Preparing for Winter

Our "little elves" have been hard at work.  We are gearing up for the Winter Break.  Please practice with your student during this time off to further prepare them for the "New Year" 2011!  We need extra help with sentences.  First grade has the expectation that we can write 3 legible, correct and comprehensive sentences on our own when we enter First grade.  We can use this holiday time to practice with all the traditions and fun families have together...write about it!  Math continues with ordinal numbers, addition, subtraction, numerals and sets.  As always reading 20 minutes "to, by and with" per night must continue also.  
Our class was very giving to the Nursing home we gave 70 items and $7.35 to them.  We were not the field trip winners, but winners in giving to others.  Thank you for participating.
Each child, each day, success!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

We have had a lot of fun and surprises this week.  I am sharing with you our successes and fun times too!  
Each child, each day, success!  
Happy Thanksgiving!  Enjoy your family!

Our big surprise at Awards Assembly!  Kids of character for the First and Second Six weeks!

Fun times at the annual "Turkey Bowl"!

Officer Gary

Officer Gary came to Grizzly Kindergarten to talk about safety and most importantly, gun safety.  He stressed the 4 important rules to follow if you should see a gun.  
1.  STOP!
2.  Don't touch.
3.  Leave the area.
4.  Tell an adult.
Here is the result of "practicing" what we learned!

Each Child, Each Day, Success!

It is, was, and will continue to be a very busy learning environment in Grizzly Land.  The Grizzly team is embroiled in a "math throw down" with a rival school, which we will not even name.  From K to 5th every Friday we take a 1 (yes ONE) minute math facts "test of our abilities".  The goal is to IMPROVE math facts across the whole school.  Please encourage your own Grizzly to keep up the good work.

The end of October found us in the noble cause of Red Ribbon week.  Our counselors had us dress daily as a reminder to "Stay away from drugs!" Elvis came to help us "Rock and Roll the drugs away".  One of our classmates caught a teddy bear during his performance. It was fun to say, "Elvis has left the building!"

The Wise Grizzly team needs to continue with lots of word practice, sentence building, and math facts.  Ask your Grizzly to tell you about Meta cognition, Schema, Inferring and Visualization.  Ask them what genre means.

As always...Each child, each day, success!  (Parents, teachers, and students)
The video is the end of Red Ribbon week the title is "Team Up Against Drugs" so the students wore their favorite jersey to school ours being the Grizzly shirt "It's Time".  It was our time to have Kinder Dance Club to celebrate the end of a great week of awareness.

 

It is Autumn!

This is our debut from Theater class with Mr. Lemieux.  It is titled "AUTUMN LEAVES"!

EACH CHILD

EACH DAY 

SUCCESS!

Parent Information Night

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 9TH:
Meet Mrs. Wise, Ms. Chambers, and Miss Kzlotsky in the Grizzly cafeteria for the informational parent/teacher evening.
We will begin promptly at 6:00 p.m.  The session will conclude at 6:45 so that 3rd-5th grade can begin their sessions.  See you there!
Each Child, Each Day, SUCCESS!

The First Week Is Over!

We began with a roar not a whimper!  28 new friends have arrived.  Our classroom is wall to wall Kindergarten students.  We are trying our best (and the teacher is included in the "we").  As you can imagine with that many 5 year olds in a confined area the sound level is beyond LOUD!  Eating breakfast in the classroom is fun...so is the cafeteria and EVERYONE needing to use the one bathroom in the classroom.  Maybe if we are successful you will see all of us on future episodes of SURVIVOR the KINDERGARTEN T.V. SHOW.  Ha!  Stay tuned for future updates.  As always at Gilbert each child, each day, success!

10 ways to become a better reader:
1.  read
2.  read
3.  read
4.  read
5.  read
6.  read
7.  read
8.  read
9.  read
10.  read

Summer Movie Time

It is FABULOUS!  

SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER

CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 2009-10!
We had a great year together.
EACH CHILD, EACH DAY, SUCCESS!
Love 'ya
See 'ya
BYE!

END OF YEAR REMINDERS

Wednesday (tomorrow) will be 5 days until school is over for this Kindergarten class of 2009-10.  Here are some gentle reminders for the coming week:
Monday - Memorial Day Holiday NO SCHOOL
Tuesday - regular school day
WEDNESDAY - CELEBRATION for K kids...students go to class at regular time, please wear your fancy clothes (no uniforms, shorts, or tank tops please) parents meet in the cafeteria by 9:00 am
Make this a special day for your family 12:00 dismissal for ALL students, so go celebrate when the ceremony is over!
Thursday - LAST DAY!  EVERYONE GOES HOME AT 12:00.  Have a wonderful summer.  Love, your Kindergarten Teacher

There are a lot of activities as the school year winds down.  We have been having such a good learning experience in the library this week.  Kindergarten has teamed up with Ms. Pitts in the library to do research in preparation for next year.  Our topic has been Dinosaurs.  Tomorrow (Wednesday) we will finish our library year with a "dig".  Ask your Kinder Paleontologist about their experiences.

We also have begun our Celebration practices on stage in the cafeteria.  The official Celebration will be Wednesday, June 2 at 9:00 am.  Invite everyone and then go celebrate our Kindergarten year where ...EACH CHILD, EACH DAY, SUCCESS is our motto.

Thursday we will hear from Community Helpers and learn about their careers.

As our class really loves the book Pete the Cat says, "IT'S ALL GOOD!"

Friday Field Time at PE -11:35 on the blacktop next to the gym
Come help your K student enjoy this special PE class time

The Latest

Kindergarten is always full of enthusiasm!  Last Tuesday we went to the Ft. Worth Zoo.
What a trip! (in more ways than one)  The best comment was, "The giraffe is the best animal at the zoo.  He smiled at me because he was happy I was there."  Absolutely the cutest thing I heard.

Then Thursday we got the land snails to wake up and come out for a little observation time.  We looked at them closely and carefully.  The curiosity built until finally someone said, "can we hold one?"  Of course you can!  SURPRISE!  They just knew I would say no.  We had more fun.  We drew them and wrote our observations in our Science Notebook and then....this little voice said, "when you were not looking I put one on my cheek, it tickled me there too!"  I do have pictures for their memory book, but that one I missed.  Hmmm--wonder how I could do that?

EACH CHILD, EACH DAY, SUCCESS---22 DAYS AND COUNTING

DATES TO REMEMBER

As of Friday...33 days until school is out!
Can you believe it?  Time flies when you are having fun!  Who knows if anyone truly reads this blog, but here goes.  It is that time of year when activities start mounting up and you need a calendar to keep track of things.  Of course the most important thing right now is birthdays, and the CLASS ZOO TRIP TO FT. WORTH!  Thursday, April 22 from 6-7 pm Kindergarten family Math night.  Tuesday, April 27 Ft. Worth Zoo.   Friday, May 7 Cinco de Mayo Celebration from 3:45-7:45 pm.  Try outs begin soon for the all school talent show in May also, so if your student has a talent to share or even as a family you have talents show Mr. Strawbridge.  Everyone please mark your calendar now for THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT IN THE HISTORY OF YOUR K KID...WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2 at 9:00 am we will celebrate Kindergarten with the end of school ceremony that you will not want to miss.  You will want to invite family and friends to come also.  It is always the most exciting thing for our families to be a part of.  It is the day that everyone has 12:00 dismissal so all the families plan something "special" to do together after the official celebration at school!  DO NOT FORGET YOUR CAMERA!
You will be getting lots of notes and further information as each event gets nearer.  Remember to always look inside the RED DAILY folder.  You know already that 4th grade asks for popcorn requests and money on THURSDAY for popcorn delivery on FRIDAY.


Kinder quote of the week...I ran into my rocking chair with my leg Friday and it made a pretty loud thud, one of my precious students said in the lowest, deepest voice, "that's 'gonna leave a mark!"  We all had a good belly laugh and kept on going.


EACH CHILD, EACH DAY, SUCCESS!  LOVIN' THOSE K KIDS!

Texas Stadium

Just like every other Cowboy fan and Irving resident I have fond memories of Texas Stadium.  I watched the implosion this morning with mixed emotions also.  Rachael (the photographer) was out and about Saturday and snapped this last image to share with me.  I remember watching the Cowboys on t.v. with my Dad and then when I was pregnant with our #1 daughter Robyn, we flew to Dallas to take Daddy to a "real" game for his birthday.  Then some years later Robyn as a high school cheerleader and Rachael as the high school mascot were down on that field cheering the other Cowboys to victory for playoff games in high school.  I also passed it daily for about the last seven years on my way to school each morning. What an amazing flood of memories as it fell with precision into a smoking rubble.  Wow!

This week driving home one hill I pass looks a lot like this picture.  Beautiful!  As we count down the days until "we" are officially First Graders it is always nice to take the time to stop and appreciate the Bluebonnets.  Tomorrow's count will be 40 days until this school year is over.  The Grizzly's in Room 13 need to continue with nightly reading and for extra practice try writing your own story and reading it to your family.  Our art teacher had the students draw bumblebees in class and then today we wrote our own story about the bees.  Pretty interesting.  Tomorrow we are going to participate in the TOMS campaign and go without shoes for a little while.  Check out all the activities and reasons for being appreciative of having shoes at www.toms.com.  We will blog about our adventure after April 8th.  TOMS is the abbreviation for tomorrows shoes.  A very worthy cause and near and dear to the Wise family.

Our zoo trip is scheduled for April 27th, that is another TAKS day for the upper grades, so it will be necessary for everyone to be on time and QUIET as we load the buses and set out for Ft. Worth.  It will be a great day of learning and we are thankful to our parent volunteers.

As always...each child, each day, SUCCESS!

OPEN HOUSE TEXAS STYLE

We had a great Grizzly turn out for Texas Public School's Open House!

The Grizzlies in Room 13 worked very hard to produce the best journals, science notebooks, Texas work of all kinds, math skills, and even their "twin" was seating at their table space.  Moms, Dads, Aunts, Uncles, Grandmothers, Grandfathers, and siblings enjoyed their school tour guided by their Kindergarten student.  We were very proud of the Fairy Tale we wrote, illustrated and let Mrs. Wise print on the computer.  Everyone had their own copy and we even had a large class book.  (it is not available on Amazon - yet)  As a family project each student brought his/her version of a stick horse to decorate the hall.  We all said, "YEE-HAW!" and the following week was Spring Break!

Last Day of Spring Break

Snow on the second day of Spring?  Yep!  The redbuds had budded and then they were stunned this morning with some really cold temperatures and SNOW!?


Luckily it will all be gone in time for school tomorrow morning with the temperatures to be in the 70's? 


Rest, relaxing and recuperating sums up Spring Break for me.  Watching old movies, sleeping late  and being nurse to Rachael left little time for any travel or fun "stuff".  The Cymbidium van was "T-boned" with Rachael as the driver Monday morning of Spring Break.  After an emergency room visit and x-rays she was pronounced fine.  However, she has been quite sore and went to work Friday for the first time.  


School stuff:  remember April 2 is coming soon, we need your zoo money.  I have plenty of parent volunteers, so all the students need to have their money in.  More information will come as soon as the money situation is clear.  It is always a fun learning experience at the zoo.


I hope everyone has adjusted to Daylight Savings time by now and I will see all you great Grizzlies first thing Monday morning!  EACH CHILD, EACH DAY, SUCCESS!

"Spring Forward"
Beginning Daylight Savings Time

Daylight savings time begins this weekend,
at 1:00 a.m. on Sunday, March 14th.
Clocks should be set FORWARD one hour.

Happy Spring Break! We had a fabulous Open House Thursday night. The kids were very excited to be the "boss" and give a complete guided tour to all who came to see their work. Several parents commented on the growth they saw from the beginning of the year until now in academics and physical growth. Kids are always an amazing miracle. Enjoy your family time.

Each child, each day, SUCCESS!

I am not a movie critic. I am an avid reader. I have read Through the Looking Glass. I have seen the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland. I now have seen the NEW Alice in Wonderland. I am a fan of Johnny Depp. (although I could not finish Sweeney Todd) As an adult I enjoyed the movie very much. As a Kindergarten teacher I am not so sure I would take my 5 or 6 year old to see this version without first having a serious talk with him/her. We know this is fantasy and that these are actors pretending, but some scenes were intense. The imagery is fantastic. I was totally engrossed the whole time. The big guy sitting by me REALLY liked the whole movie. (husband) He even said, "I'm not sure about this for the little guys." There were many young children at the early movie. (notice I said "early") Just remember I'm that 'ole Kindergarten teacher who likes the innocence of childhood for as long as "they" can possibly maintain it. Now I think I would enjoy it in 3D. Whatever your personal decision---reading is always the best and your own imagination is too!

REMEMBER: Thursday, March 11th Open House 6:30 p.m. come and go

EACH CHILD, EACH DAY, SUCCESS!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

The Cat in the Hat came back and he brought a bunch of Kindergarten Kids!

We do so like Dr. Seuss books. We will have our last activity in the Library Friday when we vote for our favorite character and book.

SMILE

Uniform

Precious

Definitely each child, each day, success!

My Teacher Loved Snow

This is the proof that my Kindergarten friends pelted me with snowballs! Do you see all the snow on me? That's from your sweet kid-Os. However...there is a big snowball in my right hand. We are still talking about this day. We were hoping it was going to happen again this week, but we were not that lucky. It was really cold, but passed us by. One of the boys said, "your face got smaller!" Actually my hair was very wet in the front and squished flat. It was such fun. I really enjoyed this time we shared and all the squeals of sheer delight!

Happy Valentine's Day!

NO SCHOOL SNOW DAY

School is cancelled! So what do all good teachers do? Still get up at 5:30 a.m., grab a camera, and walk around the neighborhood. The weather man had said record snowfall in a 24 hour period. Here is the proof - 12" DFW area. I found the winter wonderland at our park. Wonderful!

Snowball Fight!

Thursday afternoon! Seriously we can go outside? I can pummel my teacher with snowballs? (yes they did) Luckily I was damp from my hips to my knees and occasionally one hit me in the face. We had a blast!

Welcome to Gilbert

Thursday Morning Greetings!

This is Texas?

We've been working in our classroom for 100 days.

We've been working in our classroom here in Kindergarten!

Everyday we come to Gilbert we learn something new!

Displaying our family project of 100 things in our hallway.

Singing the 100 day song, counting to 100 by 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's, measuring ourselves with unifix cubes (no one was 100 cubes tall), reading books, writing, eating the number 100 (1-Twinkie 0-2 Oreos) and CELEBRATING 100 days of learning.

It was fun. It was exciting. It was a loud and rowdy day of Math! We enjoyed at least 100 minutes of the activities.

We are 100 days smarter! Each child, each day, success.

Will Punxsutawney Phil see his shadow?

That was THE question February 1st. We predicted he would! Today February 2, 2010 was the "official" groundhog day we had anticipated. Our prediction was correct! We watched Phil via utube. Then during rotation time all our activities were in honor of Phil. We wrote sentences, read books, sang songs, and sequenced his story. We located Pennsylvania and decided Phil did not live in Texas because..."we do not have any snow or men in funny suits and hats around here." The kids also thought that Phil was probably thinking "how rude of you to wake me up for this!" Too many people and cameras. The other observation was "don't you think it was all the flashes going off that caused his shadow...cause we didn't see any sun there." Anyway we know that Spring is six weeks away, but what fun we had trying to pronounce Punxsutawney, making predictions and learning about shadows too.

We also had our first experience with Mr. Johnson and netbooks. Exciting! Techno savy here we come!

In science we placed "seeds"/butter beans in ziploc bags to observe what will happen. We are competing with the the other Kinder classes to see whose sprouts first. We can observe everybody's daily as we taped them to the big windows by the atrium that we pass daily headed to lunch. Team Wise hopes we have the greenest thumbs!

Each child, each day, success!

Count Down to 100

Each child, each day, success... that is the motto of Gilbert. Everyday we as a school community try to live out this philosophy. We have been counting since the first day of school. We are so close to the 100th day we are anticipating all the fun activities headed our way. Today we took our Family Project home. The assignment was to decorate a one hundred with 100 things of their choosing. We will display them in the hall for the whole school to enjoy. The official 100th day of school is Thursday, February 5th. Yes, we will be 100 days smarter! We will also be practicing the math skills of counting by 2's, 5's, 10's and 1's.

CELEBRATING MARTIN LUTHER KING

The Grizzly's in Kindergarten expressed their dreams Friday as we reflected on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King.

I have a dream...

Brianna said, "to be a flower girl someday."

Dulce said, "to be a doctor."

Brian said, "to work for money."

Nayeliz said, "to go to college."

Nile said, "to be a teacher."

Rithik said, "to read chapter books.

Jonathan said, "to play football."

Leslie said, "to drive a car."

Brandon said, "to work for my Dad."

Grace said, "to wear dresses ALL the time!"

Brianna said, "to be a 5th grader."

Macy said, "to go to First Grade."

Mrs. Wise said, "for all my students to fulfill their dreams!"

Thank you Dr. King for your contributions to our lives, may we all follow the example to have a dream and work to make that dream a reality.

*some of our classmates were absent as Friday was a half-day for us and did not get to express their dreams, however we know that they each have one for themselves.

continue the Gilbert motto: each CHILD, each day, success!

COWBOY MANIA

We believe!

We have heart!

We made a really good sentence!

The Artic Blast was a reality for the Grizzlies today, but our spirits were strong enough to give the COWBOYS the "thumbs up" for victory against the eagles! Friday's are always fun, but today we had a lot of science observations going on with the temperature outside the cafeteria foyer registering 20. We saw water freeze! We documented our observations in our science journal. Then we decided to leave our silly hats on for a photo to prove our loyalty and devotion to the DALLAS COWBOYS! January 2010 will be full of testing our reading and math skills, so continue to work in these areas at home as well. If you still have your Winter Break packet, dig it out. Rhyming really needs some extra attention. Stay warm, root for those COWBOYS, drink some cocoa, read a good book, and be ready to return Library books Monday. Remember ...each child, each day, SUCCESS!