Mr. G's Busy Bees: Santa is Coming!

Welcome to Kindergarten!

There is a wonderful sense of home when you walk through the front doors of Samsula Academy. I deeply believe that your child will find our school to be a warm and friendly place. I am very proud to be a part of the Samsula Academy School family. Once you have opened those doors you are a member of our family too.

I wish to welcome you to Kindergarten. Kindergarten is a new and exciting time for you and your child. It’s a time of change… new beginnings, new friends, new challenges and exciting discoveries! I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation for allowing me to be a part of your child’s life during this precious time of growth and discovery!

This is my honor to welcome you and your child into Kindergarten and into… my life. I will do my best to make this year in Kindergarten enjoyable but also filled with academics. My motto is: “The seeds I plant today will blossom into a flower tomorrow.” It will be my pleasure and privilege to watch your child’s personality and learning abilities blossom and unfold day by day.

I run a very effective classroom which is well structured but allows for fun and growth. I hold high expectations for all my students. Furthermore, I strongly believe in differentiated instruction. Research reveals that all students learn differently. Therefore, I plan my lessons to meet the needs of all students. It will be my honor to expand the growing minds of tomorrow and encourage them to become the great leaders of the new generation.

You will find very useful information on this blog. I will update it with events that are happening in our classroom, student work, and other related events. If you have any questions, you may contact me at cgibbs@readingedgeacademy.org

-Mr. Christopher Gibbs

"There ain't no school on the ground Mr. Gibbs!"
"Oh no, Jeremy. But it sure does feel like it!"

Snow has touched ground in Mr. Gibbs' classroom this week. We have been very busy celebrating the season in fun and exciting ways. We have been doing lots of crafts which are currently on display in our classroom. These crafts will be sent home with your child later next week. Below is a brief recap of our week.

In reading, we learned about the -ap word family. The students in Mr. Gibbs' class was busy building and blending -ap words. We read stories with ap words this week. On Friday, we had a spelling test. Every student got all ten words correct. Some of the words we spelt were: flap, snap, zap, and scrap. Mr. Gibbs is so proud of their success. This has been a great week in reading. Next week, we will be working with the -at word family and move on to the next set of Dolch words.

Tuesday was the 70th day of school! In math, we learned how to write numbers to thirty-five. This presented a problem to many of the children. It is a concept that students are not yet understanding. Please practice number writing with your child nightly. We also continued counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s to 100 using a hundreds chart. We will be learning about even and odd numbers next week. Students will learn about Mrs. Odd and Mr. Even on Monday. This is a great lesson students learn that integrates math, language, and social studies.

In science and social studies, we learned about
different holidays. We learned about Hanukkah. We played Dreidel and made potato pancakes. In the middle of the week was also RJs birthday. So, we had brownies with our potato pancakes.

Afternoon workshops were a blast! I am so thankful for all the parents who came throughout the week to help. It really helped a lot. We made a cute Christmas tree craft, a paper Elf, a paper Santa, and a stocking. We had a lot of fun and they turned out very cute. Next week, we will continue our Christmas themed workshops by making a fire place, snow globe, and more....

Important dates:

Dec 11 - Christmas Play at Samsula!
Dec 12 - Samsula Tractor Parade!
Dec 16 - ERD
Dec 17 - Spelling Test and Dolch Word Test
Dec 18 - Polar Express and Christmas Morning

December 18 is the BIG day in our class. Students will be wearing their PJs to school. We will be opening presents and celebrating the season. Santa will even stop by. We are asking you bring your gifts (for the Santa exchange) on Thursday, so that they are already placed under the tree. At 11:45pm we will go to our Polar Express party. We will go have hot chocolate and eat special treats. We are going to have a blast!

Sawayer was our terrific kid this week. We are all so proud of Sawyer.

Below is a slideshow of some of our December family projects - yay to go!