourage you to practice with your child at home to maximize her/his playing time outside. HERE is a poster you can use to help your child. Please note that kindergarten has  snow play ONLY on Fridays (of course that is only when there is snow on the ground:). You only need to send in snow gear on Fridays. The other days we will play on the hardtop. In order for your child to be allowed to play in the snow, your child must have:

• winter coat
• gloves or mittens (we do love mittens!)
• snow pants/or snowsuit
• snow boots
• hat/earmuffs  (or at least a hood to cover the head if needed)

If they do not have one of those items, they will have to play on the hardtop on snow play days.

We will begin our new "trimester" special class this Wednesday. We now have P.E on Wednesdays and Fridays for the next 1/3 of the year so please make sure your child has sneakers those days.

This week, the children will...

Language Arts:

• learn the last 2 letters qu, and z
• learn the trick word: and
• practice isolating beginning and ending sounds in words
• complete Fundations unit 1 assessment 
• practice writing all the lower case letters
• build words!
• begin a new "arc" in Wit and Wisdom with the story The Little Red Hen and learn about the elements: characters, setting and story problem

Math:

We will be reviewing math skills this week as well as beginning our number writing math journals, which will be coming home soon.

Science:

• We will be going to the Imagatorium to participate in multiple STEM activities and begin our Wood and Paper unit. Our activities will integrate the story we will be reading in our Wit and Wisdom lessons: The Three Little Pigs
• comparing x-rays of different animals and looking at their skeletal makeup

Social Studies:

We will begin our super fun theme of Holidays around the World at the end of this week- more info on that in the next post.

 

Here are some pictures from last week:

Yarn Art

  

A huge thank you to Mr. Alla for being
our Mystery Reader!

ABC match BINGO

Decorating a Y with Yarn

CHOICE TIME CREATIVITY!

Using hundreds charts to practice our skip counting

Do you hear a /y/ or a /w/ sound first?

Science Center- looking at animal x-rays

December 1-5th 2025

 

Hello!

I hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday💖. These next 3 weeks +2 days will go so quickly...I love this magical time with 5 and 6 year olds!

This week, the children will...

Language Arts:

• continue to focus on letters x, y
• learn the trick word: a
• work on ABC order
• retell a story
• identifying beginning sounds in words and working on ending sounds
• match pictures to letter sounds
• write their prediction to what might be in the mystery box
• begin a new "arc" in Wit and Wisdom with the book The Three Little Pigs

This is how we pronounce and write the letters x and y 

In Math:

• practice counting to 100 by 1s
• skip count by 10s to 100
• counting on from a number to 100 
• comparing 2 groups and telling which has more/less

Second Step:

• participate in lesson #13- managing frustration 

Science:

• noticing and wondering about trees in the winter (well, late fall:) and using our senses outdoors
• comparing x-rays of different animals and looking at their skeletal makeup

Here are some pictures from our short week last week:

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

I promised the students a picture of Millie at Thanksgiving😆

November 24-26th 2025: Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Hello Families,

This week will be a short one...but very busy! Mrs. Mondal will be with us for the week and will be leading the class/instruction through most of the days.💖

**Shaker Lane is still taking food donations!

Theme: Thanksgiving

K Word: a

Song: Albuquerque the Turkey

Since this is a short week (only 2  1/2 days), our format will be a little different. Rather than math groups, we will spend each day learning about various aspects of the first Thanksgiving in America. We will learn several facts about Thanksgiving and write about them. A turkey theme will be integrated into our math centers. We will also learn about Native Americans and how they helped the Pilgrims survive. We will continue our Wit and Wisdom lessons, however.

• Monday: The children will listen to the story The Pilgrims First Thanksgiving by Ann McGovern. The story describes what role the children played in the early years in this country. They worked as hard as the adults and had to overcome great adversity. Did you know that a sign of good manners was for the children to eat their meals standing up! They had to wear their hats and could not speak unless an adult spoke to them first. We will try this for our snack time! We will also do some “turkey math”. 

• Tuesday: The children will learn a bit about the Wampanoag Indians who were living in the area near Plymouth when the pilgrims first settled. Squanto, one of the Native Americans, lived with the pilgrims and taught them how to hunt, plant and fish in the new country. He even introduced the new settlers to popcorn. Did you know that popcorn was served at the first Thanksgiving? We will explore some Native American pictographs, which were an early form of writing. The children will use some of these pictographs to “write a story”. I will attempt “Native American Storytelling” by telling the children a story about my name and will demonstrate my Native American flute.

• Wednesday: On Wednesday, we will complete any writing/art projects that we started earlier in the week. I will read a story about being thankful and then the students will brainstorm the things for which we are thankful. The Children will then complete a writing/art project that will demonstrate those things. It will be a 12:20 dismissal for the whole school.

We would like to wish you and

your family a very Happy

Thanksgiving- Enjoy!

~💖Michelle and Jen

Here are some pictures from last week's fun and learning!

GLOW DANCE PARTY!

A HUGE thank you to Mrs. Artis for being our 
Mystery Reader! What a special day for Alexander!

We had a visit from nursing students who taught us the "proper" way to wash our hands and demonstrated the power of soap!

practicing fine motor skills while making a volcano during choice time

Using the Felt Board app, the students created a farm scene with 10 farm related items/animals and then counted them on the TV for me:).

LANGUAGE ARTS!

listening to first sounds and tracing the correct letter, reading a predictable sight word reader, coloring trick words, making a sentence with words from our Mrs. Wishy Washy story, identifying the /w/ sound 

math games with a partner and practicing number writing

We set up a veterinarian office, complete with a receptionist  and patients- SO CUTE!💕