Mr. Nichols' Kindergarten Updates

Action Items and Upcoming Dates

Newsletters start with Action Items and Upcoming Dates. These are the most important part of the newsletter and might require action on your part. Please be sure to review and complete the action items first. Some items may repeat from the previous weeks depending on duration. Additional news/info/photos that do not require action will continue after the action items.

Action Items:

Happy Birthday - Happy Birthday to Greyson on October 15th. We will celebrate him in class that day. Happy Birthday to Klyde on October 22nd. We will celebrate him in class that day.
New Student - Please welcome Booker to our class. It is great to have you! We are now at 14 students.
Individual Student Photo Day - Yuen Lui Studio will photograph individual portraits at Olympic Hills Elementary on Thursday, October 15. Families can preorder portraits here: 2026-27 Olympic Hills Elementary Picture Day 10/15. Print orders will be delivered to the school in 3-4 weeks after picture day; digital orders will be sent via email from no-reply@imagequix.com. Contact Yuen Lui Studio with any questions. Thank you!
Specialists Newsletter - Click here to see the specialist newsletter update for September.
Absences and Tardy Arrivals - Please avoid unexcused absences and tardy arrivals. If your student is absent, please be sure to call the office or send me a Talking Points text with the reason so that we can see if it can be excused. While the curriculum is designed to spiral back to topics previously covered, each unexcused absence can remove a chance for that student to have another learning moment with the skill being taught.

In kindergarten, a student arriving with an unexcused tardy can have an affect on the learning of the whole class, not just the tardy student. I have to stop teaching to direct the tardy student and catch them up on what we are working on. If I have to do this for two or three students each day, this can affect our progress as a group. Being tardy of course happens from time to time, but please avoid it when possible.
Snack Donations - Right now, we still have plenty of snack. Keep an eye out for donation requests in future newsletters.
Mobile Food Pantry - Olympic Hills will have a food pantry in the staff parking lot from 2-4 PM on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month. We just had our one yesterday. Come get some yummy stuff!
Otter Gear - New Otter Gear from the PTA is here! School themed clothing items can be ordered from the PTA by clicking here. Today, October 9th, is the last day to order. You can also donate to scholarship gear for others or request a scholarship for gear.
PTA Newsletter - Click here to see the latest PTA Newsletter for more upcoming events, community news, and volunteer opportunities!
Olympic Hills Move-a-thon - Our annual Move-a-thon fundraiser put on by the PTA will be Friday, October 30th. This is an in-school event. If you are interested in helping, contact the PTA.

Upcoming Dates:

Friday 10/9 - Teacher In-Service Day - No School
Thursday 10/15 - Individual Student Picture Day
Friday 10/16 - 6:00-8:00 PM (doors at 5:30 PM) PTA Movie Night: Kiki's Delivery Service (in the cafeteria)
Thursday 10/22 - Mobile Food Pantry 2-4PM
Friday 10/30 - Olympic Hills Move-a-thon

Upcoming Learning Goals

Social Justice: I can define identity. I can explain how race, ethnicity, and my community are part of my identity puzzle.

Social & Emotional: I can recognize mistakes are a part of learning by encouraging myself and others when we make mistakes.

Emerge ELA: I can learn the sound of the letter Short Aa. I can learn about how we can each play a role in our school.

Math: I can compare numbers 0-5.

Science: I can learn about what plants need to live and grow.

Highlights and Photos

Reminder: Please do not share these photos on social media. Please respect the privacy of all students and families. If you prefer your student does not appear in newsletter photos, please let me know as soon as possible and I will remove them from this newsletter and omit them from future newsletters.

Science - Do Plants Need Water?

After learning that all animals need food that they eat to be present in their habitat to live and grow, we realized that we needed to figure out what monarch caterpillars eat to see if that food went missing when the town of Mariposa Grove converted their grassy field to a vegetable garden. We learned through reading reference books that monarch caterpillars eat ONLY milkweed. Then we observed and compared photos of the field and the garden, looking for milkweed plants based on the illustrations of milkweed from our reference books. Sure enough, we found milkweed plants in the field but not in the garden.

With our new knowledge of the missing milkweed, we decided that the kids of Mariposa Grove need to plant milkweed in the garden to help bring back the missing caterpillars. This led us into our next question: what do plants need to live and grow? We discussed what we though we knew already and decided that plants probably need water, sun, and soil. To confirm this, we decided to do two investigations. We read in a reference book that garlic cloves need water to grow and sprout roots to absorb the water. So we took some garlic cloves and placed one in a cup with water and one in a cup with no water to see what happens. We wanted to know about more than just garlic, so we also planted radish seeds, setting aside a few of the planted seed cups to receive no water while we made sure to water our own plants each morning.

In both our investigations, the cloves/seeds that received water sprouted roots and began to grow stems! The ones that did not get water only a grew tiny roots due to the water already present in the soil. We also took some time record our observations as scientists by drawing what happened to our garlic. Next, we will investigate if plants need sun to grow by keeping one of our radish plants in the closet and the other in the window to see what happens. We'll also dig into some more reference books. Here are some photos from our garlic and radish investigations.

Counselor Keri - Bucket Fillers

Counselor Keri visited us to do some tier 1 Social Emotional Instruction with a classic story about bucket filling. The story has us imagine that everyone has an invisible bucket. Making kind choices can help fill others' buckets. Making unkind choices scoops or dumps out others' buckets. Sometimes, people will make unkind choice because they are feeling frustrated that their bucket is empty. The best thing we can all do as a team is work together to keep each others' buckets full. Counselor Keri prepared a T-chart that we helped add ideas to for helping fill buckets and avoiding emptying buckets. We will continue to add to this during our social studies choice time. Thanks Counselor Keri!

Social Studies Choice Time

Here are some more photos of social studies choice time where we practice our standards by independently self-regulating, building cooperative play skills, and solving conflict. It has been really great to see someone start a game or activity solo and then watch it grow as more join in!