We had such a busy and exciting week! I really enjoyed visiting with all of you who had conferences this week, and I’m looking forward to visiting with the rest of you next Tuesday! I love being able to set specific goals for each of my students with their families!
Our Dad’s Breakfast went so well today! Thank you all for coming! The kiddos have been looking forward to it all week, and I just know it made their week to eat, sing, and dance with their dad’s. They had fun thinking of pictures to draw on their placemats to show what they like to do with their dads, and I know they took pride in showing them to their dads.
We spent some time talking about pumpkins and Halloween this week. I brought in a classroom pumpkin, and we estimated its height, weight, and circumference. The children are getting much better at making smart estimates with height and weight. Instead of guesses like 100 or 1,000 pounds like they guessed for our watermelon, they guessed between 6 and 20 pounds for our pumpkin! It actually weighed 10 pounds. We also talked about whether or not it would float. We were surprised to see that it did float! We discussed the pumpkin life cycle and made a fun book illustrating the life cycle using real pumpkin seeds. Our favorite book from this week was The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. We made our own version of the book in which we practiced reading and writing the word see.
We finished up the last of the 42 Jolly Phonics sounds this week! It’s hard to believe we’re ready to move on to more tricky words and really practicing using those sounds in reading and writing. We were able to spend some time on specific skills this week after we finished the sounds. We read a few books all on our own and practiced writing words on white boards! We also started Wonder Journals this week! Each day, I will show a daily wonder in the form of a picture. The students look at the picture and come up with a “wonder” to write about. For example, we looked at a picture of jelly beans on Wednesday and the students had wonders like, “I wonder if they are sweet,” “I wonder what they are made of,” and “I wonder if they taste like jelly.” There is a short video that goes along with each wonder. It is fun to watch the video to see if any of our wonders are answered.
During math, we started talking about number stories. These are the beginning of addition and subtraction. We told stories like, “One day, there were five pumpkins sitting on the fence. Two fell off. How many pumpkins are still sitting on the fence?” We also started to talk about the tricky teens. We talked about how all of the teens start with a one, and we practiced putting them in order.
This week was Red Ribbon Week. We had so much fun with the spirit days this week. We wore sweats on Monday, boots on Tuesday, backwards shirts on Wednesday, red on Thursday, and green and mismatched socks on Friday.
We will have our Halloween party in the afternoon next Thursday, October 31. Your child should bring his/her costume in a bag that day, and we will change before the party.
Our Dad’s Breakfast went so well today! Thank you all for coming! The kiddos have been looking forward to it all week, and I just know it made their week to eat, sing, and dance with their dad’s. They had fun thinking of pictures to draw on their placemats to show what they like to do with their dads, and I know they took pride in showing them to their dads.
We spent some time talking about pumpkins and Halloween this week. I brought in a classroom pumpkin, and we estimated its height, weight, and circumference. The children are getting much better at making smart estimates with height and weight. Instead of guesses like 100 or 1,000 pounds like they guessed for our watermelon, they guessed between 6 and 20 pounds for our pumpkin! It actually weighed 10 pounds. We also talked about whether or not it would float. We were surprised to see that it did float! We discussed the pumpkin life cycle and made a fun book illustrating the life cycle using real pumpkin seeds. Our favorite book from this week was The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. We made our own version of the book in which we practiced reading and writing the word see.
We finished up the last of the 42 Jolly Phonics sounds this week! It’s hard to believe we’re ready to move on to more tricky words and really practicing using those sounds in reading and writing. We were able to spend some time on specific skills this week after we finished the sounds. We read a few books all on our own and practiced writing words on white boards! We also started Wonder Journals this week! Each day, I will show a daily wonder in the form of a picture. The students look at the picture and come up with a “wonder” to write about. For example, we looked at a picture of jelly beans on Wednesday and the students had wonders like, “I wonder if they are sweet,” “I wonder what they are made of,” and “I wonder if they taste like jelly.” There is a short video that goes along with each wonder. It is fun to watch the video to see if any of our wonders are answered.
During math, we started talking about number stories. These are the beginning of addition and subtraction. We told stories like, “One day, there were five pumpkins sitting on the fence. Two fell off. How many pumpkins are still sitting on the fence?” We also started to talk about the tricky teens. We talked about how all of the teens start with a one, and we practiced putting them in order.
This week was Red Ribbon Week. We had so much fun with the spirit days this week. We wore sweats on Monday, boots on Tuesday, backwards shirts on Wednesday, red on Thursday, and green and mismatched socks on Friday.
We will have our Halloween party in the afternoon next Thursday, October 31. Your child should bring his/her costume in a bag that day, and we will change before the party.