Picture Day, Flappy the Owl, Parent Teacher Conferences

I hope all of you have had a wonderful weekend! We had a great week in Kindergarten and a relaxing weekend was definitely needed!

Just a few reminders I wanted let you know about. This Wednesday, September 18th is picture day! Be sure to send your picture form with your child if you are planning on ordering any pictures. If you are not ordering, your child will still have their picture taken for the school! I can't wait to see all of them on Wednesday morning :)

We have started something new in Kindergarten! We are proud to announce.....Flappy the Owl!

Flappy was donated to our classroom by our para Miss Molly. We brainstormed ideas on what to name our new owl friend and had a class vote to narrow it down! Flappy was the winner and we love him!

Flappy gets to go home with one child in our class every weekend. He will come home in a bag with a notebook. Make sure your child has a lot of fun with Flappy and draws a picture of what they did together over the weekend! (Feel free to add real pictures as well..you don't have to!) Encourage your child to write something about what they did together! Flappy got to spend this weekend with Ms. Schlegel to start us off, and he had a really fun time! If Flappy comes to your house for the weekend, please be sure your child takes great care of him and remembers to bring him, his notebook, and his bag back to school on Monday to share what he did over the weekend with our class!

Great job with encouraging your children to bring their homework back every day! We are in full force with math and I know a lot of them are enjoying doing homework every night! When every child brings their homework back, we get a brownie to add to our pan! We have been at 4 brownies for a few days, so they are very motivated to get our surprise!

We have started our Social Studies unit and have been talking all week about American symbols. Ask your child about things like The White House, The Statue of Liberty, and The Liberty Bell. We are continuing with more American symbols this week and the children have loved learning about their country!

Parent teacher conferences are coming up! Please remember to send back the signed yellow half sheet that came home in Wednesday folders with a reminder of the date and time of your conference!

I hope your weekend was wonderful! I am reading for another week in Kindergarten!

One more week done!

We've been in school for almost 20 days! It's hard to believe since it is moving so fast! I hope all of your kids are loving Kindergarten. I am enjoying all of them so much! Even though we are all tired at the end of every day (including me!) we have a lot of fun during the day!

We have jumped full force into literacy stations and guided reading time! The children are learning how to work independently, with another person, or with a small group. They might have told you a few things they have been working on like syllables, rhyming words, and matching uppercase and lowercase letters.

We have also been working on Brownie Points in our room! Brownie Points are brownies we get on a cookie sheet when the whole class is following directions and listening! When we get to 5 brownies we get a prize!

This morning we wrapped up our Health and Safety unit! We have been learning all about how to stay safe at home, in the classroom, and outside. This morning we finished up with a safety walk around the school to look for some of the signs we had learned about! The kids spotted lots of stop signs and traffic lights and we even got to cross at the crosswalk! Ask your children if they recognize any signs while you're out and about!

We also made a safety snack today and created a traffic light out of graham crackers, frosting, and m and m's. They really loved it!

We had our first parent reader this morning thanks to LaTava! The kids loved it and were talking about it the rest of the day! We have lots of times open if anyone would like to come join us! Just shoot me an email!

I hope you all have a great weekend! I'm excited to jump into another week!

Just a few things...

Hi there!

I sent an email this morning about a book order. If you didn't get it, can you email me back with your currect email address so I can make sure I have it updated! Some of them came back undelivered! Thanks! (The email I sent is below if you are worried about not receiving it!)

Yesterday a book order was sent home with your child! If you have any interest in ordering anything from this book order, you can send it back with the order form filled out and checks made payable to Scholastic Reading Club (Please no cash!) These are due back by September 13th. If you would rather order online, you can go to this link https://orders.scholastic.com/MCN7Q and place your order through our classroom Scholastic website!

Scholastic has so many great offers on not only books, but also on items for our classroom. We get all kinds of special things when certain books are ordered so if there are any you have been searching for, take a look in the book order! Let me know if you have any questions!

Your kindergarteners are adjusting great to school! We have jumped right into every thing and they are loving it! More recently we have started Writers Workshop. This is a time when children have some time to write stories from their lives. If anything happens in the evenings, over the weekend, or with your family, remind your child that that would be a great story to write about in Writers Workshop! This helps them make the connection with things that happen outside of school! Here's some of the children doing their work during writing!

Our first homework assignment also went home today! They should've come home with a red homework folder. Please assist your child with the homework (they need to be the ones to complete it, but will need help with the words and procedures these first few times), and then send back the completed paper in the homework folder! We will not have homework every day, but when their red folder is in their backpack, they need to be sure to return their homework the next day! We have a special prize for returning homework without missing an assignment!

Have a happy weekend! :)

Our first week of Kindergarten

Hey there!

Our first week of Kindergarten is finished! I had such a great week last week with all of your kiddos and we jumped right into our normal routine this week!

Some papers went home this week including some information about our behavior plan in our room, information on a Homework Helper, and a sheet about the rules of Meadow Lane. Please read these papers, go over them with your child, then sign and return the two that need to be at school.

If you have not yet returned the forms about Elementary Census Information or Dismissal Plan for your child, please send them to school as soon as you can!

There has been some confusion about our specials days relating to the lunch schedule. Kindergarten does have an E Day and that is not shown on the August lunch schedule. The September schedule will be fixed, but for the rest of August just know that we will be adding an E Day to the schedule. This week specials schedule is as follows:

• Monday - Art (E Day)
• Tuesday - Library (A Day)
• Wednesday - PE (B Day)
• Thursday - Music (C Day)
• Friday  - Tech (D Day)

There will be information going home with your child about this as well. Sorry about all of the confusion and mix ups!

Thanks so much for all of your donations to our room! They will help out our class the entire year! I will leave you with some pictures from our center and math time in our room the past few days! Enjoy!

Welcome to Kindergarten!

Hi there!

I had so much fun meeting all of you at Open House! It was such a good turn out and it felt great to finally see all of my new Kindergarteners!

As a few of you know, this is my first year teaching, so this class is a special one for me :) These kiddos are my first group ever and I'm so excited to be a part of your child's year! We get to do our first year of school together and I know that helped a lot of the students feel a little less nervous at Open House when they know their teacher gets to do the first day of school with them too!

Just a few reminders about next week:

• We will be lining up on the Kindergarten playground near the West gate.
• Feel free to drop your child off or wait in line with your child. But please encourage them to stay in line with their class. It is so important these first few days and weeks of school to keep consistent routines so they can learn all of the things they will be doing every single day!
• When it comes time to walk into the school, please tell your brand new Kindergartener goodbye with a hug! It will be an emotional few minutes for everyone and I know they will be nervous, but please reassure them that you will be back to get them, they will be okay, and they will have so much fun in Kindergarten!
• Please remember to either load money into your child's lunch account, send lunch money with them, or send a cold lunch to school with them. We will be practicing lunch room procedures in the morning on Tuesday so they will know what to do when it's time for lunch!
• I know a few parents were concerned with the fact that there aren't bathrooms in our rooms. We will be going over bathroom procedures right away on Tuesday and will take a few group bathroom breaks during the day, as well as eventually reach the point of going to the bathroom with a buddy and a pass on their own! If you want to keep a change of clothes for you child in their backpack every day, that would be a great idea as well!
  
• When you pick up your child on Tuesday afternoon, our class is going to be in the same line that we meet at in the morning. Children will need to pick up something from me before they go with you so I can be sure they are leaving with the right person. Also, so I can start placing kids with the right parents and getting to know you as well! Please discourage your child from running out of line to you! I know they will be so excited to see you, but I need to be sure I have a count of all children!

See all of you on Tuesday! I'm so excited to start the year!

About Your Teacher

Hi there and welcome to Schlegel's Nest!

I'm Tristan Schlegel. I'm originally from Columbus NE and currently live in Lincoln NE with Adam, Wrigley the puppy and Perry the cat. :) I own a photography business called Bliss Photo. I love Saturday mornings, working with kids, changing seasons, music, traveling, being outside, and spending time with my friends and family!

I graduated from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln and taught Kindergarten at Meadow Lane Elementary last year. This year, I decided to take on the challenge of 2nd grade!. I am so excited to have this experience and to see where this journey takes me!

Feel free to send any questions my way at tschlege@lps.org

I'm looking forward to having your child in my room this year!