Week Eight: October 2nd-6th

Happy Friday! It's hard to believe we are in the month of October already!  The kids are loving the Halloween and fall themed books that we have available around the classroom. :) We are excited to see you all next Wednesday for our Fairy Tale Play!

October 11th 10:00 AM Fairy Tale Play: Come and see our fairy tale play about the 3 Little Pigs, the 3 Bears, and the 3 Billy Goats Gruff!  This will be in our classroom with refreshments to follow.
October 12th and 13th: No school....Optional Parent Conferences
October 18th Field Trip to Aw Shucks Farm: Children need to be at school by 8:00 AM.  We are loading the bus and leaving the school at 8:15 AM to head to the farm.  They need to have a lunch packed and water bottle because we will eat lunch there.  Normal lunch boxes are fine.  Comfortable clothes and tennis shoes!  Chaperones please meet us there with your child at 9:30.  The program starts at 10:00 AM.  Chaperones will need to pay $8.50 for their ticket upon arrival.
October 19th: CSD Festival and Kickball Tournament 4:00-8:00 PM

October 24th 1:00 PM Pumpkin Carving with Dad: This is a great opportunity to get dad's involved in our classroom!  If Dad cannot come, we would love for a grandfather or uncle to come! Please bring your own pumpkin for your child and carving tools (safely wrapped up).

October 31st Parade of Fiction 8:30/8:45 AM: Students get to dress up as their favorite fictional book character!  Children will need to have the book (his/her character is from) with them to carry in the parade.  No scary costumes and no weapons of any kind (guns, swords, knives, bow and arrow, etc.)  

Math Workshop:

We had a great week in math workshop!  We keep the same math tubs/games open for the students to go and play for about 2-3 weeks at a time.  The purpose of this is that they become "pro's" at the game and in turn master the skill that is involved.  I have all of the games on a rotation so usually there is one or two new games introduced per week since there at 8 centers total.  The skills that we are working on include counting to 100 by ones and tens, one-to-one correspondence, and counting on.

Literacy (reading and writing)

During literacy this week, all students learned how to write the letter "R" properly using a big line, little line, and little curve.  We continued working on learning our sounds and how to blend them together when trying to read a word.  I teach them to say each little sound that they see and them then put all of the sounds back together to see if they can decode the word.  We teach them the same thing for writing.  When attempting to write a word, I tell them to say the word and put down each letter sound that they hear.  For example the word "apple" may look like this when they attempt to write it: "apl" because that is how it is written phonetically.  They have not learned about doubling the "p" or adding a "silent e" on the end yet.  We just want them writing down what they hear and their writing will progress over time as they learn the grammar rules of the English language.  We wrote short stories this week during writer's workshop!

Thematic:

This week we practiced our play during thematic center time.  The students are doing great and are excited to share it with you!  We also did an activity using kidney beans, black beans, and great northern beans and they got to create their own bear!  They used glue and beans to create their own "fur" on the bear.  

Science:

Today we are doing an experiment about the blending of colors!  We have 5 different sets of colors (red+white, green+yellow, purple+blue, black+white, and blue+green) and the students predicted what each one would turn to when mixed together.   We recorded our observations and findings onto a chart.  A major component of science is them understanding how to record information on a chart/graph so we try to do this with every experiment!

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James