Desert Willow Elementary

Cave Creek Unified School District

“Learning For Life, Loving To Learn”

January 12, 2018

Mrs. Malina’s Weekly Update

“H” was our letter of the week. The children completed worksheets identifying pictures

beginning with “h” and printed upper and lower case “h’s” on lined paper. Please reinforce

these concepts at home. Our snack today was a house using saltine crackers and a cheese

roof.

Our story of the week was Russ and the Firehouse. The Oral Vocabulary words were:

borrow, equipment, frequently, neighborhood and organize. The new High-Frequency word

is “are”. The main comprehension strategy was to summarize and the comprehension skill

was to identify the main idea and details. Our Read-Aloud was a folktale titled, “The Black

Cat”, and the expository selection was “Let’s Look at Maps”.

Center fun included:

creating a penguin from hearts

drawing 100 marks on a hat for our upcoming 100th Day Party

completing a page for a class book, A House Is a House for Me

participating in a guided reading lesson by echo and individual reading of the book,

Are Caps Hats?

listening to a tape while following along in the books, A House is a House For Me, My

Hero! and The Happy Hedgehog

reading three-letter words and finding the correct picture in the game, Hanging

Monkeys (Literactive website)

circling the High-Frequency words and reading the booklet, We Are

playing a game, What’s the Rhyme? Sorting Houses

placing ghosts and pumpkins on the mats to find the sums in Haunted House Addition

constructing houses using wooden blocks

counting the drops of mustard on hot dogs and matching them to the correct

numeral bun from 1 to 20

flipping a nickel and recording the number of heads and tails on a graph

writing and illustrating a page in each of the class books, Having 100 Could Really Be

a Problem, 100, I Could Eat 100 and If I Had $100

Musicfest Minutes

Composer: Antonio Vivaldi

Composition: The Four Seasons, “Winter”

The books read this week were: My “h” Book, A House Is a House for Me, Hug, From Head

to Toe, A House for Hermit Crab, The Little Red Hen (3 versions), The Little Red Hen

Makes a Pizza, Harry the Dirty Dog, Animal Homes, The Hat, Harriet, Horses, The Horse

in Harry’s Room, Hibernation, All About Hibernation, How a House is Built, What If You

Had Animal Hair, Hidden Treasure and Hopper.

Important Information

I have attached a copy of the Kindergarten 2nd Semester Overview. Please

read the packet, sign and return the bottom slip to acknowledge that you

received this important information.

The 100th Day of School is Tuesday, January 23rd. I have many fun activities

planned for that day. I have enclosed a gallon-sized plastic bag for your

child’s 100 Collection. Your child should count out 100 of some item and bring

it to school in the labeled bag. When counting, it is easiest if your child

arranges the objects in rows of ten. We will have a little museum and walk

around to examine everyone’s collections. The collections should be brought in

any time before that day and will be returned on the 100th day.

Every child will also bring in 100 of some snack item for our gigantic snack on

that Tuesday. You can sign up next week on Sign-Up Genius to bring the item

you would like. This is in addition to the 100 Collection.

Book orders are due next Friday.

Our field trip to the firehouse is on Friday, January 26th. A permission slip is

attached.

Please have your child wear gym shoes every day.

Remember to supervise your child’s homework. Make sure your child uses a

pencil on his/her handwriting sheet and forms the letters correctly. If your

child practices it incorrectly, it will be harder to correct in the future. We

are spending too much time having children make corrections at school. We

need that time to practice letter sound speed and reading.

Saturday, January 27th is the Daddy Daughter Dance. Girls see attached.

There is no school on Monday. Due to the short week, we will not have a Star

of the Week.

This week’s treasure is a baby bottle to remember the book, A House is a

House for Me. (A baby bottle is a house for milk.) The book has over 90 types

of houses such as a mitten is a house for a hand, a hive is a house for a bee

and a sty is a house for a pig. I made a new literacy bag for this fantastic

book.

Next week’s letter is “d”. Cathy Malina

cmalina@ccusd93.org

(480) 575-2842