Please note that all blog/newsletter updates will from this point on be posted to the drive folder here!

Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or comments moving forward. We are all in this change together!

Hello parents!! Before I get into the meat of this update…this week we learned about animal characteristics and started to separate them into different groups based on those characteristics. We crafted animals that have feathers, scales, fur, and the special jellyfish and of course we have kept growing our plants. Next week we will be continuing to look at these special characteristics but it will be done through LONG DISTANCE LEARNING!! We may not be in school, but this time is not a vacation! We want to make sure that kiddos are keeping up with their skills so that when we come back we have not lost any time!! This means students should be academically active everyday just like they were in school!

Things your child is coming home with today (if they were here/the items were picked up): orange folders, report cards for Quarter 3 (with comments, math and reading test results), unfinished work from the week (in the return to school side of the folder), German and Math composition journals (they will be working with these over the closing), and our plants!

What does Long Distance Learning mean? This means having class instructional time that can be completed at home. Please consider these lessons as vital and extremely important for your child! Students will need access to an internet accessible device in order to watch and listen to lessons that I will record DAILY during the school closing. They should work with materials: paper, pencils, print-out (if accessible). This means that their learning is interactive!! It should not just be your child staring at a screen for 3 hours, but actively participating as if they were sitting in my class! Our first day of lessons with be TUESDAY the 17th. 

How will it work? Everyday I will have 2 lessons recorded and posted in a special drive folder (Please let me know ASAP if you cannot open this folder. Currently there is only 1 sub folder called 17 March that is currently EMPTY. ). Each lesson should take around 45 minutes one being in Math and the other our PYP curriculum or German. Ms. Little will also be posting an English lesson. So in total your child will have 3 lessons that they should participate in. Ensure that your child is comfortable with the video commands like pause!! My drive folder will have my video lessons as well as any printouts that I will be using in the lesson. If you have access to a printer, you may print the worksheets that I attach in the folder so that your child can work alongside what I am working on. If you do not have access to a printer, your child should still be actively participating by either handwriting/drawing what I am working on or repeating vocabulary and staying engaged. Along with work alongside my video teachings, there will also be an extra math and PYP activity for each day that will be in English! Consider this work as independent review/homework that you should help your child complete and check for accuracy.

Will this work be graded? I cannot stress how important it is that this break not be treated as a vacation!! Losing 2 weeks of instructional time suddenly can have a HUGE impact on your child’s success for the unit. That being said, the work done on the break will not be put into infinite campus for grade BUT, I will be collecting and checking it to see how ready the class is in each subject.For ALL work done over the break, PLEASE collect it in the orange folders to be sent back into school. Remind your kiddos everyday that this is NOT A VACATION and that they are responsible for learning and participating like they do every single day in class! The less of the school routine they lose during this time, the smoother the transition will be for them!

What will my child need each day for the video lessons? A device connected to the internet, pencil and eraser, things to color with, paper (either printed out from my lesson, written separately, or working in one of their journals). I also suggest doing these lessons when at home rather than in the car or at a restaurant etc. I am going to keep my lessons true to how I teach in the class which may mean movement, repeat after me, pause the video and go collect stuffed animals to work with, etc. Because of this it is important that they be at home in a place where they are free to move around and work the way they would in my class.

Should they do each lesson one after the other? Because this is so new (for me too) it may take the whole first week just feel adjusted to it. I would recommend doing one lesson in the morning, give them a break to play/eat, then do the next lesson, another break, and then the last lesson. You may find it works better for your child to get all the lessons done in the morning, or even just half a lesson and a small break. For the first few days (if can spare it) you could sit and do the lessons with your kiddo. This will help them feel more engaged. Or at the very least check on them every 10 minutes to see if they are engaged. If they are staring quietly at the screen and not engaged, have them pause to move around and get back to it.

What happens when we come back? Those orange folders should come back to school stuffed with work completed over the closing! Make sure you send your kiddos back with their orange folders, the german and math composition journals, and any checked out library books. After that we will continue as normal unless we hear otherwise.

Questions? Just like this isn’t a vacation for you kiddos, it isn’t a vacation to me either. I will be by my phone/computer during the week so if you aren’t able to access something, or have ANY questions please ask me. This is a brand new system for all of us but we can make it work!

Happy Friday y’all!! And what a BUSY week we had here in KG. On Monday and Tuesday we kept up our talks about plants and even planted our own plants!! They sprouted TODAY and we will continue to grow and observe them until the end of this unit! Then on Thursday we introduced our class fish and voted on names for them. We have 4 lovely Goldfish named: Helmud, Giesela, Paxi, and Sylbi and everyday one lucky student will get to feed the fish! Along with the introduction of our fishies, we learned about how fish breath and the parts of their bodies. It was a jam packed week of learning!! Next week we will be expanding our view of animals and start exploring the characteristics of animals and how we can sort them into groups.

Lets jump right into the rest of our news~~

• Library Books!! Just a quick reminder to send in your library books if you have not already by Monday as we will be visiting the library again to check out new books!
• Here on time!! Here at the lower campus we have started a new Tardiness initiative to help encourage showing up on time! For everyday that the entire class comes in on time we receive a class sticker! Each week our class wolf is moved on a race board based on how many days of 0 tardies we have. The winning class will earn a prize! Let’s try our best to be here on time and ready to learn!!
• Report Cards!! Next week on Friday I will be sending home the Quarter 3 report cards!! They will include grades from Unit 4 as well as personal comments from Mrs. Little and I. You can see the grades that will be on the report already on infinite campus. Speaking of grades, you may have noticed a lack of new grades since starting our new unit. We decided that we will delay entering grades in the system until Quarter 4 starts since we have only been in the unit for 2 weeks it would be unfair to enter a ‘final grade’ for that standard. That being said, expect a lot of grades to hit the system once we officially start Quarter 4. As always, don’t hesitate to reach out if you are at all concerned with what you are seeing in the grade book.
• Language Masters!! I just want to brag a little bit because OUR ENTIRE CLASS HAS RECEIVED THEIR BLUE RIBBONS!!! That is 10 days of only speaking German!! I am sooooooo proud of every single one of these kiddos! They have been working hard to stay in language and have even helped keep each other in language! I am working now on a little class reward for them so look forward to that 🙂
• Influenza~!! Like i mentioned last week we had several students who were diagnosed with the flu and missed school. Please be sure to read this official notice from the nurse and know the signs of when to keep your child home. While it is important to come to school and learn, our number one priority should be being healthy!!

Vocab from the week: Living- Lebendig , Plant – Pflanz, Dirt- Erde, Water- Wasser, Air- Luft , Fish- Fisch, Gils- Kieme, Fins- Flosse, Scales- Schuppen

That’s it from me y’all. Have a fantastic SUNNY weekend!!

Well we did it! We all made it through the first week back from vacation!! (only 5 more weeks till Spring break but who’s counting?) This week we reviewed our living and non-living concepts and moved swiftly into plants and their needs! We made a flip book and drew lots of diagrams. Next week we will be planting our very own seeds and growing them here in class!! I will also be introducing some swimmy friends~~

Lets get into the news~~

• Library Books!! We visited the library this Monday and nearly the whole class checked out books (see the agenda). If your kiddo has not returned their book this week, make sure they bring it back on Monday as we go fairly regularly every Monday to the library (and the rare occasional Wednesday)
• Read Across America!! Monday March 2nd the kiddos are invited to dress up as their favorite Dr. Seuss character or to wear pajamas in celebration of Dr. Seuss’ birthday!!
• Book Fair! At the upper campus we will have our spring book fair. In the orange folder you will see a book fair wish list as well as a flyer. If you are interested please take a look and consider checking it out.
• Spring Picture Day!! Spring pictures will be taken on March 19th at the lower campus and March 20th at the upper campus. Students are allowed to be out-of-uniform for spring pictures (out-of-uniform rules apply). Class pictures will also be taken. Don’t miss out!
• Flu!! We had a good handful of kiddos out for the flu this week! Let’s all stay healthy and stay home if we are sick so we can prevent the spread.

That’s it from me. I hope y’all have a healthy and happy weekend! 🙂

We did it parents~~~ we made it to our February winter break!!! I wanna throw a big THANK YOU to all the parents who made it out to our PYP event. The kiddos LOVED presenting to y’all and I hope you were able to hear some of the German they are working so hard to use every single day in class!! When we come back we will jumped head first into our new unit: Sharing the planet. We will learning about living and non-living and the difference between those 2 ideas, the needs of plants (where we will grown our own), animal characteristics (class pet?!), and about maps and some basic geography! It’s a jam packed unit with lots of hands on activities that kiddos will LOVE!

Let’s get into some news:

• Winter Break!! Just to reiterate that there is NO SCHOOL next week the 17th-21st!! Enjoy your week off~~ Just know that will be away for the break so I will not be as fast as answering any emails! 🙂
• Monster Presentations!! If y’all check the photo gallery, you will find a video of each group’s presentations! This was just one day of presentations, so don’t be concerned if you see your child did not speak! I collected grades for the presentations over 3 days which gave the kiddos lots of chances to show me what they know 🙂
• Karnival!! Tuesday, February 25, 2020 We will be celebrating Karnival in class through dress up and by eating traditional German donut-style pastries called: Krapfen! Students in the German track may dress as children do for Carnival in the German-speaking countries. Costumes are usually simple and may involve some face paint. Masks are not typically needed (e.g. instead of wearing a lion mask, the face would be painted as a lion face). Please remember that costumes should be funny/happy rather than scary.
  Here are some suggestions:
  Jobs (e.g. baker, police officer, firefighter, etc.)
  Animals (e.g. cat, lion, panda, etc.)
  Magical (e.g. witch, wizard, fairy, etc.)
  Story or Book Characters (e.g. princess, prince, Pippi Longstocking, etc.)
• Dress Code Enforcement!! After we are back from the break we will be more strictly (the way we should be) enforcing the dress code. Please review the policy for the dress code and make sure your boys are wearing belts, that shirts are the correct color and have the school logo, and that pants are not “jogger” style with stretched ankles. Starting after the break I will send an e-mail with the first violation and upon the second I will send home a violation ticket.
• School 5k Fun Run!! Check the info blasts about how to register for the event! We always have a great turnout and it is a fun event for the whole family!
• Things we need in class!! I am desperately out of thick coloring markers! The class has made our current set last as long as possible, but we are down to the last box!! If you are able, I would LOVE a few extra boxes to push us through to the end of the year. The other thing I am near out of is highlighters!! If you have a couple, I would love to get them from you. They can be any color, but please long/pencil shaped so the kiddos can keep their pencil grip when using!

I hope y’all have a FANTASTIC  9 days off! I look forward to coming back refreshed and ready for the next chunk of school 🙂

Hello parents we have made it through another week! Did anyone else feel like this week just dragged by soooo slowly? Just me? Anywho~~ we spent this WHOLE WEEK working on our creations for the summative assessment! They all worked so hard on them and they are looking great! Next week marks the end of Unit 4 and the start of Unit 5: Sharing the planet! We will reflect on unit 4, practice our presentations of the creations, and start learning new things! Unit 5 is all about the planet: living v. non-living, animal characteristics, how plants grow, AND about maps and globes! We will start next week with just Living and Non-living as we continue to practice our presentations 🙂

Let’s move on to some news!

• Parent Event!! Wednesday Feb 12th @ 8:45 in the GYM we will be having our parent event!! You are all invited (i hope you saw the cute invitations in the agenda) to come see our amazing creations and hear your kiddos speak in German!! Unfortunately, no siblings of any kind will be allowed at the event! If you are unable to come it’s OK! I will be filming our in class presentations so you can see the presentation at home! I look forward to seeing y’all on Wednesday!
• Chinese New Year!! TOMORROW @ 1-4  here at the Lower Campus! Please come out for some fun food, games, and presentations from our Mandarin track! I’ll be helping out there so I look forward to seeing those of y’all that make it! 🙂
• Grades!! Those of you who check the grades frequently may have noticed I deleted some grades in the German Writing grades section. We noticed there were some discrepancies as Mrs. Little has an ELA handwriting grade so we are changing what these grades are. For now, all handwriting based grades will be in Mrs. Little’s ELA grades. The German Writing grades will consist of writing ability/production and will not be based off handwriting neatness/correct letter formation. These grade will be more: can the student copy letters from the board? Does the student need to trace words or can they write free hand? If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask me.
• Mobymax!! We have some new math assignments on Mobymax for y’all that have to do with addition and subtraction! We will be doing an assessment to see where the kiddos are on this in Monday, so this weekend would be a great opportunity to get some practice in!
• Language Experts!! Some of you may have notices a blue ribbon on your child’s backpack this week! I am happy to announce that most of our class has either received the blue ribbon or is over half way to receiving that ribbon!! The ribbon is received upon 10 days of 100% German usage during instructional time! If you see that blue ribbon on your kiddos bag please congratulate them as it is AWESOME to see them work so hard for those rewards!!
• Teacher Job!! I also wanted to make a quick note about a new job in my class called : Lehrerdienst. This basically means Teacher Job. During our morning circle, I select one student who has my job. They instruct the class, they remind students to follow rug rules, and they select students to help complete tasks. This job is a HUGE jump in ability for the kiddos! I go through the class at random with each kiddo being able to go once before we reset. But kiddos also have the option to pay 15 blue tickets for the opportunity to be the teacher (they can do this 2x in one rotation). I just wanted to keep y’all in the loop about this new role in class in case the kiddos talk to you about it 🙂
• Valentine’s Day!! It is next week on Friday!! If you would like to bring in valentines in for the class please make sure you bring in enough for the WHOLE class! If your child only brings in a few for their best friends, they will NOT be allowed to pass them out!! We wont be having a party, but I will have time for kiddos to share valentines. Please keep in mind no edible treats! (tattoos, stickers, toys, erasers, etc)! Please don’t bring in donuts/cupcakes or other edible things. If your kiddos walks in with them, they will be taken away! I will share a list of the class names in the email I send to yall 🙂

That’s it from me for today!! Don’t hesitate to reach out if y’all have any questions! Happy weekend 🙂

Happy happy Friday everyone!! First off I wanna say WOW what a cute rockstar day!!! So many kiddos dressed up for what was an awesome kindness week!! Our class rocked it with the kind acts 🙂

This week we learned about sink/float and did a fun experiment in class. We continued our work on materials in order to lead us to our Summative Assessment!! As of today the kiddos have already been put into groups and have brainstormed what kind of monster/creature they want to create! Next week we will be building and creating ALL WEEK!! They will present to me on Friday in order to prepare for the parent even on the 12th. Lets just jump into that news!

• Orange folders and grades!! Pllleeease empty out those orange folders today as they are STUFFED with fun activities we did. Also, you may notice that I marked some of them with 3’s or 2’s. I have matched the title of the worksheet with my grade. I have done this so that you can see some of the grades I take and actually connect it to the work in the orange folder. Don’t ever hesitate to ask any questions about it!
• Coins for Australia!!  is a charity that is working towards rehabilitation of the Australian animals and their habitats that were destroyed by the forest fires. In my classroom I will have a container that the kiddos can put coins into (any kind of coins not just pennies). The class with the most coins by weight will win some awesome prizes!! 🙂
• Parent Event!! Feb 12th @ 8:45 in the GYM  will be our parent event for this unit!! The kiddos will present to you their amazing creations that we will be building all this week!! There are no siblings or other children allowed!! I look forward to seeing y’all at the event and I will try my best to take videos of the presentations for those of you unable to attend!!
• No More Trash!! Y’all really delivered on the trash cause I have SOOOO much of it!! After Monday, please do not send anymore for the rest of the week. If your kiddo sees a really cool bottle cap that they want to use in their project, then yes, they can bring it in. But no more big shipments!

Well I can’t think of anything else for now! Have a great weekend y’all!!! 🙂

Hello parents and happy Friday! I am sorry for the delay in posting this update of the blog, but I was out sick today!! During the week we experienced natural materials by weighing, measuring, and observing key features about them. We also introduced how natural materials become man-made materials: trees to wood and paper, water to ice, sand to glass, etc. Next week we will be continuing this discussion as well as thinking more about things like plastic and metal.

• Yearbooks! It’s that time of year again — YEARBOOK TIME! Deadline for purchase March 27th. To order your yearbook, click here:
  http://jostensyearbooks.com/?REF=A07636630
  (Or visit schoolannual.com: Click on “Buy your student’s yearbook.” Enter school name, city and state.Place your order!)
  To buy a graduation ad for K, 5th ad 8th, visit the School Store:
  https://www.icsatlanta.org/store
• Grades! I posted a new batch of grades this week. As usual, if you have any concerns please let me know and I will give you as much info as I can about your kiddo.
• MobyMax!! there are some new assignments up on mobymax for y’all to work on at home. As usual we will also be working on them during math centers throughout the week.

Not too much to report this week! Hope y’all enjoy the weekend!

Vobab: tree- Baum, wood- Holz, water- Wasser, Paper- Papier, Natural Material- Natuerliches Material, Man-made material- Kuenstliches Material, clay- Ton, dirt- Erde

YAY Parents we made it 100 Days in Kinder!!! Wooohooo~~~~ This week we started to introduce and explore natural materials please read below about Homework to find out more! Next week, we will continue to explore and sort our natural materials and combine them with man made materials. This of course is all leading up to our Summative assessment where we will be building creatures/monsters from “trash” as teams and present them to y’all in February! Please keep collecting the trash but do not sent it in yet!!My little room can’t handle it just yet!

Let’s move in to the neeeewwwws!

• No school Monday!! This Monday the 20th there will be NO SCHOOL! Enjoy your long weekend and I’ll see the kiddos on Tuesday 🙂
• LICE!! I hope y’all read my e-mail about our lice “outbreak” in class. Please try to check your child weekly/regularly! Please read this letter from our nurse for more information and how to help prevent your child from getting lice! And pleeeeeaaaaase don’t send your kiddo to school with lice. The more on top of it we are now, the less of a problem it will be moving forward!
• Homework! Because the weather this week was so bleh~ we weren’t able to go outside during our class time to collect natural materials. Sooo I am passing the torch off to y’all!! There will be plastic bags in the orange folders today. Each student is responsible for collecting a few examples of a material. I decided to do this based off the table your child sits at in my class. There will be colorful dots on the bags Blue= sand/dirt Black= rock/stone Green= wood Red= leaves. Make sure the items you put in your baggies are NATURAL. No wooden toys or kinetic sand or shiny polished gems. We want real outdoor materials! (If your child was absent today I will send you your information separately~ Pleeeeaase collect your items and have your child send them in by Thursday the 23 so we can use those materials in class!!
• The Weather~ like I said it was bad this week. When it wasn’t raining, the play ground was soooo wet and soggy that we didn’t have ANY outdoor recess this week. Today was the first day this week that we went outside. So if you get the chance, please let the kiddos play outside a bunch this weekend. They were going stir crazy on me!
• School Wide Reward!! Our school has collected enough blue tickets to receive another school wide reward! Friday will be CRAZY HAIR DAY!! Send your kiddos to school with their wildest and craziest hair!!
• Mobymax! As usual there are some new assignments up on Mobymax! In my class students work on Mobymax for about 20ish minutes a week during math centers! If you are able, please allow them to practice more at home to reinforce these new skills we are learning in class!
• Language Experts Ribbon!! Starting today we are doing language expert ribbons!! I introduced it to the kiddos today as Gumball’s. If students stay in the German language ALL day then they will receive a colored in gumball on their chart. If they collect 10 the will receive a blue ribbon to display on their bag and have a shoutout during the announcements! As they collect more, they can earn more ribbons! Read more here!!!

Well everybody~~ That’s it from me for this week! Have a FANTASTIC LONG WEEKEND and I’ll see everyone ready to go on Tuesday!!

We did it! We made it through our first week back after the break!! And what a week it was~~ we jumped right into our new unit about how we express ourselves starting with our 5 senses!! Each day we explored a new sense and the body part that goes along with it. We played LOTS of game that put our individual senses to the test: blind writing/walking, sensory box, blind smell test, blind listening test, and of course the favorite taste test!! I think the kiddos had a blast putting their senses to the test this week!

Next week we will be shifting focus to how we experience natural materials (wood, water, dirt, etc). This will involve heading outside to collect materials, observe the word, and maybe even have a few experiments about sinking and floating! In math we will also be continuing to work on ADDITION!! Kiddos are expected by the end of the unit to be able to add fluently (without fingers or objects) from 0-5 and be able to add with objects up to 20! Something to do at home to reenforce what we are learning would be to ask one or two addition questions for quick response or do have them count everyday objects i.e: you have 3 markers, here are 5 more…how many do you have now?

Now on with the newsss:

• 100th Day of School! Thursday Jan 16th is our 100th day of school!! We mark this special milestone with the whole school being able to dress up as someone 100 years old (or just grandma/grandpa)! Some tricks for this: baby power in the hair will make it look “grey”, glasses on strings, long skirts, suspenders etc! Have fun with it so we can celebrate our 100th day!!
• Trash!! Don’t forget to be collecting some of your trash for donation of our summative assessment!! I think I will start collecting it in my class the last week of January so that we can build our big creatures! Things that are great to donate: thin cardboard (cereal box style), plastic bottles (clean please), bottle caps, can tops/bottle tops, tissue paper rolls, fun shaped containers! Please no cans or glass!
• Parent Event!! In conjunction with out trash creatures we will be doing an in school parent event on Jan 13th where the kiddos will be presenting their amazing trash creations in school to y’all!! More info on this event will come, but go ahead and mark that date down!
• Puzzle Donation!! One of you amazing, super awesome parents sent me a donation bag filled with puzzles! (THANK YOU SO MUCH) Unfortunately I have no idea which one of you did such an awesome thing as the receptionist did not take down your name so I have no way to get your tote bag back!! Please email or text me so that I can send your bag back home with your kiddo! 🙂
• GERMAN CLUB!! For our spring clubs, there will be an awesome German club!! Mrs. Shepherd (the PE teacher) does a very fun and interactive German club where students will pay trivia, German children’s games, learn traditional dances etc. This is a great opportunity for your child to get some more German exposure at school!! If you are interested please fill out this form If not enough people show interest in the club, then it will not actually take place 🙁 Check out the sign up here https://www.icsatlanta.org/clubs
• Grades!! New set of grades are posted in O3 on infinite campus! Please remember we just started these new concepts so don’t be concerned about a 2 in the grades.

That’s it from me for this week parents! Have a great weekend and please let me know if you have any questions 🙂