**Thanks so much for your attendance at Parent/Teacher conferences. I so enjoyed chatting with all of you and sharing your child's progress. Our students are sure working hard!
**We had a great morning for our FUN RUN!! The students got their picture taken with the Irving Eagle and had a great run. Thanks for your participation and pledges!!
**The Irving School Book Fair begins Monday, October 27 thru Thursday, October 30th. See the flyer for times. Our class will be visiting the fair on Monday morning. Students will bring home a wishlist with a few of their favorite selections.
**Author Eileen Christelow of "Five Little Monkeys " fame will visit Irving on Tuesday, October 28th at 1:00 pm. Can't wait to hear her speak about her ideas for stories.
**Come on out on Wednesday, October 29th from 6:30-7:30 pm for "Sightly Spooky Family Storytime" Please join Ms. Noonan and guest readers ME, Mr. Sak and Ms. Durham for stories to get you in the Halloween mood. Come browse the Book Fair and enjoy a sweet treat!
**We will have a Bus Evacuation Drill on Tuesday, October 28th.
**The culmination of our week will be the All School Irving Halloween Parade and Celebration. There is an on line sign up from our room parents for healthy treats and help with costume changing. On Friday, October 31st, we will have regular morning activities. Students may bring a costume/make up etc. in a bag. After lunch, the students will change into their costumes. The parade begins at 1:30 pm. with our celebration, craft and refreshments immediately following. All parents and sibs are invited to attend. Students may bring a candy or non candy treat if they wish. These treats will go into a treat bag and be sent home. Please remember--we have a PEANUT FREE classroom.
**Picture Retake Day is Monday, November 3rd in the morning. Stay tuned for more info.
**Our 50th Day of School is Wednesday, November 5th! We will be half way to 100!! We will spend some time learning about the decade of the 50's. On Wednesday, November 5th, 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 boys and pony tails for girls. If you should have a poodle skirt--WOW! Our Math workstations on Wednesday will center on activities and games that feature the number 50. We will top that off with a Sock Hop Dance complete with 50's music! What a great movement break!
**The Children's Clinic of Oak Park will be providing FREE dental care to Irving students on November 5th, 6th and 7th. The consent form is in your child's homework folder. Last week, a representative from the Children's Clinic spoke to the class on teeth brushing and flossing.
**The last "Poppin on the Patio" will be held on Wednesday, October 29th after school. Buy some popcorn and help the 5th grade raise money for outdoor education.
**Student Council Reps, Ethan and Lily spoke to our class about the "Stand Up for Cancer" project. Students will vote for their favorite picture of a teacher standing up for cancer during the week of November 3rd-7th. Students can also submit a picture of themselves standing up for cancer. These will be hung up around the school. All money collected will go to the Stand Up for Cancer Foundation.
**Last call for a fun grown up night to raise money for Irving School. Trivia Night is coming up in November!!
**No Friendship Club this week.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving, Mr. Packer began a new unit on Data and Probability.
**FUTURE FIELD TRIP to Brookfield Zoo, Tuesday, November 25th from 9:00-1:30 pm.
**SAVE the DATE: Kindergarten Winter Concert--Wednesday, December 17th. Because of the amount of students participating the concert will be held 2 times---once at 8:15 am and then again at 9:45 am. Stay tuned for more info.
This week:
It was all about pumpkins and spiders. And yes.....the biggest squash around! Lily brought a "cucuzza" Italian squash to show the students. It is one long squash!!! Note the picture on the side of the blog. What does it taste like when it is cooked??? Hopefully Lily will share that with us. The students learned that spiders are not so spooky. They are really very helpful to our earth. They learned the difference between spiders and insects and viewed some spider specimens. The students learned the term--arachnid. Spiders live almost everywhere and hatch from eggs. Baby spiders are called spiderlings. Spiders can be very colorful. Students listened to nonfiction and fiction stories about spiders. We accessed information via the internet on spiders of interest like tarantulas and black widows. Many spiders eat pesty bugs and insects that bother both humans and plants. The students looked inside a pumpkin. They examined the seeds, flesh, pulp and skin. The students viewed the growing sequence and wrote about it in their journals. We were lucky enough to have two station day activities days. The activities included marble painted spider webs, color by code leaf scene, pumpkin 10 frame count, cut, glue, pumpkin plant sequencing activity, pumpkin roll and number color and preparation for our leaf sort reading the story "Leaf Man" and creating a leaf man using mixed media.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue work in Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading series. They built background knowledge about how friends around the world 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 friends lived. We located the countries on the map so the students could get an idea of where the friends lived. The word a was added to our sight word list. They reviewed the isolated sounds of M, S, A, P. Our Robust Vocabulary words included WORLD, GAMES, PLEASANT, ASSIST, HONEST. The students worked on asking and answering questions about the Big Book story. They also used the retelling cards to review the order of events in the story. Our guest puppets assisted the students in the practice of blending letter sounds to create 3 letter words and students used their elkonin boxes to segment 3 letter words. We read our pre decodable story "I Am a Doctor." The students tracking skills are continuing to develop. Workstations this week included leveled readers--story elements/comprehension, reader's response, draw a picture and write about how you can be a good friend, use the sentence starter--We like......
rainbow words from the word families--am, at, ad.
Math: The students continue to work on counting quantities and one to one correspondence. They are doing a great job of completing their Calendar Books daily. They are working on the concepts before and after, plus one, greater than/less than, and number families. The students did a variety of activities using their ten frames. They counted spiders, pumpkins, seeds and bats. Their number globe projects and shape review jack-o-lanterns are posted in the hall.
Writing: The students worked to complete their writing project on what they like to do in the fall. They are beginning to think about how letters are placed on a given line. Where do upper case letters go....lowercase letters.....tall lowercase? What about lowercase letters that go below the line? Lots to begin to think about. The students worked on a variety of topics including spiders, friends, pumpkins. Students continue to label pictures and work on sentence structure.
Technology: The students continue to use the iPad to reinforce what they are learning. In reading, student small groups used the apps Dolch Words, Reading Magic 1, Word Wizard to work on segmenting, sound/symbol, sight words. In math, student small groups worked on the apps Monster Squeeze, Number Find, Geoboard and student whole group work used Number Rack. Brain Pop Jr. and Facthound were used to research facts on spiders and pumpkins.
Literature: "Leaf Man," "Super Spiders," "Eensy Weensy Spider," "3 Hungry Spiders and 1 Fly," "16 Runaway Pumpkins," "Pick a Perfect Pumpkin," "Splat the Cat--Scaredy Cat," "Spiderlings," "Click, Clack, Boo," "Pumpkin's Circle," "From Seed to Pumpkin," "Fall Leaves Change Color," "Animals in Fall."
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