**We had a lovely fall afternoon for our Halloween Parade around the school grounds! Darth Vaders, princesses, super heroes, dinosaurs, a friendly police officer and some spooky creatures were some of the many cool costumes worn by students. Room parents provided healthy treats and we made origami bats. A BIG THANKS to Julie Wulff for great story reading and movement and to all of of you who came out to enjoy the afternoon with us.
**Slightly Spooky Family Story Time was a huge success and lots of fun. Ms. Noonan, myself, Ms. Durham and Mr. Sak had a great time reading our stories. Thanks to all who came out to hear us. I want to say a special thanks to those of you who purchased books for our classroom.
**Our Student Council Reps, Quinn and Jackson are extending a shout out to everyone to donate a pair of new mittens or gloves to the Student Council sponsored Mitten Drive. See information on the Mitten Drive in your child's homework folder. Donate the whole month of November. The Oak Park and River Forest Infant Welfare Society will be receiving the bulk of the donation.
**PICTURE RETAKES will be done on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2nd in the morning. Please send back the the package or form.
**Our 50th Day of School is Wednesday, November 11th. We will be half way to 100!! The students will spend some time learning about the decade of the 50's. We will mark part of our day by dressing up like the 50's, having a sock hop and working on math workstations surrounding the number 50. On Wednesday, November 11th, the student can dress up. It can be as simple as a white tee shirt and blue jeans--slick back hair for the boys and pony tails for the girls. If you should have a poodle skirt--WOW!
**Last call to sign up for TRIVIA NIGHT--a grown up fundraiser for Irving School. It is Thursday, November 5th from 7-10 pm at The Wire in Berwyn.
**Route to Reading Rotation 2 will begin on Monday, November 2nd. You will receive notification of the skill group your child will be participating in at that time. You should have received notification of previous skill mastery. Email me if you did not.
**If you have some time on Tuesday, November 3rd beginning at 1:45 pm, the students will be going to our kindergarten garden bed to see what else there is left to harvest. Come check it out with us. Students will take home what we find.
**In culmination of our text study on "Peter's Chair," the students will be working in small groups to create a diorama to illustrate Peter's reaction to one of the events in the story. I am providing the boxes but students can bring in ribbon, cloth or material, or any cool stuff. We will announce the groups on Monday and dioramas will be designed and worked on Thursday and Friday.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms.Bell Bey worked on asking questions and good questioning techniques. She played a game with the students where she had a certain animal picture that students couldn't see. She call on students to ask a question about it to see if they could guess what it was by the answer to the question. Does is have stripes? What color is it?
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, the students shared their pictures using the black dot as part of the picture. Very creative!!!
**In Mr. Degman Tech/Math this week, the students finished their counting projects on the iPad using the Educreations. I will post these.
**Field Trip to Brookfield Zoo on Tuesday, November 23rd from 9-2 pm. Look for information and permission slips this coming Friday.
This week:
It was all about bats and spiders and skeletons. We took the fright out of these creatures. The students listened to informational texts as well as fictional stories. BrainPop Jr. had a great bat fact video and quiz. They viewed bat skeletons in diagram form and learned about bat habitats, bat physiology and bat diets. Ask your child what a mammal is? The students learned that humans and bats have something in common---they are both mammals!! What are baby bats called? The students learned that spiders are not so spooky and they are really helpful to our earth. They are arachnids. They have eight legs and eight eyes. The students looked up information through internet sources and also read books with spider facts. The students read about and viewed a human skeleton. Who has more bones--a baby or a 5-6year old? Students delighted in feeling where certain bones were located on their body and reading stories about the function of our bone structure.
Reading/Language Arts: 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. They listened to the song "The More We Get Together." Many students remembered this song from their preschool days. The students listened to the Big Book story,"What Do You Like?" They responded and made connections about activities they do with friends. The students found the title page and discussed the main characters and setting of the story. They learned how to compare and find differences and commonalities by using a Venn Diagram. They compared a boy and a girl in the story --What they both liked and the types of things each liked separately. The students reviewed all their sight words thus far and worked on the sound of Ss at the beginning and ending of words. Robust Vocabulary for the week included FAVORITE, FRIENDS, PARTNER, HOBBY, COMPLETE. The students read their read aloud story, "I Like," and worked on tracking and fluency. They learned what a speech bubble or balloon was. The students read with a partner and elbow chatted with their partner and discussed the characters and setting and one event in the story. In our continued text study of "Peter's Chair," the students completed a Blueprint workmat on using a quote from the story to illustrate and explain what the character was thinking and why it was important to the story. Workstations for this week included letter/picture/sound sort using the letters M, S, A, P, sound blending 3 phonemes using the app Reading Magic 1--tap the box--record the sound you hear--tap the picture box--did you make the word? word work using the word WE, leveled readers read aloud with discussions on key events, writing and illustrating about a time when you were happy and sad and prep work on sequencing events in a story and what is a diorama.
Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 50 as our 50th day approaches! The students have completed their calendar books for October. The month of November will bring a new and more challenging calendar book. We will begin to work on sequencing numbers before and after a target number, tally marks, adding plus 1, domino and dice number patterns, ten frames and place value, teen numbers and number bonds to 5. Fun! Fun! The students spent time counting spiders. pumpkins, bats, skeletons and recording their number. Reckenrek exercises are assisting in students looking for ways to say 5. (3 and 2, 4 and 1etc.) and the idea of visual counting and visualizing number. Math workstations this week included count and record, build/count and record, playing the Skeleton Dice game, what number comes next activity and writing numbers to 30.
Writing: We started to chat about our Starting Corner Capitals. Where do they begin--right next to Mr. Smiley! Students continue to work on sentence structure----NAME and TELL (subject/action), beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words and some kind of ending mark. Topics this week included writing about a friend, halloween, your costume, bats and spiders.
Technology: In reading whole and small groups the students used the apps Educreations for drawing and labeling setting of the story, Magic Reading 1 and Montessori Crosswords for sound blending and recording and Oz Phonics for words order and beginning and ending sounds. In math whole group, students used the apps Subitze Tree for visualizing number (subitizing) Easy Match for looking at dice and domino number patterns and Brainy Bugs for counting/cardinality, matching and mazes. Mr. Degman used the app Educreations for his project with students. BrainPOP Jr and UTube video helped us explore the world of bats and dioramas.
Literature: "Amazing Bats," "Bats," "Bats-Strange and Wonderful," "Your Skeleton," "Your Amazing Bones," "Bones," "Spiders,""Spiders and Spiderlings," "Bats Big Game," "The Runaway Pumpkin," "The Little Old Woman Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything,""Inside a House that is Haunted."
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