**Thank you so much for your attendance at Parent/Teacher Conferences. I enjoyed chatting with you about your child's progress. We are working hard in Kindergarten!
**The Irving Book Fair was very busy! There were many great book choices. I did purchase some great titles for our classroom. A BIG THANKS to families who also purchased books from our classroom wish list. Reading is the way to go!
**FIELD TRIP REMINDER--Friday, October 26th is our walking field trip to the Maze Branch Library. We will begin walking at 8:30 am. Our tour of the library and classroom experience will be from 9-10 and we will be back at Irving by 10:30 am. It looks like it will be chillier weather. Please have your child dressed accordingly. We have field trip volunteers--D. Bovio, N. Smith and A. Struckmeyer to assist our class.
**Halloween will soon be here! I have been in contact with our room parents and they have been in contact with you. We have 8 volunteers also signed up. Wednesday, October 31st is an early dismissal day. We will have a regular morning, but from 10:00-11:00 am, I would like to do our culminating craft from our study of bats. We will have no time to do this in the afternoon. Our room parents will contact our volunteers to see if we can get some assistance with our craft. The rest of the schedule is as follows: We will have a regular lunch hour. All volunteers please come to school at noon. The students will be bringing their costumes in a bag to change into after lunch. You can help assist with this and any make up or hair props. In keeping with our non violent classroom atmosphere, please do not send toy guns, swords, hooks, light sabers, poles, knives, brooms or hand cuffs to school. Thanks! The students will line up for the parade around 12:40 and the parade will begin around 1:00 pm. The all school parade will be around the block and then continue into the playground in a spiral form. We will then return to the classroom for our party. Our room parents will provide a juice boxes and a snack for our us. The students will be making treat bags. Students can bring a treat for their classmates that will go in their bags. All parents and sibs are invited to come and hang out with us!
**The FUN RUN was great! Our school raised over $15,000!!! Our class raised $1,300. Way to Go!!!
Everybody ran. The proceeds from the run will go to our Schoolyard Project. Many thanks to our participants.
**Ms. Howell reports that our class has read 9,500 minutes. Keep reading and recording those minutes!!
**Route to Reading Rotation 1 has concluded. You should have a received information on skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 2 begins on Tuesday, October 23rd. You will receive information on your child's current skill level at that time.
**Our wonderful art teacher, Ms Tague sent each student their screen name and security code to view their art work on ARTSONIA. It is in your child's homework folder.
**Future Field Trip--Our next cross curricular theme is Bears. The students will be taking a field trip to the Brookfield Zoo for a classroom experience and tour of the Bear Grotto on Monday, November 19th. The permission slips and info for this trip will be sent out next week. We will need lots of volunteers. We will leave at 9:00 am and be back by 2:00 pm. Students need to bring a bag lunch. Students and teachers will ride a school bus. Parent volunteers will car pool. We will pay for your parking.
**In Friendship club this week, Ms. Bell Bey worked with the students on the topic of FEELINGS.
**We have E. Hagedorn and E. Cummings as Station Day volunteers for Friday, October 26th.
This week:
It was all about bats!! We took the fright out of these amazing creatures. The students listened to informational texts as well as fiction texts on bats. They viewed a bat skeleton, a Brown Bat and an Indian Flying Fox courtesy of the Field Museum. Ellie was our student bat expert and amazed her classmates and teacher!) with knowledge of bat habitats, bat physiology and bat diets. The students learned that humans and bats have something in common--they are both mammals. Ask your child what a mammal is. The students sought information about bat types, diet, characteristics (super long fingers and a tiny thumb) and bat baby facts (pink pups.) The students counted bats, wrote about them in their journals and read about them. They are in the process of learning to play BAT GAMES in reading and math. Those games will come home next week. Next week: spiders!
Reading/Social Studies: The students began work in Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading Series. They built background knowledge about what a friend is and what types of activities you can do with a friend. We listened to the song, "The More We Get Together." Many students recalled this song from their time in preschool. The students listened to the Big Book story, "What Do You Like?" They responded and made connections about different activities they do with their friends. The sight word LIKE was introduced. We reviewed our previous words and created sentences with them. Our sound in isolation this week is Ss. We used our sound toys and sounds cards to guide us. The students used chants and rhymes to reinforce the sound. The students made the sound/symbol connection by writing the letter Ss. They reviewed what a noun was and looked for examples throughout the room. We added the Robust Vocabulary words FAVORITE, FRIENDS, PARTNER, HOBBY and COMPLETE to our list. The students worked on listening comprehension and retelling skills. They reviewed their color words. Our puppet, Mr. Happy helped the students work on blending sounds to form 3 letter words. The students read their pre decodable story, We Like," and made predictions about story content. The student shared their story with a partner. The students listened and responded to the informational text, "Friends Follow Rules." They read their story, "I Like," and discussed what a speech balloon or bubble was. Workstation activities this week included working on a mural about friendship and using the sentence starter--We can.....to tell about the pictures they selected, reading a story and creating their own retelling cards, picture sort with sounds A, M, S and vocabulary review--saying and using the app Magnetic Letters to practice their spelling.
Math: The students worked on a variety of math concepts this week. They are up to numbers 1-30 in our MONSTER SQUEEZE game. The students continue to review number recognition 0-20, counting quantities and telling what number comes before or after a random number. They continued their exploration of symmetry by dripping paint and folding the paper to create two symmetrical sides. What does it look like to you? The students recorded their responses. The students continue work using tally marks to count by 5's and straws and rubber bands to count by 10's.
Writing: The students completed their Frog Jump Capitals. They continue to work on starting at the top of the page to make a letter. The students are working on their writing posture--sitting up straight, one hand holding the pencil and the other holding down the paper. They use writing prompts from our Treasures Series. Beginning sentence structure is stressed-- an uppercase letter starts the sentence, space between words in a sentence and some type of mark is needed at the end. Our sentences name and tell!
Technology: The students continue to use the iPad as a tool for enhancement of skills taught. This week the students are learning how to take a picture of their work. They are practicing a steady aim! Our app Monster Squeeze is now using numbers 1-30. The apps Number Find, Dot to Dot and Sam Phibian are assisting with recognition, sequencing and counting. Some students are experimenting with the app Hundred's Board and Patterns. In reading the students continue to enjoy the apps Montessori Crossword, Sound Sort, Magnetic ABC's and Word Find.
Literature: "Little Red Bat," "Bats," "Bats Big Game," "Boo To You," "Pumpkin Soup," "Stellaluna," "Blackout! Animals That Live in the Dark," "Night Creatures," "Extremely Weird Bats."
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