Morgan

May 2008

Can it really be the last month of this school year?  The children did a GREAT job in our Letter People Parade.  We are very proud of them.  We had a wonderful day at Cagle farm......the weather was beautiful and the trip was very educational. 

The month of May is very busy:

May 8th - All of the children coming to Kindergarten in August are invited to come for orientation that day.  We will sing the songs that we sang at the Letter People Parade for them. 

May 9th - All student books should be returned to our media center

May 12th - We will attend the Reader's theater in our media center

May 14th - We have a Cultural Arts program in the morning and later that day the librarian from Merchants Walk library will visit us and tell us about their summer program.

May 16th - "ART in the PARK"  All of the Kindergarten classes will go outside for a morning of FUN!  The students will go from station to station.  There are numerous art activites (they include painting, bubble blowing, chalk, sand, gluing......), wood working, hula hoops, a duck pond............it's lots of fun (wear OLD clothes and shoes....it's also very messy!)

May 17th - Happy Birthday to Andrew

May 19th - the science folks from High Touch High Tech will come to our classroom to present the program: "Dig It!"

May 20th - P.E. Field Day - (8:30 - 10:30)  Wear your tennis shoes and your class T-Shirt.........another fun-filled day !!!!

May 23rd - The last day of school..... please don't bring your book bag or your lunch.  We are having pizza, chips, a drink and dessert to celebrate the last day. 

Have a great summer!!!!!!!!!  We'll see you in August!!!

April News

Wow!  Can you believe that it is time for Spring Break?  (Have a good one!!!!!)  We have been busy counting money, reading, and writing.  Our sentences and our journal writing has improved sooooo much.  We are very PROUD!!!!!!  Mr. W brought us a great unit on whales and the water cycle.  We have an 'evaporation jar' in our classroom and we made it "rain" today!  Our next unit will be the farm and we are looking forward to our field trip to Cagel Farm.  The play that we saw at Wheeler HS was terrific......a great experience for our students. Look for your child's letter assignment coming home after spring break.......everyone will need to memorize their poem for the annual Letter People Parade on May 6th.  We have had several birthdays:  Happy birthday to Helen, Rachel, and Jake.  We are all reading leveled readers on the computer with the Raz-kids program.  Everyone will be able to continue working over the summer months.  Have a great Spring Break!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Spring into March!!!!

We have truly enjoyed the unit on dinosaurs!!!  We have learned so many interesting facts and our creative writing is fabulous in our journals!  Next we will meet Mr. V and make a volcano.  When we study about volcanoes, we will also study rocks.  On St. Patrick's day that nasty little leprechaun will probably visit our classroom.  We will also have "The Eating of the Green"!!!!  We will be celebrating lots of birthdays this month:  Helen, Rachel and Mrs. Seagraves!  On Mach 21st we will go to the Alliance theater to see "Seussical the Musical".  Our third grade students already saw it and said that it was fabulous!  We have learned to tell time to the hour and half hour........and our skills with money recognition and counting are improving.  We have a Walton cadet working in our classroom.  Her name is Carolyn Woodruff (Can you believe that I was her Kindergarten teacher???   Time flies by........speaking of time, change your clocks this weekend!).  The children enjoy working with her!  Looking forward to SPRING and lots of good learning............!!!!!!!!!!!! 

February 2008

We celebrated the 100th day of school!!!!!!  Then we celebrated "101 Dalmatians Day"......what a great way to learn place value!!!!! 

We want to thank all of our parents for coming to conference week.  We were very proud of the progress that we have made this year. 

The ground hog saw his shadow!!!!  We made ground hog puppets, read some great stories, and learned about hibernation.  Mr. R introduced our unit on reptiles.  A mystery that we read about a missing turtle produced some very creative writing.  Our Administrative Assistant visited our classroom and taught us how to do "power writing" (now we are writing paragraphs). 

Everyone is having fun going to our writing center.  We are making Valentines with written messages and then 'sending' them to classmates.  We're looking forward to making Valentine candy houses and our Valentine exchange on the 14th.  We're also learning about Presidents this month.  Does your child know which president is on each coin?  Please continue to count and work with coin value at home.   

We were thrilled that we had SNOW in Marietta, GA.  Once again, we loved writing in our journals about our fun in the snow. 

Our Kindergarten classes are presenting a music performance at the PTA meeting on Feb. 7th and we are going to the Center for Puppetry Arts on the 21st. 

(I want to share some personal news:  I have a new granddaughter.  Her name is Stella Rose Morgan.  She was born on Jan. 28th.  She weighed 7lbs. 6oz. and now she is at home with her sisters, Julia and Olivia.  She is precious!!!!!!!!!!!!!) 

January 2008!!!!!!

Happy New Year!  We hope that everyone had a nice Winter break!  The beginning of the new year is a great instructional time in Kindergarten.  The children are familiar with all of our routines, they have grasped many phonetic skills, and they recognize numerous sight words.  We will be making lots of progress in reading and language arts during the next few months.  Our journal writing is wonderful and we can't wait to share our journals during conference week (Jan. 22nd-25th).  We are having Donuts for Dads on Friday, the 18th, at 7:45.  When our dads visit, we would like to share our new technology.  Mt. Bethel was one of 7 schools in Cobb county to be chosen to receive and pilot these tools.  All of our classrooms have been equipped with Mounted Interactive Whiteboards (we call it a Smartboard), mounted LCD projectors, DVD/VHS/cable players, speakers, and Student Response Systems.  SPLOST funds paid for all of the equipment and the installations.  All of the Mt. Bethel staff is recieving training and our training will continue throughout this school year.  Wow!  We are very fortunate!!!! 

December News

It's another busy month in Room # 817.  All of the boys and girls are making terrific progress with their reading and writing skills.  Mr. R brought "Progress Ribbons" to our classroom and we are earning our ribbon pieces by knowing our birthday, telephone number, and our address.  We are also reading our color words, mastering sets and numeral recognition from 1to 20, and learning all of the letters and sounds.  The last one is probably the toughest:  tying that shoe!!!!  When we complete the ribbon, we can go to our classroom prize box!  Many of us have gone to the prize box for completing all 50 tangrams!  In math, we are working with numbers and sets to 20.  Please continue to count 'change'.  Coin recognition is not easy. 

Last week we learned about reindeer and we had reindeer day on Friday.  We even 'ate' a reindeer!  The children loved the reindeer glasses.  We will have Beany Baby day on Friday, the 21st.  Everyone is invited to bring their favorite Beany Baby to school that day.  We still need large brown paper grocery bags.  And please don't forget that Friday, the 14th is the last day for us to collect your donations for our custodians and cafeteria staff.  They really do alot for our great school. 

Enjoy this Holiday Season!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

November Fun!

What a busy month!  We have learned about the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving.  We have made Indian vests with headbands, Pilgrims and turkeys!  Our trip to the Fox theater to see Junie B. Jones was great.  All of Moms attended Muffins for Moms on the 16th.  They loved the things that we made and the songs that we sang.  We are thankful for our Moms!  Katie is celebrating a birthday this month.  We are reading "three letter words" using the short a and o sounds.  Next week Miss I will join the group.  We are very pleased with the progress that all of the children are making with their reading and writing skills.  During the month of December we will start working on our 50 tangrams in math.  Zero the Hero is coming for the 6th time.  He teaches us tens/ones etc. and he always brings a treat shaped like a zero.  Our winter holiday party is Thursday, Dec. 20th..........we will look forward to a great day!   

October

October will be a busy month in Room #817!!!!  Mr. Kadow is visiting our classroom on Monday, Oct. 8th.  He will present a lesson on fire prevention.  Our class has really enjoyed going to the computer lab.  We have done some exciting lessons on the Scholastic Keys program.  The original Cobb County calendar stated that Oct. 12th was a student holiday...........it isn't, please send your child to school on the 12th.  On Oct.16th the yearbook staff will come to our classroom to take a class picture.  October 17th is an Early Release day.........we will dismiss at 12:20.  We have lots of birthdays this month.  Please wish Nathan, Lauren and Cole a wonderful October birthday!!!!  Everyone will be bringing home their first report card on Monday, the 22nd.  Please remember the rubric for each item on the report card is located on the back of the card.  Dr. WellBee is coming from the Wellstar Health system to present a program on the 24th.  The last day of this month is not only Cole's birthday.........it is our Fall Festival!  All of the Kindergarten classes will rotate through stations: face painting, games, crafts, decorating and eating a pumpkin cookie,  etc.  It is a great day and lots of FUN!  We're hoping for nice weather so that we can all be outside.  All moms: Please save the following date: 'Muffins for Moms' on Friday, Nov. 16th from 10:45-11:30.   

September 2007

      We are enjoying lots of new activities in Room  #817.  Every one is making lots of progress and is having fun learning!!!!  We have met several letter people and we are truly enjoying them....M,T,F, and H.  Please check to see if your child recognizes those beginning sounds and recognizes the capital/lowercase in print.  We should be printing our name with the first capital letter and the remainder lowercase letters.  We are learning to read the color words and several new sight words.  Learning to read using our Big Books is fun.  We were excited when Zero the Hero came to our classroom for the second time.  We work with our calendar daily counting tens and ones.  We are graphing, sorting, and patterning.  It was fun making a floor graph with our toothpaste.  Mr. T loved the toothpaste graph.  In health we have learned about taking care of our teeth and our five senses.  Mr. M taught us about magnets and we have enjoyed using our magnifying glasses on the play ground.  Our first field trip is on 25th of this month.  We are looking forward to going to the North Georgia State Fair.  Last week we started centers and we want to thank the Moms that have volunteered.  We hope that they have enjoyed working with their group in our classroom.  All of us have become familiar with our daily routine and we can use the media center to check out library books.  Reagan and Georgia are looking forward to celebrating their birthdays this month! 

Welcome to Kindergarten

We were so pleased to see our new Mt. Bethel Buccaneers at Meet and Greet yesterday!  We can't wait to see you on Monday morning. 

We want to thank all of the parents who attended our "warm" Open House.  After I rushed through all of our Kindergarten information I thought of many things that I needed to mention.  I'll try to keep you informed through this site and emails.  Please feel free to ask any questions that you might have...

We have a fabulous PTA at Mt. Bethel and they need lots of volunteers to help with the many wonderful things that they do for teachers and students.  Please volunteer in any way that you can and be sure to join PTA.  We are also very fortunate to have our Foundation.  They provide numerous supplements to our school and help to make Mt. Bethel the excellent school that it is.............please support them too!!!!  You are very fortunate to have your child in this school. 

We hope to make your child's kindergarten experience both fun and educational.  The first few weeks of school we socialize, share Big Books, sing, interact at free choice centers, and become familiar with the school day routine.  During the first week of school we'll make a Mt. Bethel Buccaneer hat, write (draw) in our daily schoolhouse journal, meet our first Letter Person, complete whole group calendar activities, and enjoy many hands-on activities. 

We're looking forward to a great school year!!!!!!!