
KES 2023 December Newsletter ❄️
Building a Community of Belonging
MESSAGE FROM CRISTY AND KWEON
As this year draws to a close, we wish you a holiday season filled with warmth, health and happiness. May you experience meaningful moments with friends and family, and time to reflect and relax.
We are thankful this holiday season for the opportunity to partner with so many caring KES families in support of our students.
For those of you shopping for the holidays, our Math Curriculum Leader put together this list of math games- fun for the whole family!
Jeanne Hand has resigned as KES Library Media Specialist for personal reasons. We know you join us in wishing her success in future endeavors.
The PTO is supporting the following enrichment events in December!
Kindergarten Animals in Winter
2nd Grade Star Lab
3rd Grade Author Visit- Annette Whipple
4th Grade trip to Philipsburg Manor
5th Grade trip to Hudson River Museum & Planetarium
BUILDING A COMMUNITY OF BELONGING
5th Grade Day Before Thanksgiving Parade
1st Graders Teach Us About Gratitude
At November's Sharing Assembly the 1st graders shared their learning about GRATITUDE.
Sharing what they are thankful for...
Presenting their Gratitude Trees!
Proud of their work!
November Birthdays
Buddy celebrates November Birthdays at the Sharing Assembly!
(Buddy visits us at every Sharing Assembly for birthday celebrations)
Annual 5th Grade vs. Teachers Volleyball Games
On December 22 we will hold the annual 5th Grade vs. Teachers Volleyball Games. K, 1, 2, 3 and 4 grade classes will be there to cheer on the 5th graders!
5th Grade Families are invited from 10:00-11:15am. Teams and times will be sent out to parents the week of December 11.
December's Sharing Assembly
We will gather to share and celebrate the holiday season with a sing-a-long of our favorite winter songs!
- Winter Sleigh Ride
- Let it Snow
- Frosty the Snowman
- Winter Wonderland
- My Favorite Things
- What a Wonderful World
- Put a Little Love in Your Heart
- Jingle Bell Rock
Buddies
Fifth Grade/Kindergarten Buddies will meet and build their relationships as role models and learning partners. Buddy Class Morning Meetings are taking place again this month with new partner classes!!!
HEALTH AND SAFETY
Winter Weather
It's that time of the year when the weather dramatically swings. This week we've experienced wind chills in the 20's and weather also near 50 degrees. Please be mindful of the weather before sending your child to school. On days where the weather is below 40 degrees (wind chill included) we do not permit students to go outside for recess if they are wearing shorts. An exception is made when they are wearing tights underneath the shorts. On colder days, when the weather is in the 30's or colder, please provide your child with a winter coat. Hats and gloves are encouraged for these days. Should your child want to play in the snow, as most do, please know that they will need a winter coat, hat, gloves, and snow boots. At KES we make it a point to offer our students the opportunity to play outside for most of the year. Barring rain or weather under 20 degrees, we are enjoying the outdoors.Thank you in advance for your support in provisioning your child properly for the changing weather conditions.
PS- Please consider labeling/writing your child's name or initials on their articles of clothing.
CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION AND ASSESSMENT
K-5 Curriculum Updates
Students in kindergarten will pay attention to the words in books in order to develop pre-reading skills. Students will learn to read text from left to right, one word after another, and with one-to-one correspondence. They'll also draw on their growing knowledge of high-frequency words and of the alphabetic code to read familiar patterned books. In writing, kindergartners will explore how writers can “tell” about topics, like important places or things, by thinking about the parts of the topic and drawing and writing about them on pages in a book. They will write their own pattern books using a bank of familiar high-frequency words and their knowledge of the alphabetic code. In math, students will compare numbers to ten, as well as classify and count data. As we continue our science unit, Needs of Plants and Animals, the students will be given opportunities to form their own investigations examining whether plants need light and water to grow. Using the nonfiction book, Handbook of Plants, students find evidence about how plants use their leaves, stems, and roots to get the light and water they need to live and grow.
Students in first grade, the newly appointed Word Detectives, will take an even closer look at vowels and strategies for solving longer words. The Word Detectives will investigate silent e, the ee and ea vowel teams, vowel flexing, double consonants, and compound words. In writing, students will use mentor texts to guide their own how-to writing. Students will be encouraged to include comparisons, warnings, and tips for their readers. Math work will include learning strategies for adding and subtracting to 20. In science, our Plants and Animal Defenses unit will culminate with students creating a model of a marine animal and explaining how that animal’s defense works. First graders will end the month exploring our favorite snowman stories.
Students in second grade will be strengthening their informational reading skills by looking closely at nonfiction conventions like an index, a glossary, and even captions. We’re excited to continue using strategies to help us become stronger readers! Students are also writing Nonfiction Chapter Books in writing workshop. The children are choosing their own focus and sharing knowledge through their writing. We have books about basketball, sewing, Cape Cod, Brooklyn, dancing… all kinds of amazing topics. We can’t wait to share all we know with our classmates through our amazing writing. In math, we’re getting ready to start exploring subtraction. We’ll spend time learning all kinds of strategies to help us understand this important math skill. The second graders will also be finishing their investigation of Properties of Materials. As glue engineers, the students have explored different mixtures and ingredients to make a sticky, strong glue. We’ll be sending home a special project that was created using the glue students made that demonstrates all they learned in this unit!
Students in third grade will continue their work with informational texts in both reading and writing workshops. Our information writers will use “Boxes and Bullets” to help plan the main or central idea as well as the supporting details in their informational writing pieces. Information readers will also think about places in their reading that are worth stopping, thinking, talking, and jotting. In math, third graders will develop an understanding of the concept of area and a unit square. They will learn different ways to measure the area of a rectangle and relate area to multiplication as well as represent data on picture graphs and bar graphs. Students will continue their investigations on Balancing Forces. They will learn through firsthand experiences and come to understand how forces can cause stability or change in an object’s motion. Stay tuned to hear how third graders answer the question, “Do you have to apply a force to make an object move?”
Students in fourth grade will use their learning from the non-fiction reading lessons on text structures and work in groups to complete a research project on Indigenous people. In writing, students will construct a second persuasive essay with a continued focus on making a claim and supporting that claim with evidence. In Math, students will learn different strategies for dividing 2-,3-, and 4-digit dividends by one-digit divisors. We are wrapping up our Science Energy Unit and will work as engineers to use their understanding of electrical systems, designing solutions to help the fictional town of Ergstown solve their frequent blackout problem.
Students in fifth grade will focus on reading non-fiction books and articles, noting different text structures and multiple main ideas. Fifth grade journalists will be on the lookout for stories around our school, writing about events, people, and newsworthy things they notice. While fifth graders develop their calculation skills, applying multiplication and division with whole numbers and decimals, they will continue to work on solving multi-step word problems. In science this month, we will wrap up our exploration of the night sky, stars, and constellations. A field trip to the planetarium at the Hudson River Museum will culminate our study towards the end of the month. After our study of migration and settlement in the Western Hemisphere and how this led to the ancient civilizations of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec, fifth-graders will be making artifacts for an archeological museum.
FEATURED ART
Second grade artists created a mixed media collage where they painted papers with different tools, and both tore and cut those papers to create the texture over which they create a “frottage” which means rubbing in French. So we learned two French words: collage, and frottage. Ooh La La!
Third grade artists are finishing up the cutest clay cornucopias. They reviewed color theory to create a myriad of colors for their 'horn of plenty' and practiced many miniature sculpting techniques.
Focusing on sustainability in art, fifth grade artists will be creating “Lightbulb Fish”. We are collecting lightbulbs (used or not) and lightweight cardboard for this cool and complex papier mâché project.
If you’ve been looking for a place for those old, inefficient lightbulbs,
the art room will happily adopt them! Please send them in with bubble wrap,
which we will use to wrap future clay projects, so they can make it safely home.
Thanks so much for your support!
Art Donations
DIGNITY FOR ALL STUDENTS (DASA)
Cristy Harris, Principal and KES Dignity Act Coordinator 763-7700 or charris@klschools.org
Kweon Stambaugh, Assistant Principal (designee) 763-7705 or kstambaugh@klschools.org
Jessica Fulton, Social Worker (designee) 763-7669 or jfulton@klschools.org.