So hard to believe, 100 days of kindergarten!  Please remember that 100’s day hats are due on Monday 1/28.  The children will share their hats with the class–describing how they made them, who helped them, etc. and then we will be off to parade around the school wearing our hats and singing our 100’s day song.

We are also fast approaching Valentines Day.  Valentines Day is especially fun in kindergarten because we love to write and receive mail!  We will exchange valentines on Valentines Day, but in kindergarten we try to do it as smoothly as we can…by not addressing them to our classmates.  If you want to get started on this, here’s how it will work:  we have 25 students in class, so please purchase a pack with 24 valentines (they don’t need one for themselves) and have your child sign their name on the back of each valentine.  This is great name writing practice, so please don’t do it for them!  On Valentines Day each child will have a valentine pouch attached to the wall as their “mailbox.”  They will each take their signed valentines and put one in each pouch as they walk down the line of pouches.  Please do not address the valentines to children in the class because it becomes very difficult to help each child read each name and then find the pouch…I am sure you can visualize this taking quite a bit more time than we have in our kindergarten day!

We are also in need of more glue sticks!  We go through these so fast with all of the projects and pages we do that require a little bit of quick gluing…so if you happen to see any on sale, we could sure use the donation!

Thanks as always for your continued support at home,

Linda O’Neill

Today was our 88th day of kindergarten!  We have learned so many things this year, and after returning from our winter vacation the children are so eager to share! 

We have some fun things coming up:

• 100’s Day is Monday, January 28th.  We like to make a big deal about everything 100 that we can think of!  We have lots of activities that we will be doing, including a brunch on Friday, January 25.  Part of your child’s math homework for the next 2 weeks will be to create a 100’s day hat.   Please take the time to help them count 10 groups of 10 and then count by 10’s to 100.  You can start with any kind of hat:  a visor, a ballcap, a cowboy hat, etc., then help your child add 100 things to it.  Please plan to have your child bring it to school to share on or before Monday, January 28.
• Next Friday, January 18 is Crazy Shirt and Tie Day.  The class with the most students dressed in crazy shirts wins the spirit prize!  Just a reminder, every Friday is a regular Spirit Day–students are encouraged to wear school shirts/colors.
• Our annual Science & Invention Fair is on Wednesday, January 30.   If you are interested in building a project and/or doing an experiment with your child  that you would like to have your child enter into the fair, please email me so that I can provide you with the information that you need to follow to complete and submit a project.  At Castello, students do class projects up through the 3rd grade, and then are expected to submit independent projects in the 4th through 6th grades.  Our class will do their Science project later on in the year. 

I want to thank everyone for their support of our peanut restriction procedures/policy here in kindergarten.  Today there were absolutely no peanut products as snacks in our classroom!  It is working out very well to have our students eat their snacks inside the classroom, clean up, then go outside for their recess.  Students are finishing their snacks without leaving them on the playground and our playground is also staying much cleaner (litter free).  It will also help all of our students as they get ready to have lunch in the BIG cafeteria each day–they will have learned how to eat without much talking, clean up and then go outside to have fun playing with their friends 🙂

If you have not sent in the slip that was at the bottom of the peanut restriction letter, please sign it and send it in soon…this is a means of communicating to the school that you have read the information and will try to follow the guidelines.

Thanks so much for your support of our classroom and all of our kindergarten students,

Linda O’Neill