Season's Greetings!

Ho Ho Ho....Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! To get in the spirit of the holidays, we had our very own Winter Festival. We started out with a relaxing and delicious lunch in our classroom. We ate pizza, carrots and ranch, yogurt and a yummy Christmas cookie. This was followed by an afternoon full of crafts, activities and goodies. We decorated Christmas trees made of pinecones, made reindeer food, designed and ate Christmas trees made out of waffle cones and frosting, and even created snowman ornaments! We ended the day with a holiday movie and a special treat brought in by one of our classmates. It was a fun time for all! Thank you to all of the wonderful parents who helped make the holiday party a success!

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All Aboard.......

On Thursday night, December 16th, we had our annual Polar Express Night. Students from all grade levels came back to school dressed in their pajamas, ready for a magical night. The first stop for students and parents was a classroom or designated location where they stopped in to listen to the reading of the book "The Polar Express." Following the book reading they headed down to the cafeteria to do lots of fun crafts, eat delicious treats, make Christmas cards for soldiers, donate Toys for Tots and get a picture with Champ (our school's mascot) by the Christmas tree. This year we celebrated the Polar Express Florida style; which entailed yoo-hoos instead of hot chocolate and fun beach themed Christmas crafts. Champ even arrived in his bathing suit!! It was a fun and wonderful way to kick off the holidays!

What do you know HOW TO do?

We are just wrapping up our 4 week study on Functional writing. As I like to tell the students - "We put the FUN in Functional" in Kindergarten at NBE! The students have been telling how to do or make something that they are experts at in their writing. We have discussed all of the important components of a great functional writing piece that meets the Kindergarten Functional Standard - W.K.2 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic. The student will write in a variety of informational/expository forms (e.g., rules, summaries, recipes, notes/messages, labels, instructions, graphs/tables). They have learned how to title their work, include 4 steps or more in their piece, use transition words (first, next, then and last) and label the picture to match their writing. We have a class full of experts on many different "How To" topics! As a class we have written about How to Brush Our Teeth, Paint, Make a S'more, Put on Socks and Shoes, Get Ready for Lunch and many other exciting things that we know how to do. One of the students' favorite writing days was when I demonstrated "How to Make Chocolate Milk." After the students assisted in writing the steps, they went back to their seats and made their own chocolate milk. Here are some pictures to give you a glimpse of our "Fun"ctional Writing!