**Fall is in the air. The students are commenting on the falling leaves, leaf colors, animals looking for food in their neighborhood, cooler weather and having to wear jackets and even gloves and hats.
**The students have a marvelous leaf collection ongoing! They continue to sort all types of leaves. Currently they have sorted by color, characteristic (dots) and shape (pointed). Stay tuned--our sorting and labeling will conclude next week.
**Our walking field trip to the Maze Library was great. We had a very pleasant walk there and back. Maze librarian, Ms. Pulliam was fantastic! The students had tour of the library, learned where certain types of books (fiction and nonfiction, readers, chapter books) dvds, cds are located. In our classroom experience downstairs, Ms. Pulliam used a variety of songs, poetry, stories and movement. The students favorite story was called, "Press Here." A big Thanks to Amare's Dad, Cobie's Mom and Grandma, Ellie's Mom, Isabella's Mom and Will's Mom for volunteering to help. All students who filled out their applications received their library cards. They are in their backpacks. Let's go to the library!!
**The students listened to the very animated story teller, Chris Fascione. He was part of our Million Minutes Reading pep rally. Let's keep reading! More Minutes!! More Minutes!!
**Reminder--Wednesday, October 31st our Halloween Parade and Celebration. We will have a semi-regular morning. The students will bring their costumes and accessories in a bag. At 10:00 am, our class will do our bat origami project. I have some parent volunteers for this, but the more the merrier! Emma's Mom has donated a leaf scraping activity too! Cool! We will have regular lunch hour. After lunch, all parent volunteers are needed to assist in the students changing into their costumes. We will have a story time and then get ready to line up for the parade. Our all school parade begins at 1:00 pm. We will parade around the block and then into the playground to form a spiral. After the parade, our room parents have provided a treat of juice boxes and popcorn. In keeping with our non violent classroom atmosphere, please do not send toy guns, swords, hooks, light sabers, poles, knives, brooms or handcuffs. Students may bring a treat for the class if they wish. We will be making treat bags in our classroom. Everyone is invited to attend!
**Thursday, November, 1st is our 50th day of school! We will be half way to 100!! On Monday, the students will learn a little about what is was like to live in the 1950's. On Thursday, the students can dress up like the 50"s. It can be as simple as a white tee shirt and jeans, slick back hair for the boys and pony tails for the girls. If you should have a poodle skirt--WOW! Our math workstations on Thursday afternoon will center on activities and games that feature the number 50.
**Our student council reps, Isabella and Angus spoke to us about an event the student council is planning called ROCK THE PANTRY. Kindergarten students bring in CANNED FRUIT, APPLESAUCE and DRIED FRUIT for the food drive. Student council has provided 2 boxes for us to put our goods in. If you can bring in one of these items--you are a rock star and can wear your sunglasses to school on Friday, November 2nd!
**Our Helping Grandma, Ms. D has returned from her trip to China. She shared with the students bits of her travels including books that kindergarten students use, a picture of the Great Wall, pointing out areas on our world map where she visited, a Chinese coin and a special gift to all the students of a piece of Chinese candy and a pencil. These items are in your child's back pack.
**Information including a permission slip for our future field trip to the Brookfield Zoo will be sent out next Friday. We need many parent volunteers. Our trip is Monday, November 19th for 9:00-2:00 pm.
**There is a very important board meeting concerning the Irving Schoolyard Project which will be held on Tuesday, October 30th at 7:30 pm. in the District 97 Board Room. Please attend if you can.
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lessons on Feelings and Personal Safety.
**Mr. Packer continues to work on his unit on Probability and Chance with small student groups.
**The Wellness Committee had a Taste Test to get kids interested in trying new foods. The only clue that was given was that the food was orange. Some of the students did try the food. Many thought it was sweet potatoes but in fact it was SQUASH! Next taste test is in two weeks!
This week:
It was all about spiders and our growing leaf collection! Those spiders are not so spooky. They are really very helpful to our earth. The students learned the difference between spiders and insects and viewed some spider specimens. The students learned the term--arachnid. The students learned that spiders live almost everywhere on earth and that they hatch from eggs. Little babies are called spiderlings. Spiders can be very colorful. Students listened to fiction and nonfiction stories about spiders. We accessed information on the internet on spiders of interest like tarantulas and black widows. Many spiders eat pesty insects and bugs that bother humans and plants. Our station day activities included creating a marble painted spider web, coloring their special spider and sorting and counting "treats," in greater than 10 and less than 10 columns. Next week--skeletons!
Reading/Social Studies: The students continued work in Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures series, They built background knowledge about how friends in different parts of the word share activities, The students listened to the Big Book story, "Friends Around Us." They made connections looking and listening to the activities and places in the world where the friends lived. We located the countries on the map so students could get an idea of where they lived in relation to the friends in the story. The sight word a was added to our sight word list. We reviewed all other sight words and played "Hands Up, Hands Down." Our letter in isolation this week was Pp. The brainstormed words that began with the sound of Pp. Our Robust Vocabulary words included WORLD, GAMES, PLEASANT, ASSIST and HONEST. The students worked on listening comprehension skills using our big book story. We also used the photos on our retelling cards to tell the order of events. Our puppet friend, Mr. Happy, assisted the students in practicing the blending of letter sounds to make 3 letter words. The students used their sound boxes to isolate where they heard the Pp sound--at the beginning or the ending of a word. We read our pre decodable story, "I am a Doctor." The students tracking skills are really developing! They also read their pre decodable story, "I Am." The students practiced reading to a partner to practice their beginning fluency development. Workstations this week included choosing a puppet too read to, drawing a picture of your puppet and you and writing a sentence retelling and event in the story, Using the app Magnetic Letters to practice spelling your sight words, recording the reading of the sight words and beginning to learn how to email your work to the teacher, sound picture sort with beginning sounds--M, S, P, A, blending sounds to create 3 letter words. What is a phoneme?
Math: The students continue to work on counting sequence from 0-50, what number comes before or after a random number, the concept of greater than and less than and beginning place value. The students began experimenting with creating 2-3 dimensional shapes using straws and pipe cleaners. We talked about flat shapes and shapes that have depth. The students used vocabulary words--corners, sides and angles as they built their structures. Magneetos and Connects were also included in their experimentation and creation. We are also beginning to work with geometric solids.
Writing: The students continue to use writing prompts from our Treasures series. This week, they wrote about bats. We reviewed all of our Frog Jump letters and began talking about our Starting Corner Capitals.
Technology: In reading this week, students used the app Word Wizard to work on CVC word practice, small group work focused on the the app Montessori Crossword and short a words. Students are beginning to use the camera function to take pictures of their work. Small groups of students used the apps Magic Reading, Spelling Bug and iWrite Words to work on spelling, blending and letter formation. In math, student used the app Dot to Dot Lite, Sam Phibian and Monster Squeeze to work on sequencial order, greater than and less than and counting quantities. The students are learning how to email their completed work to me.
Literature: "Diary of a Spider," "Three Hungry Spiders and 1 Fat Fly," "Book of Spiders," "The World of Spiders," "Fly Guy, Fly Girl," "Cock a Doodle HOOOOO," "Spiders of the Midwest," "The Halloweener."
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