January

It has been quite a while since I have remembered and made time to post.  We had such a fun and busy December that it flew by!  As we finish up our first full week of school, we quickly are back into another busy season at school.  Next week, our class will study Martin Luther King Jr. and finish up our reports on arctic animals.  We have had a great time studying them so far, and I look forward to seeing all of the information they will have when our projects are finished.
 On to the busy but very exciting part- National Lutheran Schools Week.  January 22-29 will be a very busy and exciting time for all.  On the 22nd we kick off by singing at Church with the ham dinner following.  The Scholastic Book Fair will open after Church and will be available Sunday- Sunday before and after school, during lunch, and during our scheduled class time.  Each day, we will have a dress up day and a school-wide devotion and activity.  Starting next week, you may send in full cereal boxes to donate to the Anchor House and we will play dominoes with the boxes on Monday (23rd).  That day is also our 100th day being in Kindergarten which is a very exciting and busy day in itself.  We will dress in our 100 year old attire, bring our 100 item posters, and complete stations and activities the entire day that are centered around 100.  Expect an exhausted 100 year old child on Monday. 
The rest of the week we will dress up: Tuesday- PJ Day, Wednesday- Wacky Clothes, Thursday- Dynamic Duo, and Friday- Raider apparel.  For dynamic duo day,  Mr. B suggested that you dress in costumes such as a group of Super Heroes, Smurfs, Peanut butter and Jelly, Farmers, animals, etc.  If you don't have time to coordinate your child with another family, you can dress both parts and be one on the front and one on the back or bring in a stuffed animal to be the other half. 
Friday we will travel to Immanuel for the entire day as we worship with schools in Southern Indiana, and work with other K-3 students on games, crafts, music, and more.  Pizza will be provided for lunch and I will send home a permission slip next week for this trip. 
Don't forget that we will collect offering to support a student in the synod on Friday (29th)!  If you have any questions about ANY of the upcoming events, please let me know.

National Literacy Month

The month of November was busy with election, Thanksgiving and National Literacy Month.  We were able to stuff everything in and still gain valuable information from each topic.  National Literacy Month was headed by our National Junior Honor's Society and turned out to be a hit.  For the first time, we read one book as a school.  Mr. B began reading Matilda for the students after chapel, and the entire school read the book throughout the month.  Our box car movie celebration was exciting for everyone.  To have the opportunity to read a book and watch the movie at such a young age, is a great experience for our kindergartners.  The message that we were able to get across in kindergarten was that we are blessed by God with great parents that don't treat us the way Matilda's did.  While the students wanted to "jump in the screen and squish the Trunchbull" at times, I believe that this also sent across a hidden message about bullying and protecting others when they are in danger.  
I have attached pictures, but I also want to remind you that Sauers has a Facebook page and recently added an Instagram page: @stjohnssauers.  Feel free to add us and check out pictures from the entire school!

Thanksgiving

Through our two week study of the Indians and Pilgrims, we had many learning opportunities to prepare for Thanksgiving.  We studied the life of Native Americans through our social studies series Let's Find Out.  Learning more about Squanto and his knowledge of the land, connected us to the farming at that time.  We took a tour of a Native American village and met some modern day Wampanoag Indians in a video. Then, we spent an entire day studying the life of pilgrims.  We first used an interactive video to "sail" to the new world.  The students heard of the hardships and tight spaces on the boats.  We learned about the pilgrim's games, hunted and gathered, wrote on chalkboards for reading time, learned more about their clothing and homes.   For Jesus time, we worked in our Jesus Journals to web prayers.  We copied bible verses about being thankful and sang songs.  Check out the pictures to see some of the exciting things we did for Thanksgiving.

We also celebrated Alex's 6th birthday!

The past 2 Weeks!

 We have had such a great time in Kindergarten learning about signs of fall and the upcoming presidential election these past two weeks.  During our signs of fall week, we studied pumpkins and leaves as signs of changing weather.  We learned the parts of a pumpkin and even carved our own pumpkin. We talked about the slimy pulp inside a pumpkin reminds us of our sins. We carved a cross on our pumpkin to remind us how Jesus washed our sins away. (He cleaned out the mess of sin.) Then we sang “This Little Gospel Light of Mine” to remind us to let the light of Jesus shine in our lives. We are saved by Christ alone. Now we live our lives in thankful service to praise Him for this eternal gift. Oct. 31 is special because on that day years ago Martin Luther wanted people to know that we are saved by grace alone, faith alone and Scripture alone.  Thank you for sending in the pictures of Traveling Martin Luther.  They make a great a great hallway display and will be turned into a classroom book soon!  If you still haven't sent in your pictures, you can still email them to me.  Thank you to our classroom moms for putting on a great fall party. Your children were so cute in their costumes, the photographers for team photos had to get a few pictures for the yearbook!

Last week, we studied the election by reading the fiction stories Duck for President and President Squid.  Your children learned vocabulary words such as ballot, election, requirement, voting booth, etc.  While everyone wanted to discuss their "political opinion," we kept our elections simple by voting on cats or dogs, strawberries or grapes, and duck or farmer.  They enjoyed using our classroom voting booth to cast their votes!  We also listed attributes that would make us good presidents.  Your children write 2 sentences that told what would make us good future presidents.  We completed a web of ideas, draft sentences, and traced handwriting pages of our sentences before completing a final draft for the hallway.  

Peek at our Week- Spiders

This week was filled with spider explorations.  We started by writing down what we already knew about spiders and questions we had.  Through a series of non-fiction books and spider facts from the internet, we were able to learn the importance of spiders and the difference between spiders and insects.  With so many spiders around this time of year, we had a few 8-legged visitors come in to observe. By looking at spiders we found in the school through our bug viewer, we could see all the body parts and name their purposes. Ask your child what they learned about spiders! We ended our week with a science project using called Frozen Fizzy Spider Science and a fun fiction book "Diary of a Spider."

For our second quarter chapel offering we are collecting money for Lutheran World Relief.  We are working to meet a $500 goal by Christmas!

October 17-21 Newsletter

October 17-21

Fall Field Trips

We have had a great time over the last two weeks at our field trips! We went to the Dentist Office, Fire Station, Nursing Home, and Kelsay Farms.  I am so proud of your children for being respectful and polite at each location.  I apologize for the late post of pictures.