Week of April 30 - May 4

Dear Parents,


What a grand, productive week!  All last week we reviewed nouns, verbs, and adjectives and did an art project each day reinforcing the concepts.  We finished our math chapter on addition and took our test on Friday. We also read, with much individual success, our first "short i" phonics book, Six Kids. I am so impressed with how well each scholar is reading and how easy it comes to everyone. Your work at home is showing in the classroom - please keep up the one-on-one time with your child. Bravo!


This week we are going to learn about the following:


Language Arts:  We will (re)read in a round-robin fashion our second "short i" book in our phonics series, Jim Wins.  We will also be learning about pronouns.


Math:  We are starting our FINAL math chapter, Chapter 12: Subtraction.  Our chapter test will be next week.


Phonics:  Our spelling words involve six "short i" words and review four of our sight words from the Dolch List.


Science:  This week we will start to plant in our garden the lettuce and corn that we've been growing in the window sill of our classroom. Accordingly, we will be learning about the water cycle to reinforce the life cycle of our plants. Once everything is planted, please come take a look at our beautiful garden!

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please email me or add a comment below. Feel free to stop by the classroom or talk to Ms. Diane when you are at school.  If you haven't already done so, please "like" Town & Country Farm School's Facebook page.

Have a great week,
Mrs. Stuhr

Week of April 23 - 27

Dear Parents,

The students did a fantastic job last week reviewing nouns and learning about verbs.  We spent our mornings talking about what "things" were nouns and putting "action words," or verbs, to them.  For instance, a dog jumps and a kid plays.  We created an "Angry Verbs" bulletin board for the front hallway of school.  Each scholar decorated an "angry bird" or "pig" and we wrote verbs on them - creating "Angry Verbs!" It was fun and has launched their playtime imaginations in new directions... I've never seen so many beautifully drawn, freehand birds in my life!  

This week, we are going to have more fun with the following:

Language Arts:  We will begin to discuss adjectives and how they are used to describe nouns. By making observations about the world around us, we will use our senses to talk and write about things. 

We will also be continuing our review of our phonics series books.  Last week, we reread Sam and Al in a round-robin fashion.  One at a time, each child read a sentence from the book as we went around the room.  This week, we will be rereading Six Kids.

Phonics:  Our spelling words this week reiterate the "short i" sound.  Number 5 and 6 are more complex words.  Numbers 7-10 are review words from the Dolch List 1. The spelling test is on Friday.

Math:  We will be finishing the chapter on addition and will be using our skills counting pennies to help add up coins.  Our math test in on Friday.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please email me or add a comment below. Feel free to stop by the classroom or talk to Ms. Diane when you are at school.  If you haven't already done so, please "like" Town & Country Farm School's Facebook page.

Have a great week,

Mrs. Stuhr

Week of April 16 - 20

Dear Parents,


Thank you for your participation in Friday's Grow! presentation and "Tax Day" Recital.  I hope you had fun learning what the scholars are growing and listening to their fabulous singing voices!  I appreciate your busy schedules... it really means so much to us when you can come to school to visit and help!  Thanks again - -


Language Arts:  Last week we had a lot of success learning about nouns and made mobiles to hang from the classroom with different nouns we found in our National Geographic magazines and nouns we came up with all on our own (and wrote down).  This week, we are going to be learning about verbs, or action words - words that DO something.


We will also be continuing our review of our phonics series books.  Last week, we reread Max in a round-robin fashion.  One at a time, each child read a sentence from the book as we went around the room.  This week, we will be rereading Sam and Al.


Phonics:  Our spelling words this week reiterate the "short a" sound.  Number 5 and 6 are more complex words.  Numbers 7-10 are review words from the Dolch List 1.


Math:  We are starting a chapter on addition and will be learning about how to add small numbers by counting groups of things.  For instance, 3 boys jumping rope + 2 girls playing catch = 5 kids.


If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please email me or add a comment below. Feel free to stop by the classroom or talk to Ms. Diane when you are at school.  If you haven't already done so, please "like" Town & Country Farm School's Facebook page.

Have a great week,
Mrs. Stuhr

Week of April 9 - 13

Dear Parents,

This week we are starting two new concepts.  Please keep an eye out for your scholars homework and assignments that come home to help reiterate the following:

Phonics:  We begin studying this week for a 10-word spelling test.  Six of the words will be a "short consonant sound" and four of the words will review the sight words we have learned so far this year.  To note, we made it all the way to List 3 and are now going to review lists 1-3 for the remainder of the year.  Please visit the Dolch Word Lists we were using for extra practice.

Language Arts: Also we are beginning a new grammar unit, learning nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns.  We start this week with nouns.  We are going to learn about "things that name things" and do an art project to help reinforce the concept.

Math:  We are concluding our math chapter on Time and our test will be on Friday.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please email me or add a comment below. Feel free to stop by the classroom or talk to Ms. Diane when you are at school.  If you haven't already done so, please "like" Town & Country Farm School's Facebook page.

Have a great week,
Mrs. Stuhr

Week of December 12 - 16

Dear Parents,

Last week was jam packed with a lot of exploring and learning.  We began a new book in our phonics series, Six Kids, and sounded out words with the “short i.”  We completed Chapter 3: Matching and Counting in our math workbooks, ending the week with an opportunity for the scholars to show what they’d learned. Everyone did very well!  We also learned about the similarities and differences with different parts of our earth (mountains/hills, rivers/oceans, and valleys) and created a fabulous model of the forms with colored construction paper and glue.

Lessons This Week...

We will continue (and complete) reading Six Kids this week and further explore “short i” words.  Three of our spelling words concentrate on this sound (him, with, fix). Our fourth spelling word, “at,” brings us back to the importance of the “short a” sound. We will be creating another flip sound book - we have made three so far. Please expect to see those come home around Winter Break. Continue to find new ways to practice the words with your scholars (car trips, night time routines, morning rituals, etc.).

We have completed List 1 of our sight words and this week are starting on List 2.

We will start Chapter 4: Numbers 0-5, supplementing our workbook pages by making counting books (shown by example through literature read in class - see Book Club suggestions below).

We will complete the first part of our Earth Science lessons by reviewing what we’ve learned (and created with our models) and discussing characteristics of a desert (versus valley).  We will talk about local landforms and make observations about the earth around us by walking around our school (weather permitting!).  We are going to spend the remainder of the week reviewing our five senses.

Book Club

I hope you are having fun perusing the titles I’m linking below and finding new adventures to take with your child*.  Here are some more book titles for you to look through (I’m linking these to Amazon as I know they are less expensive here and perhaps you can get a shipping deal. We’re busy people - so I hope this makes life just a tick easier):

The Baker's Dozen: A Counting Book Count! by Denise Fleming Whoever You Are by Mem Fox Scribbleville by Peter Holwitz Honey Baby Sugar Child by Alice Faye Duncan The Peace Book by Todd Parr A, My Name Is Alice by Jane Bayer In the Tall, Tall Grass by Denise Fleming "A" Was Once An Apple Pie by Edward Lear and Suse MacDonald

(Brought to you in part by The ABCs of Literacy. Yay! $7.96 on Kindle! Easy as that...)

* If you’d like me to research books with certain themes, please let me know.

Holiday Festivities

Santa Clause is coming to our farm on Wednesday, December 14th. We will also be having our Holiday party in class that afternoon at 11:30 a.m.. Please sign up to bring something, if you are able.  

Our Winter Recital is on Friday, December 16th. Kindergarten, along with Ms. Melissa’s Pre-Schoolers and Ms. Denise and Ms. Sandy’s Pre-Kindergartners, will be singing especially for you!  The concert starts at 2:30 p.m. in Room 2. 

Winter Break is from December 19th - January 2.

“Cold” Season

No Getting Sick! A lovely dream... but, in that ever-glorious battle to keep everyone healthy so we can continue to have fun and learn together, I’ve been emphasizing with the children the importance of hand-washing, covering our mouths when we sneeze/cough, eating healthy, and getting plenty of rest. With that in mind, our rest time bedding should be washed weekly so I’m sending home blankets, etc. on Fridays for you to wash and return Mondays. We can also wash them at school, too. With a whole-hearted effort to keep the germies at bay, please pack a fitted crib sheet for your child to keep at school.  Rest time is from 12:00-1:30 p.m. and is a wonderful opportunity for each scholar to “turn off” and recharge batteries for the remainder of the day.

As Always...

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to email me, stop by the classroom, talk to Ms. Diane, or leave a comment on our blog.  Please become a “follower” of our blog and “like” our school’s Facebook page, if you haven’t already done so.

Have a terrific week!

Mrs. Stuhr

Week of November 7 - 11

Dear Parents,

Last week was a lot of fun! Thanks for coming to our Costume Parade and for your help making our class party on Monday a success. It’s always fun to use our imagination and play with the ideas of Halloween... my hat’s off to the students for their bravery with all our games. 

Speaking of bravery, the scholars did an outstanding job this week listening to sounds and building words.  We will continue to play our phonics games in class (see last week’s post) to prepare us for reading.

This week’s spelling list has FOUR words. I’m adding three new sight words and one word we’re learning in Max (see below). Also, we’re are almost done reviewing our alphabet letters. This week we’ll be doing P, Q, R, S, T... yes, one letter per day!  

Drum roll please... This week marks our first leap into beginning reading! We are starting a phonics series that has been around since the 1970’s. It’s a great tool to help the scholars hear sounds, implement sight words, and build rhyming words.  Our first book is Max, from Series A (short vowel sounds). Working with a partner, we will read this book throughout the week with the goal of learning to read the whole thing by ourselves. 

We are beginning Chapter 2 in our math workbook. My original thought was to do a chapter per week, but I think we’ll go slower and do a chapter every two weeks (and pick up the pace in the last half of the year). In terms of our number recognition, we’ve started to explore the concept of counting by two’s and putting things in pairs.

Thanksgiving Project (OPTIONAL)

In this week’s homework packet is the project assignment for the month of November. It is due on Wednesday, November 23rd (the day before Thanksgiving vacation).  It’s a family project that I hope you’ll have fun completing. 

To incorporate physical properties of matter into Thanksgiving (because, really, what holiday of giving thanks would be complete without it?), we are going to build the Nina, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria!  In class, we are going to learn about how boats float (i.e. the bigger the boat, the more it holds). Your assignment is to build a boat that 1) holds three Thanksgiving objects of your choice and 2) floats!  See the assignment for more information (like the “optional” clause!) 

As Always...

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to email me, stop by the classroom, talk to Ms. Diane, or leave a comment on our blog.  Please become a “follower” of our blog and “like” our school’s Facebook page, if you haven’t already done so.

Have a terrific week!

Mrs. Stuhr

Week of October 31 - November 4

Dear Parents,

Happy Halloween! Our Costume Parade in on Monday at 10:00 a.m. If you drop your child off around 8:00 a.m., we suggest he/she comes in regular clothes. The kids will have a chance to change before the parade. Please do pack, though, a change of clothes for your child (especially if you think he/she might get uncomfortable in a costume for the whole day).  Our party is at 1:30 p.m., but if you’d like to stay with us after the parade, we’ll be doing Halloween activities for the remainder of the day. Come celebrate with us!

On Tuesday, with my little glimmer of hope that the Halloween buzz has worn off, we will jump into an exploration of sounds and patterns. This week, we are going to begin our lessons on Phonemic Awareness (i.e. hearing and manipulating different sounds in words).  We will spend Tuesday-Friday playing games that give the scholars an opportunity to hear and play with words as sounds and groups. For example, we will solve rhyming riddles like this:

“You need me to play baseball. I rhyme with hat. What am I? BAT.”

We will learn songs that isolate sounds, like this:

“Twinkle, twinkle little word. What’s the new word to be heard? If I take off the first sound, what new word will now be found? Take the /F/ right off of FARM. Now the new word sounds like __________ (ARM).”

And, we will learn to blend sounds to make words by playing games like Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, like this:

The word BUG would be /b/ (head), /u/ (shoulders), /g/ (knees). 

These activities will lead us into next week when we start to read decodable books during class. Decodable books are comprised of words that are easily sounded out (e.g. “Bill has a big ham.”). I’ll write more about it next week and explain what we’ll be doing. In the meantime, keep reading and pointing out words in books to your scholar... Continue to play rhyming games in the car or while you wait in line at the grocery store... Have fun exploring sounds and building words!

This week we will also be starting Chapter 2 in our math workbook: Patterns and Movement. We will build patterns with Legos and picture cards and look for patterns we see around our school. In terms of “movement,” we will be discussing “right” and “left” and as we make observations about the world around us.

P.S. The scholars are doing a FANTASTIC job studying the sight words! In two weeks, we will be adding one more word to the Friday spelling test, a decodable word from our week’s reading.  I hope my study cards are useful. If you’d like any help or suggestions on how to study and/or memorize the words, please slip me an email or stop by the classroom. 

As Always...

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to email me, stop by the classroom, talk to Ms. Diane, or leave a comment on our blog.  Please become a “follower” of our blog and “like” our school’s Facebook page, if you haven’t already done so.

Have a terrific week!

Mrs. Stuhr

Week of October 24-28

Dear Parents,

What a wonderful first week learning our sight words! The students put in such a lovely effort to their classwork, and I can assume at home as well, to learn the three words. It was very evident on their spelling tests. I was very pleased... and so were they!

Along with our phonics excitement, we also had a great week exploring the numbers 8, 9, and 10. We talked about those numbers in terms of what they “feel” like and we solved math problems - adding and subtracting our way to some fun and interesting results.

This week we will be adding three new words to our “high frequency word” list and beginning our first math workbook.  Our week looks like this:

1.  Phonics 

• review letters K and L (practice our penmanship and word building skills)
• learn about and memorize spelling for HE, A, and I (spelling practice test on Wednesday and test on Friday)

2.  Math

• begin Harcourt Math workbook, Chapter 1: Sorting and Classifying (sorting objects that are alike in some way)

3.  Science

• learn how to describe an object by the material it is made out of and their physical properties 

Halloween Party

Our Halloween Party in on Monday, October 31st. While our party doesn’t officially start until 1:30 pm, here is the schedule for the afternoon’s festivities:

10:00 School-wide Costume Parade*

12:00 Lunch

12:45 Story and Art Project

Our Party Begins!!!

1:30 Relay Games

2:00 Tactile Story

2:30 Decorate Halloween Cookies

*Parents are welcome to stay with us after the parade and through lunch. If anyone would like to bring special treats, etc. during lunch time, feel free. Our party begins at 1:30 after the kids have had a chance to digest their food and rest a little (with a story and an art project).

Thank you for those of you who signed up to help during the party:

Game Helpers (1:30-2:30)

Lisa Stacey

Danielle Biel

Bringing Edible Decorations for our Cookies

Ji Sun Stetson

Christine Coles

Danielle Tew

Lisa Stacey

Party Volunteers (1:30-3:00)

Heidi Downen

Troy Stacey

If you have the afternoon off work, please join us... we’re going to have a spook-tacular time!

As Always...

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to email me, stop by the classroom, talk to Ms. Diane, or leave a comment on our blog.  Please become a “follower” of our blog and “like” our school’s Facebook page, if you haven’t already done so.

Have a terrific week!

Mrs. Stuhr

*** Homework is due Friday, October 28th (not 27th)

Week of October 17 - 21

Dear Parents,

Thank you for a very successful  Parent/Teacher Conference week. I truly enjoyed sitting with you and discussing your child’s base knowledge and talking about where we go from here.  If you have any lingering questions, please email me, ask Ms. Diane, or stop by the classroom. 

Starting... now! you will see a real shift in our academic focus. We will continue to review the letters of the alphabet and numbers 0-10 (with a goal of 30), but we are also going to start learning sight words and begin to interact more with numbers (adding and subtracting).  

Please note the new layout of our blog. The columns on the left and right highlight the spelling words for the week and our math concept for the week. Please review this information with your scholar in conjunction with the work due in the homework packet.  In the footer you will find the polls, archives, and followers. There is a new poll for you to answer, as well!

Sight Words

In 1948, Dr. Edward W. Dolch comprised a list of 220 high frequency words that we find in the English language. This Dolch List is still used today in classrooms across the United States to help beginning readers.  The words on the list are called “sight words” and/or "high frequency words" and they make up 50-70% of any general text. Most of the words can not be sounded out and therefore must be memorized.  It includes pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and verbs. There is a separate list of 95 nouns which students learn as well.  

For the rest of our school year, we are going to focus on the words that have been isolated for Kindergartners to learn. Each week, we will memorize 3-5 words and have a spelling test at the end of the week. During the week, then, our scholars will be responsible for memorizing the given words and be responsible for writing them correctly when I read them out loud during our test. Our first spelling test is on Friday, October 21st.

The column to the left of our blog has the first three words for this week. As you can see, these three are VERY common when we read. During the week, we will be incorporating these three sight words into our daily practices, giving your child every opportunity to see how these words operate.

If you have a chance to research the Dolch List, please pay attention to the Pre-Primer and Primer word lists. As an aside, we will begin to read more of author Jan Brett during the year, and I will be posting her Dolch List on the News Bulletin Board in our classroom so that you can see what words are coming up. Jan Brett is a lovely artist... so I’m using her lists specifically, just because they’re pretty. 

Mathematics

To begin to learn more about the numbers 0-30, we will start to manipulate those numbers for better understanding. Starting next week, we will be working out of an actual Kindergarten math workbook. Everyday will be a different math lesson and the completed workbook will come home, graded, on Fridays. The homework assigned for the week will reflect that work. 

Jumping Ahead 

Starting in December, we will explore some beginning reading. This will consist of decodable books - short (very short!) books that have words the scholars can “sound out.” We are going to set aside some reading time in class for us to learn to pronounce the words in the book.

Business as Usual

Of course, we will continue to do what we do best: learning a new concept and exploring it through art, science, and history. Expect to see some cool art projects come home and new family activities to do for homework. I will be assigning a new big project in November that will be due right before Thanksgiving break. 

Halloween Party

On Monday, I will post a sign-up sheet for our Halloween Party on our classroom's clipboard.  Halloween falls on a Monday, unfortunately, so I hope you are able to participate in some way...

As Always...

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to email me, stop by the classroom, talk to Ms. Diane, or leave a comment on our blog.  Please become a “follower” of our blog and “like” our school’s Facebook page, if you haven’t already done so.

Have a terrific week!

Mrs. Stuhr