Poindexter Press for May 5th-9th, 2008

Dear Parents,
Welcome to the first full week of May! Time just flies by doesn’t it? We have been very busy this week! We are in the very beginning processes of getting everything all wrapped up for the year. Mrs. Poindexter has been doing the last round of assessments and the children have been very flexible with the changes in our schedule! ☺ We learned how to play a new math game called Roll, Add and Place! The children have two number dice (numbers 0-5) on them and a sheet of paper labeled with the numbers 0-10. They roll both at the same time and add the numbers together. They then place a cube under the correct number on their recording sheet. We played this game with a partner and alone and the children seem to love it! ☺
We have also been checking in with our beanstalks, our Wisconsin Fast plants, and our vegetables. All are growing very nicely and our beanstalks will be coming home today! If you are able to move the beanstalks outside and plant them in the ground—the plants will continue growing and you could even harvest the beans.
The children have also had time to explore our Science and Reading Center boxes (provided to us through a PTO grant 3 years ago). They have been practicing skills such as; listening for beginning, middle, and ending sounds, printing letters, recognizing letters, making sight words, parts of plants, exploring with magnets, mixing color wands, and sorting different materials by various attributes.
Be sure to make a note of all the upcoming dates in May—it’s a busy month for all and you don’t want to miss it! ☺

http://www.poindexterpress.blogspot.com
Have a wonderful weekend—check out the blog!!
Kristen Poindexter ☺

Poindexter Press for April 28th-May 2nd, 2008

Dear Parents,
We have many things “growing” on in our classroom! Our beanstalks have gotten quite tall—not quite the height needed to climb them yet! The AM class helped to plant vegetables and those are in the greenhouse off to a great start. The PM class planted Wisconsin Fast Plants and they are almost ready to be pollinated! ☺ We have also had several of our Painted Lady butterflies emerge from their chrysalides this week and we will be releasing them sometime next week.
We read the Big Book titled “Growing Vegetable Soup” by Lois Elhert this week and explored how she makes her illustrations. The children all enjoyed the fact that she labels many of her illustrations so that they could copy the words into their own writing. It sparked quite an interest in labeling everything! ☺ We made a list of all the vegetables we could think of and the list was quite long and included some not-so-popular vegetables (edamame, okra). This lead to the AM class asking about what the seeds looked like for vegetables, so I tried to find as many as I could and bring them in. Both classes passed the seeds around and studied them with magnifying glasses. We decided to plant them to see what they looked like. Did you know broccoli grows quite quickly? We planted Monday and already have ½ inch sprouts! The peas are not too far behind!
Be sure to make a note of all the upcoming dates in May—it’s a busy month for all and you don’t want to miss it! ☺

http://www.poindexterpress.blogspot.com
Have a wonderful weekend—check out the blog!!
Kristen Poindexter ☺


Important Dates:

May 8th- Muffins with Mom (Moms come in and enjoy a muffin and juice with your Kindergartener (8:30 and 12:00)

May 12th-Last day to return books to the Media Center

May 16th-Science Stretch Day (more info. To follow)

May 22nd- Kindy 500

May 27th- Retirement Open House for Mrs. Leininger, Mrs. Crook, and Mrs. Lach-Stone

May 27th-Last day for PM Kindergarten

May 28th-Last day for AM Kindergarten