Reminder

I know it's in the weekly newsletter but this is a reminder to check out Mrs.Kuntz's Stem Lab blog.  She posts pictures of the activities of all the grades.

http://stemca.blogspot.com/

It's Christmas Week!

What excitement there is this week in the eyes of these young children!  I hope that all of us are excited as well to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus! 

This week is filled with the nativity story, finishing Letterbook U, math activities and practicing for chapel.  We hope to see you at chapel in the church at 8:45 AM on Wednesday as we share the Christmas story with you through word and song.  Merry Christmas!!

 Squirt says, "Merry Christmas, everyone!"

 Someone had helped Sam earlier in the day with his writing.  So he took that kindness and passed it on to Isaiah as he showed him some of the colors we had used for our puppets!

 In the computer lab this last week, we used Nearpod.  We took quizzes and I was able to see the results from my computer!  They did a great job logging in and completing the quizzes assigned!

December 2017

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted.  Hopefully, you've all kept up by reading my emails and notes on the pink daily homework sheet!  We are looking forward to a great December.

• We are learning about the birth of Jesus, our Savior!
• Ben and Deanna Weseman visited us today!  They are Jo Bell's cousins and do mission work in South Africa.  We Skyped with them earlier this year and it was great to meet them in person.  Your child has a brochure and magnet from them in their backpack.  We will pray for them as they pray for us here and we'd love you to join us in those prayers!
• We are enjoying reading all our new stories!  "The Flat Cat" comes home tonight and another story will come home tomorrow night.  I STRONGLY recommend you keep the Letterbooks that come home from now on as they have the stories in them.  Having your child keep them in a special spot and reading them in bed or with you in a chair or on the couch would sure make it seem like it's important!  Reading them over and over will help your child!!
• We continue to learn about money, time, adding, numbers and SO much more than the worksheets show you!
• Christmas Party - Friday, December 15th.  Send the gift exchange in "To my friend From (your child's name" by Thursday, December 14th.  Thank you!  Brittainy Adams is in charge of the party and has let the other room volunteers know what she needs.  
• Christmas Chapel - December 20th - Kindergarteners may wear school uniform or Christmas dress clothes (nice church-type clothes!) that day.  Please join us from 8:45 - 9:15!  Lines need to be memorized soon!
• Week of Code - You will see notes about this on the pink sheet today.  We practiced coding today as a group and they will work on it individually later this week.  We will do "Gingerbread Coding" on Friday!
• We will visit Montclair on Thursday!!

I will post a few pictures today!  I'll try a video of us coding and hope it posts!  

Thank you for sharing your children with me!  I'm blessed by them every day!!

Mrs.Dartmann

November 13, 2017

We had a wonderful "Fictional Character Day" together!  Thanks for dressing your little one up!  They enjoyed sharing their books and costumes!

This week in Jesus Time, we will learn a Bible story similar to Joshua and the walls of Jericho from last week.  Gideon was called by God to lead the Israelites into battle to defeat the Midianites.  He didn't want to because he was "just a farmer not a soldier."  But God equipped him and he followed God's leading!  Your child can tell you the rest of that story.  We will also learn about God's goodness to Ruth and learn about Hannah and her son, Samuel.  

We met "Ettabetta" today.  She is our second-to-last SuperKid.  Can you believe that?!  Where is this year going?  The children are bringing home a story book to read tonight.  Please return it tomorrow and we will keep it with other stories so they can build confidence as they read these stories over and over.  The story for Letterbook E will not come home until next week Monday.

In Math, we are working with money, patterns and number writing.  In Science, we are learning about animal habitats and Evan will be our Scientist of the Week on Wednesday.

We will visit Montclair on Thursday!!  It is such a wonderful blessing to be able to do ministry with elders and little ones!!  

Thank you for sharing your children with me!!

November 1, 2017

What a blessing it was to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation  yesterday!  Thank you to all the parents, grandparents, St.Mark staff and others who led the 10 stations that we visited.  Everyone really enjoyed it!  We will finish up our learning about the Reformation this week.....Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Scripture Alone, Christ Alone, To God Alone Be the Glory!

We are working through Letterbook T this week.  The story will come home on Thursday night for you to listen to.  Our snails came late today so we will start learning about them on Friday.  Regan was our Scientist of the Week today and she and her Grandpa Terry did a great job using science to teach us about the importance of including Christ in our lives each and every day! 

We are looking forward to visiting the Grandpa's and Grandma's at Montclair this week!  It is always such a wonderful time, sharing together and learning from each other!

Have a wonderful week in Jesus!

October 16, 2017

Welcome to a short week!  We are still busy little kiddos and enjoying this wonderful fall weather!
We are learning about the children of Israel wandering in the desert and how God took care of them through it all.  We also will learn about God giving them the 10 Commandments.

We will finish Letterbook Ii this week.  Next week, we will take the time to review and practice our blending of letter sounds.  In Math, we will learn about number order and missing number, ordinal numbers and continue working on making our numbers correctly.  Our goldfish unit in science is fun for the kiddos!  Squirt has a new larger tank and they are very excited about that!  We will learn more about fall, firefighters and pumpkins in the next couple of weeks.  Last Friday, we were "researchers" in Computer Lab time.  Each of the kiddos was able to click on "Google" and type in "goldfish" (letter by letter!!) and then we looked at pictures of different goldfish!  They did a great job! 

I hope you have a nice long weekend!  I'm looking forward to learning with teachers and pastors from across Nebraska in Lincoln on Thursday and Friday. 

It's Fall!

I saw quite a few sweatshirts and jackets today with this chilly weather!!  I love it!

We have another busy week.  In Jesus Time, we are learning about Joseph forgiving his brothers and then we will learn about baby Moses and the job God had for Moses in helping the Israelites escape Egypt.  We talk a lot about God's having a plan for us every day of our lives and how important it is to pray and ask God to show us what we are to do.

We are learning about Letter I (short sound only) this week.  In math we will learn more about patterns and number sequencing.  Myles will be our Scientist this week.  We will also be learning about self-discipline skills and how we need to remember that there are others around us who we need to respect and show kindness to.  We will have an assembly on fire safety on Wednesday and our goldfish should arrive by Wednesday so we can begin our science unit on animals.

Thank you for attending conferences last week!  It was a pleasure to visit with all of you!

Ssssssssss - stilts from last week learning about letter "s"!

September 25, 2017

Well, I don't know about you but I think the weeks are sneaking right past me!  I can't believe we are already to the end of September.  The little ones are already learning to blend sounds together to read words and it's fascinating to watch!  Even more fascinating for me is to see their growth in friendships, helpfulness, kindness and traits which are from the Holy Spirit!  It's a blessing to me!

This week, we are learning about Abraham, Sarah and Isaac and how "nothing is too hard for the Lord"!!  We've practiced that!  We will also learn about Isaac and his son's Jacob and Esau and how God loves families and desires that we get along.  We are reading more words by adding the letter "s" to our group of letters learned.  The children will be bringing home a story to READ TO YOU on Thursday!!  It's very exciting!  In Math we will discuss patterns and continue practicing making our numbers correctly.  There's so much more then even this wrapped up in our day and it's exciting to see the fruits of our efforts to learn and grow!!

I love our "Friend 2 Friend" time!!  It's so great to hear them asking questions about others and making eye contact.  If you practice this at home, too, let me know how it goes!

Enjoy the pictures!

September 11, 2017

We are having a great week and I hope you are as well!!

We are learning about Noah and the flood this week.  Thanks to Mrs.Wilson for doing some cutting and gluing projects at home for us so we can complete them later this week.  In Reading, we are learning about letter a (short sound only).  We will be learning about school and maps and rules and all that fun stuff in Social Studies!  We also made sunflowers for our bulletin board (aren't the crabs cute they brought home yesterday?!) and will be learning about artist VanGogh and making a "Sunflower" paint project to mimic his!  On Thursday, we will have our first session of "Literacy Centers"!  You'll have to ask your child about looking at "the wheel" and what things they did in their small groups.

We also have a new friend....Squirt!  He came to me via a friend and he doesn't make a mess so I'm okay having him for a class pet!!  We are sure to wash our hands very thoroughly after touching him.
Have a wonderful week in Jesus!

September 5, 2017

We've made it to September already and I am just amazed at the routine these little ones have settled into at school!  They are remembering all the procedures, working hard, getting to know each other and having a lot of fun!  Kenzie was our Star Student last week and we enjoyed learning more about her!  Tanner and his dad were our "Scientist of the Week" helpers and we learned about potential and kinetic energy while using marshmallow catapults!!  It was a lot of fun and I hope you got to join us for that via Periscope!!

This week, we will finish learning about the creation of the world by our loving God.  We will also learn about the first sin.  Our verse this week from the Bible is, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."  Genesis 1:1.  We met Golly, our new SuperKid friend today as we were introduced to the letter G (hard sound only).  We also met Mr. G who has Gooey Gum!  In Math, we are finishing up learning to write our numbers correctly as well as doing more graphing and patterns.  We will visit Montclair nursing home on Thursday - please remember that all children need a cold lunch that day.  Baylor will be our Star Student this week as his birthday is on Thursday.  Have a great week!  Thank you for sharing your children with me!!

I Am Blessed!!

Good Morning!  And what a good morning it is!  If you joined us on Periscope this morning, you saw us doing our "Friend 2 Friend" activity (even though there was no sound) in which we talk with our friend partner and ask them questions and visit. This helps them get to know one another and learn to listen and ask questions to learn about others.  Then you also saw our caterpillar!!  They are so intrigued watching him (or is it a her?  They've asked me and I have no idea!).  This group of little ones is such a blessing to me each and every day!  They are well-behaved and love to learn!  That is a reflection on YOU!!  Thank you for all you do to support and encourage them on this journey of life.

This week, we are learning about how much Jesus loves children.  I love the comments on the pink sheet that you wrote about the story!  We will finish Letterbook C, learn about patterns and writing our numbers correctly, learn about the life cycle of a butterfly, meet new friends, sing songs, enjoy Music Class, PE
and STEM Lab and of course, recess!  We are off to a great start and I look forward to coming to see your little ones each and every day!!  Thank you for sharing them with me!

How Did We Get To May Already?!

Oh, my goodness!  I looked back and noticed that I haven't posted in a month.  Where did that time go?!  I know you've seen my emails and notes on the homework sheet but I do want to share some photos with you from last month.

We enjoyed learning about the sun, clouds and shadows.  It was kinda tough to find a sunny day in April to do this but we were successful.  In this STEM activity, they had to design and build a tent using only the materials provided.  We then put an ice cube in the tent and one in the sunshine and observed what happened.  It was a windy day so they had to adjust their tent to be able to stay down in the wind as well!  It was quite a challenge but I was very proud of them and their work!

We also enjoyed this activity!  They had to make sure the shadow of their animal fit on the paper and that I could tell from just the shadow what animal it was.

 This is one of the STEM Fairy Tale units that I recently purchased.  They love these units!  This is the 3 Little Pigs and we've also done Rapunzel (build a ladder for the prince to get to the top of the tower to rescue Rapunzel) and Goldilocks (build a chair that will hold each of the three bears).  It so fun to watch their faces as they succeed with the challenge!

They are very excited as we begin our pioneer unit!  The log cabin, covered wagon/horse are ready to go!  Stay tuned for pictures of that learning soon!