PARTY TIME.....so FUN!

"Tis the Season

Have a wonderful time with your family and friends during this holiday season!!

Happy New Year to all as well............

Carolers

 Memorial Holiday Sing

Weekly Update

It has been a very busy week considering it is right before the holiday break. We have spent a great deal of time in math talking about categories, classifying and charts. In its simplest term we have been sorting in a more sophisticated way. Building charts and reading charts has been the focus and the kids are talking their way through understanding the concept. It is the language at times that is difficult but they have done a great job!

The letters this week have been x, y and an introduction to q and z. We have also been working on hearing ending sounds which is important when it comes to writing. We have just completed our Narrative Writing Unit and the children have written many stories. We are now celebrating the ones that they want to share with our classmates.

This past month we have also been working in our guided reading groups. This has been very exciting! They are all interested in reading and I know we will see great results by the end of the year.

Raz Kids

A note went home this week regarding your access to the Raz Kids website. This site gives your child an opportunity to read books at his/her  reading level. I want everyone to know that I have set settings at your child's independent reading level. This means that your child should be able to read these books easily, fluently and without help. The idea is to increase confidence and the desire to read more. I will adjust the levels as I see fit based upon their progress in my guided reading groups which are instructional sessions. Have fun reading!

Our Feast

Our Thanksgiving feast in class was fun and exciting! We dressed up as Native Americans and sat around a long table together sharing lots of goodies! Thank you to those who helped make this happen. Everything was DELICIOUS!

Have a wonderful holiday with your family!

Week of November 8th

It was a pleasure meeting all of you at conferences. Thank you for being prompt and keeping me on schedule!

This week we spent time working on the letters e and r as well as p and j. We are moving along very quickly with letter introductions and their sounds. This is a great help for reading and writing. As you know we have been writing for a few weeks now. It is difficult and challenging for some but the kids love to write and tell their stories! We are currently learning how to edit our work with the help of checklists to keep us on track with conventions and story telling guidelines. The stories are small moments in our lives but need to be told with a beginning, middle and end. They are working very hard.

In Math we continue to work on counting, writing and comparing sets to ten. Our latest challenge has been understanding the concept of whole and parts. We have been making combinations with all numbers to 10 and trying to determine a pattern as we discover all the possibilities. We played a spinning game and  wrote numbers, made numbers and equal sets with playdough, discovered combinations to 10 with counters and recorded our answers, finished our Apple counting book and completed a counting jar activity recording many ways to represent the number we counted. We have been very busy!

Guided reading will start in the near future. The kids are so excited about learning to read. This is where the skills of letter/sound identification are so important as they begin to put these into practice. We are looking forward to it.

Conferences

This is a reminder that conferences are coming up starting next week. They are scheduled for Tuesday November 10th and Thursday November 19th.

Happy Halloween!!

Today was party time for Halloween! It was exciting from the moment the children came into the classroom. They couldn't wait to put on their costumes and get ready for the day. We paraded around the school with all the classes. The music was ghoulish and the crowds were abundant. In the afternoon we celebrated with games, food and a craft. Nothing can get better than that! Thanks to the moms who volunteered.

Ocean World

On Tuesday we were entertained by a Marine Biologist who spoke about the North Atlantic Ocean. We had the chance to touch some REAL ocean animals as we learned a little bit about their habitat. We also explored some sea animal bones, pictures and whale artifacts with magnifying glasses. In the end, we made a stamp print of a fish. It was a GREAT time!

Star Writers Club

We are writers! And our club is called the Stars Writers Club created and decided by the kids. We have been working everyday trying to create small moment stories. We started out with just a one page picture and have moved along to writing a three page narrative. Labeling our pictures, adding coloring, details, speech bubbles, and action to our illustrations has been fun and exciting. We are learning to give our stories a beginning, middle and end sequence. Below are a few samples of the first page of some stories. Take a peek!

Homework

As mentioned at PIN night, homework will be given to the class once a week through the first trimester of school. It will increase to two then three days a week as the year progresses.

Please note that every WEDNESDAY starting today, your child will have homework to complete (10 minutes) to be returned the next day. Make sure you check his/her backpack for the activity. Activities will vary in nature. It could be cutting, learning to tie shoes, counting around the house, writing names etc. This is a way for your child to understand the responsibility of doing homework as they move ahead in their academic years.

Weekly Update

Well, this past week, we have been very busy considering we have only been in school a little over 20 days! In literacy we continue to introduce lowercase letters as well as some sight words. We have been rhyming and practicing letter/sound identification through games and various center activities. Writing our names in lowercase letters has been a focus as most children find it difficult to transition from uppercase letters.

In Math we are working on comparing and writing numbers to 5. What does equal, greater than, and less than actually mean. And can you explain what they mean when solving a problem? Speaking in math terms is very difficult for young children to do. Although they can solve a problem, they can not explain how they arrived at the answer. We work on this daily so they have an understanding of what they are doing.

We are also writers!! We have started to put together simple stores through pictures, labeling and adding detail to the page. Our work lately has been focusing on writing words by stretching and slowly saying each word carefully listening to the sounds we hear. This has enabled us to try and put these words on lines to tell a story. Not easy!! But boy are we doing a great job! And more importantly, we are all enjoying it!

Conferences

Yes, conference time is coming! Please make sure you open the google document that I forwarded to you and sign up for a date and time to meet with me regarding your child. Conferences are on Tuesday November 10 and Thursday November 19th. Please let me know if you did not receive my email with this information and I will forward it again. It is important that you mark your calendar with the date. Timely appearances are greatly appreciated! I will try my best to be on time as well.

This week in Room 6

In your child's backpack you should have received a packet of information regarding the first five letters introduced in our Fundations program. As the weeks progress you will receive an updated home connection letter explaining what letters we are working on. Please note that the letter sheets coming home are available for your child to practice making the letters and sounds. These letter sheets can be put together to create an alphabet book for practice.

This past week we have been working on the letters m and n. We practiced identifying these beginning in words, wrote words around the room beginning with the sounds, sorted pictures that had the same beginning sound and practiced writing the letters. We also began practicing our names in lowercase letters. As you can see the Fundations program focuses on the lowercase letters first. We have also talked about sentences. Some questions we pondered.....What is a sentence? How does it end? What kind of letter begins each sentence? How do we write all the other letters in the sentence?

In Math we are focusing on the numbers 0 -5. We have been writing the numbers, counting and determining the cumulative amount, matching numbers to the objects we count, discovering and discussing that a whole number can be divided into 2 parts.

We had a GREAT first week!

Despite the heat, we are starting to get to know each other. We have been learning the rules, reading stories and beginning to learn about letters and numbers. We have only just begun and there is so much ahead of us!

Great First Day!

Well the buses arrived today with a lot of smiling faces! We had a great day despite the HEAT and boy was it hot! We read The Kissing Hand and everyone enjoyed it even those who have read it before. We completed some activities on the smart board and on paper. We also started learning about all the rules there are in the day (and there are a lot!). It was fun exploring the building and eating lunch in the cafeteria. I am sure tomorrow will be just as much fun.

Note about blankets: A notice did come home today explaining this so please read carefully. Your child should bring in a blanket to lie on in the classroom. Please put the blanket in a grocery size plastic bag with handles (not a Marshall's bag....too big) and label it with your child's name. When the blanket is not in use we can keep them organized and off the hallway floor when not in use. It will also be easier to transport to and from school to be cleaned every so often. Thanks.

Class Library Books

Hi all. This is to remind everyone to please return the RAH books that the children have been taking home weekly by Friday June 19th. These books belong to my class library. If you are unable to locate them and know that they are lost please send in $5.00 for each missing book. Check should be made payable to Memorial School. Thanks!

Year End Reception

The end of the school year is near! We will celebrate our hard work with our friends and family on Friday June 19th for a reception from 1:30 - 2:30pm. Please join us as we share our accomplishments with you. There will be refreshments served. Parents and siblings are welcome!

What a great day at Southwick!

We had a wonderful trip! The day was picture perfect. Cool in the shade, a bit  hot in the sun but truly a great day for a field trip. A big thanks to all the chaperones who took the time to help us out.

It's Spring! Our plants are sprouting!

We began planting our bean seeds last week and they are growing so quickly! We spent our time each day observing the changes and recorded what we saw in a journal. We made sure that our seeds and plants were well watered and placed in a sunny spot by the window. It has been fun to watch the different stages of the life cycle that each plant is in. It has been very exciting! Some of us will be ready to take them home on Friday to replant in a garden.