Mary Lynch Newsletter

Friday, February 16th - No School

Monday, February 19th - No School Teacher In-Service

Tuesday, February 20th - 5th and 6th grade Digital Citizenship Assembly at the High School

Thursday, February 29th - Kindergarten to Kimball Family Dentistry

Friday, March 1st - Thursday, March 14th Read-A-Thon

Tuesday, March 5th - Family Engagement Night 5:00-6:00

We want to recognize Jayden Serrano and Theron Tabor this month. Jayden has been working really hard to be a leader in the classroom. He has been giving his best effort and making great choices! Theron has been very helpful to her classmates, is always giving her best effort, and showing her peers the Longhorn Way! We are very proud of these two!

We’ve made it to February and have completed 100+ days in Kindergarten! We have been practicing counting to 100 by ones, fives, and tens and look forward to learning all about 2D Shapes next. We are learning about characters, setting, and sequence of events in reading. During our writing time, we have been talking about the 5 important things needed to make a sentence. We will start writing more sentences this month and drawing illustrations to match! We are becoming quite the little experts in stretching words to sound them out – exciting to see these kids grow as readers! In Science, students are learning all about the sun, the planets, and what causes the weather. In Social Studies, we are learning all about communities and what makes our community special!

Upcoming Events:

Kindergarten will be taking a field trip at the end of the month for Children's Dental Health month! Be looking for permission slips soon!

1st grade is reading a story about Arbor Day. We learned that it started in Nebraska and has since spread across the United States and many other countries. In Math, we are finishing up 2-digit addition and starting our measurement chapter. We have Read Across America/Dr. Seuss Day coming up on March 1. This is always a great way to celebrate Theodor Seuss Geisel and all the wonderful children's books he created.

In second grade we have been learning some new concepts. In social studies we have been learning about the formation of our country, In math class we are counting money and telling time. Reading we are learning to tell what the main idea of a story is and writing a personal narrative. The students just finished building towers with note cards, which we tested with weights and most of the towers passed the test. We have now started building towers from popsicle sticks and glue. We had fun on Valentine's Day and trading valentines.

In reading we are reading the Frog Princess and learning a lot of new vocabulary words! We are also working on our fluency and phonics!

We wanted to spotlight one of our TA's this week! Kyler Lusche helps out in the classroom and works with the students to accomplish their reading goals! This is Kyler and Decker working on Really Great Reading.

We had a lot of fun at our Valentine's Day Party!

Fourth graders decorate their door and their Valentine's Day boxes for the upcoming holiday.

A group of fourth graders is reading the book Because of Winn-Dixie while others are working on specific skills during Intervention time to prepare for graduation to fifth grade in just a few months!

Ms. Dorrell's fourth,writing classes have been writing informational essays in the last month. They are getting really good at creating outlines and composing short research documents!

Every year, fifth-grade science students get to learn about some of the different Biomes across our planet. They have completed all of the prep work before they can get started building one, but now they are ready for the best part of the process, designing a Biome of their choice! We are also working on Geography of the Colonies. The geography and climate of the thirteen colonies affected how colonists lived and worked.

Fifth classes played Ms. Dorrell's almost famous Egg Game a couple of weeks ago. They love it! All of the students begin with the same writing prompt, such as, "When I entered the abandoned school...". Then, every five minutes, students select a new plastic Easter egg from a bin. In each egg is a slip of paper with a new plot twist that the student has to work into their story. Examples are "add time travel to your story," or "add x-ray vision to your story". Each story gets stranger and stranger!

Sixth grade classes played Ms. Dorrell's almost famous Egg Game a couple of weeks ago. They love it! All of the students begin with the same writing prompt, such as, "When I entered the abandoned school...". Then, every five minutes, students select a new plastic Easter egg from a bin. In each egg is a slip of paper with a new plot twist that the student has to work into their story. Examples are "add time travel to your story," or "add x-ray vision to your story". Each story gets stranger and stranger!

We are also studying The Rise of Big Business. Inventions of the late 1800s changed people's lives.

This month we will be busy making Valentine's for our community partners: Kimball Public Library, Kimball Main Street Market, Nebraska Game and Parks/Wildcat Hills Nature Center, and the Nebraska 4-H Extension Youth program! We LOVE them and appreciate all they do for our program!! The kids will also be making love bugs, cherry puppy chow, chalk hearts and we will be learning to hand sew a felt pocket pal. Ms. Ashley will continue teaching us a new game each week. The ELITE leadership club has been busy publishing the bathroom news for Mary Lynch, and they enjoyed volunteering at the Upside Down Childcare Center! We are always happy to have volunteers come teach us a new skill, or play games! If you are interested please reach out: mpratt@kpslonghorns.org

New registrations are always welcome!!

Thank you for letting us have fun with your kids!

Ms. Marcie, Mrs. Wurdeman, Ms. Ashley, Ms. Barbi, Ms. Julie

Read-a-Thon is coming soon! Watch your child's Longhorn Mail folder for more information.

March 1st - March 14th

In PE we have been putting in a lot of work with basketball fundamentals. Looking ahead we will be participating in Jump Rope for Heart soon.

In art we have been busy finishing up our masks and dove right into clay. Students really enjoy getting their hands dirty and seeing what their pieces look like after they have been bisque-fired in the kiln. Below are some pictures of some third graders striking a pose with their masks and some clay pieces 5th and 6th graders have completed.