Sept. 30th - October 3rd

This is the newsletter that was suppose to go home today but our homemade applesauce took my attention and I forgot to give it out!!!!!Look for it on Monday! Sooooo sorry!!!!!! In the upcoming week, we will be learning Tt as in tent, tail, and tie. Take some time to find items at home that begin with the letter Tt sound! Also, boys and girls are asked to learn their telephone numbers. Please practice at home! Our theme for the upcoming weeks and October will be Fire Safety. We have many activities planned to teach the students about fire safety such as; videos, stories, and art projects. Don’t forget to ask your child what he/she has learned! In reading we will be starting the story Julius. Our focus skills for unit one are story setting, characters, sequence, and comparing and contrasting the story elements. The genre is animal fantasy. We will soon begin our writing program titled Kid writing. Several times during the week we work in small groups writing stories. Once we complete several pieces I will send home your child’s writing for you to keep and enjoy. It is very exciting to watch the children grow into writers! In Math we will be working on reading and writing zero and continuing with as many, more and fewer. Most of the students are doing a good job with this!!! The Kindergarten Fall Festival will be held at the school on Thursday, Oct. 17th. There will be a fall festival meeting on Sunday, Sept. 27thh, at 5:30 at the Mineshaft in Ashland. Parent and grandparent volunteers are welcome and needed to help the homeroom parents with this fun-filled day! Please send your $4.00 dollar donation ASAP. If you cannot help at the festival, there are many small things that we need donated to defray the cost of the larger items. If you would be willing to donate something let me know and I will send a list of needed items to pick from. If you signed up to be a homeroom helper please attend the meeting or get in touch with our homeroom coordinator Tiffany Urbanowicz. Parents are encouraged to check out your teacher’s BLOG for homework and important information for the week. You can access each teacher’s blog by going to the NS website at www.northschuylkill.net and clicking on Elementary School; then drop down to Homework Helpline and click on the teacher’s name. This should take you directly to each teacher’s blog. (The blogs will be updated at least once a week) Please make sure their children have their names on their homework. If you did not get a corrected homework paper returned, it could be because there was no name on it and the children could not identify it. Some of the homework I don’t return so do not panic if you don’t get it back. November 1st is picture retakes. If you are unhappy with your child’s picture for any reason the package can be returned to school on retake day . Wednesday October 2nd is day # 1 on the school rotation and we have art class. Mrs. Zink will be painting with in class and she suggests that you send an old shirt to school to be used as a painting smock. It will be kept in school all year to use in art class. Monday, September 30th will be Day 4 on our special classes’ schedule. Our class has library class and I am hoping that we can begin borrowing books!!!! Hip, Hip, Hooray it’s the weekend!

September 23rd- 27th, 2013

Kindergarten News ~In the upcoming week we will be learning the letter Hh as in hat, hippo, and horse. Letter Hh is a consonant. As part of our study with the letter Hh we will have a “Hat Day” on Friday, September 27th. Students are asked to wear a favorite hat, a funny hat, or even a homemade hat. You can be creative with this if you want! Students will be able to wear the hat all day—we do just ask that students do not share hats. Show and Tell will be with items that begin with the /h/ sound. Check your schedule and start hunting! ~ Our theme for next week will be apples... We are asking that each student bring in an apple on Monday, Sept.23rd. The apple can be any color, size, or kind. Each day of the week we will use the apples for sorting, graphing, and/or tasting! We will celebrate Johnny Appleseed’s birthday, and we will have all kinds of apple activities planned. It should be a sweet week!!!! ~In Math we are learning about more, fewer, and as many. We also will be learning about the order of numbers using the term ordinal numbers. ~In reading, we will begin the story Miss Bindergarten Takes a field Trip. This book will teach about classifying and categorizing, and the genre is “animal fantasy”. ~We have been practicing writing our first names. Please watch your child as he/she is writing. Be sure to check if letters are beginning at the top, not the bottom and also guide him/her to use the lines when forming the letters. Thank you! ~Box tops for education, Turkey Hill Moo lids and Campbell’s labels will be collected at the end of each month. If you have any at your home, then please send them to school with your child. The box tops, lids and labels help our school to earn extra money and the homeroom with the most collected each month will receive a treat from PTO! There will be a fall festival meeting on Sunday, Sept. 22th @ 5:30pm at the “Mine Shaft” in Ashland. Any interested parent that would like to help with the fall festival is welcome to attend. You must have clearances but do not need to be a member of PTO. The school will begin the “citizen of the month” program in September. Any child that shows good citizenship characteristics will be eligible to get this award. We pick one a month so not all children will get this award. An Elementary Newsletter will come home every month with information about the happenings in each grade level for the month, and the children that earned this award. The children are encouraged to bring a pencil box to school with some supplies like crayons, scissors, and glue sticks to keep in their desk at school. They are beginning to want their own things to use every day. Thanks!!! Everyone did a great job returning the word cards. We will be adding to these each week. Monday will be day # 4 on the school rotation and we have Library class.

*Mrs. Bernosky’s Kindergarten Newsletter* *First week of school* We made it!! The first week of school is over and all the children and the “teacher” survived!!! The girls and boys learned a lot about the school rules and the consequences if they are not followed. We even learned a song about school rules. I saw an improvement of behavior each day as the children became aware of my expectations. I believe that we are off to a great start and I am looking forward to a great year. We began this week exploring how many objects in a set, and learning about the numbers 1 to 5 in Math, and we learned the correct way to write them. Keep practicing writing these numbers at home. The children are doing a great job writing their names, and did a super job returning the homework all week. I will send homework on Monday through Thursday, and no homework will be given on the weekends! Phonics began on Tuesday introducing the very first letter, the letter Ll. We are learning that there is a capital and a lowercase letter. We learned the sound of “L” and that we always begin at the top to write both the capital and lowercase “L”. We will begin our Reading Series by reading the book “The Little School Bus” by Carol Roth. The genre of this story is a rhyming story, and the comprehension skill is character. A “Family Times” newsletter will be sent home with details about the story and the skills that we will be working on. We will continue this unit next week. We practiced a fire drill on Thursday so that the children can get use to walking to the high school football field which is where we assembly for fire drills. Friday afternoon, we hiked over to the football field for a school wide pep rally. Go Spartans!!!!!!!! Week of September 2nd– 6th Monday- Labor Day – no school Tuesday- The students will be upset because they have to start all over again getting adjusted to being at school. Due to the change in the schedule because of the pep-rally, Tuesday will be day # 5 and we will have music class. We will begin our Reading Series by reading the book “The Little School Bus” by Carol Roth. The genre of this story is a rhyming story, and the comprehension skill is character. A “Family Times” newsletter will be sent home with details about the story and the skills that we will be working on. We will continue this unit next week. Wednesday- We will finish up with the letter “L” for phonics, and continue with our reading story. Thursday- We have finished up the letter “L” this week and to celebrate we are having a “Little Luau” in Mrs. Bernosky’s class. The children can dress in tropical prints, bright colors, Hawaiian shirts, etc. It is ok if your child is not dressed according to the dress code policy on this day, but please no denim or flip flops. We will begin learning the letter “O” this week .Make sure that you go over all of the papers at home with your child to keep you informed about what your child is doing at school. *Friday, September 6th will be school pictures and the order forms will come home in your child’s folder. You must send the money in the envelope provided on or before picture day or your child will not be permitted to have their picture taken. This will be day # 3, computer class, so the children don’t have to worry about wearing “gym attire” on picture day. *Every Friday of the school year is spirit day. This is an optional activity that our school does to promote school spirit for our sport teams. The children are permitted to wear any North Schuylkill t-shirt or NS shirt and uniform pants or shorts. They can also still wear the regular uniform clothing if they wish. *Snack and lunch is getting better, but some of the children are still struggling. Please discuss what they are going to pick if they are eating the cafeteria food, and show them what they will have for snack. *Please keep wearing bus tags every day because the children don’t know their bus numbers yet. *Some parents have not returned all of the required forms from the beginning of the school year yet. Please submit them no later than Tuesday, Sept. 4th. I will try to send extra papers to the people who are missing them. If you don’t get any them you know you are fine. Have a great long weekend and great Labor Day! Mrs. Bernosky