Happy Friday!

We made it through our first real week of remote learning! Thank you all very much for helping your child to navigate this new world of Google Hangouts, videos, and assignments.  I realize the amount of work this takes to help facilitate the learning going on in your home and I am very grateful for your support, time, and efforts.  So...thank you again!  It was wonderful to meet with the children in small groups this week!  It really gives me a chance to get to work with them and gives them the opportunity to connect with each other.  We are off to a great start!  That being said, please note that next week is our Spring Vacation.  There will not be a new checklist of work on the Remote Learning Site and I will not be holding small groups next week.  However, I will be hosting my Story Time and Snack Time at 9:30am on April 24th, per the usual schedule.

For those families not listening in on our small group work this week, I will share what we covered.  In literacy, we did a review of letters and sounds and sight words.  We also practiced tapping out short words and writing down the sounds we heard.  I tried my best to remind the children that we are practicing writing words with lowercase letters and that when we write sentences, the first letter is capitalized and there is punctuation at the end.  In math, we did some quick ten-frame number review (counting the dots in the ten frame efficiently) and flashing fingers to show numbers.  We also worked on problem solving, showing thinking with numbers, pictures, and equations! A couple of thoughts regarding our small groups:  Please make sure your child has a paper and something to write with during each session and it is helpful if any toys or stuffies stay off to the side just to avoid any distractions!  Thank you!

I hope that you and your child have time next week to do some fun activities together (that don't necessarily require a computer screen!) and can get outside and enjoy the "vacation", but if you are looking for ideas in order to keep a routine, please visit the Additional Activities section on our Remote Learning Page.  There are some science exploration activities there.  Your child can also access Lexia online at anytime, can read books, or even work on their math practice book pages.

Lastly, please check out our blog as there are a couple of new posts this week.  One post has some stories read on video by one of our 4th grade book buddies.  Have a wonderful week!  I look forward to seeing anyone who wants to join me for Story and Snack on April 24th!  As always, please reach out with any questions or concerns.