K3 The Place To Be!

Hello families,

I hope you all had a great week! I wanted to let you know that I was out of the classroom on Wednesday and Thursday for a dermatology procedure. It ended up being more involved than I expected, which is why I was also unexpectedly out on Thursday. The sub did a wonderful job and kept things running smoothly for both days, and we still had an awesome week!

Here’s a look at what we’ve been up to:

On Friday, we had a make-up art lesson with Ms. Valerie and did some fun number tracing with crayons. She introduced the class to numbers in art by reading a book where students searched for a certain number of objects hidden within each piece.

During our morning rotations, we had a special visit from Ella’s grandmother, who came all the way from Australia! She is an artist and helped at the art table as we painted Japanese vases to celebrate spring. When we return from spring break, we’ll be adding cherry blossoms to our artwork!

Another exciting activity we started earlier this week was our “March Madness” book bracket. We read the “Final Four” books and voted as a class for our favorites. After narrowing it down to the top two, we had a final vote…Don’t Trust Fish! took home the championship trophy!

In writing, we learned about Frida Kahlo by reading a few books about her life, her art, and the challenges she overcame. We talked about how Frida expressed her feelings and experiences through her paintings, even during difficult times. Students reflected on her message of strength, creativity, and embracing who you are, and then wrote a sentence or two about how they can “Viva la vida” (live life to the fullest), just like Frida, by being brave, creative, and proud of what makes them them.

In math, we continued working on subtraction and are learning how to read and create our own word problems. For example, we imagined apples on a tree, if a bird flew in and ate 3 out of 10 apples, how many are left? We also did another esti-mystery game. This time, we used a first-grade level challenge, and the students were so eager to take it on! It was exciting to hear them recognize patterns like 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, all the way to 99. It’s always such a celebration when the final number is revealed after a few clues, especially when so many students estimate correctly. I even shared that I thought the answer might be something different, it was a great learning moment for all of us!

I also introduced the students to Sudoku using four different colored Legos (“Lego Sudoku”). This activity helps build logical thinking, pattern recognition, and short-term memory in a fun, hands-on way.

In Bridge to Reading, we practiced identifying words with consonant /s/ blend sounds such as /sm/, /sn/, /sp/, /st/, /sw/, and /sk/. Students worked on building, decoding, and spelling these words.

I hope you all have a wonderful and relaxing spring break! Safe travels if your plans take you outside of Lafayette. I look forward to seeing everyone in April!

Lindsey Spansail