Happy Birthday Kamron!

We sure have been celebrating a lot of birthdays this week and we had one more today. Kamron's actual birthday is not until next week, but I guess Confetti thought that we should celebrate it today! Next week, Kamron will be 6 years old! Today Confetti wrote Kamron a note and left a ton of confetti on his desk. We enjoyed making Kamron's gift and singing to him. We hope he has a great birthday over break! Here are a few pictures from his day...

                        Birthday boy Kamron and his note from Confetti!

                                 Singing Happy Birthday to Kamron!

                                                  Kamron and his friends!

                                                       Kamron and Confetti!

Happy Half Birthday Sam!!!

In one week from today is our friend Sam's half birthday. We were all very surprised to see Confetti again today! Sam loved wearing his birthday crown and even found confetti in his cubby! He had a great day today at school and I am thinking he will have a great half birthday next week! Here are a few pictures of him...

                                                 Birthday boy Sam!

                 All of Sam's friends singing him Happy Half Birthday!

                                 Birthday boy, Sam, and his friends!

                                  Confetti and silly Sam!

Sam and his friends while we were making his gift!

Happy Half Birthday Hayle!

Today was Hayle's half birthday and guess who came back again to help us celebrate - Confetti! Hayle was so nice and brought all of her friends a little treat and passed them out at the end of the day. We made her a special gift and sang to her! We sure hope she had a great day! Here are a few pictures from her half birthday!

                                      Hayle's messy desk and note from Confetti!

                                                   Hayle and her friends!

                                        Hayle and Confetti - he is way up high!

                                 Hayle passing out yummy treats to her friends!

                                       Each friend got to have two treats!

Happy Half Birthday Arthur

Confetti was back in our room again today because Arthur's half birthday was yesterday. He left Arthur a note and confetti on his chair! We had a great time coming up with words that describe Arthur for his gift and we enjoyed singing to him as well! Here are a few pictures from Arthur's day!

                                       Singing Happy Half Birthday to Arthur!

                                                    Arthur and his friends!

                                                  Birthday Boy Arthur!

                                          Birthday boy Arthur and Confetti!

                                       Confetti and the note he left for Arthur!

CRAZY BUSY WEEK!

Well…I hope my kindergarten friends are ready for a wild, crazy, fun week in kindergarten!!! Of course, we will be learning lots of stuff and we will be getting ready for our holiday program on Friday!!

In literacy we will be starting a brand new unit called “Wonders of Nature.” Our theme this week will be “Watch It Grow!” Our essential question will be “What do living things need to grow?” I know it is a silly time of year to be talking about this…but we will be learning more about this in the spring!! We will be singing the song “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.” The stories we will be looking at are called, “ My Garden” and “Growing Plants.” We will also be looking at some poetry….can you believe we do that in kindergarten? As we read we will continue to look at the concepts of print, genre, and we will start to talk about the reading strategy of rereading.  We will continue to blend words and we will be using this strategy as we read “Hop Can Hop” from our crabby books. We will continue to learn about the letter ‘H’ and we will be sorting lots of picture cards and trying to decide what they start with!! This is so easy for us now:) Can you see we have a lot to do!?!

In writing we will continue to write stories from our lives. We are working super hard on sounding out words and using adjectives when we write!! This week we will be talking about pattern books and we will even try to make a few class pattern books!! In grammar we start to learn about pronouns! Crazy!!!

In math we continue to learn about teen numbers and the number of tens and ones each teen number has!! We are recognizing and writing numbers 1-20….this can be tricky!! Some of us like to get the ones place and tens place mixed around. We will also be looking at shapes and practicing sorting them by their attributes. 

In unit studies we will finish up talking about Holidays Around the World and we will be doing lots of projects!!!! We are so happy to complete our passports and show you all of the great things we’ve done and learned about in our suitcases.

Of course if we continue to stay on the nice list, Snowflake will continue to watch us this week and I think Confetti might be coming too to help us celebrate some half birthdays and a birthday over our break if we are lucky!
 

Please remember our Holiday program will be Friday at 12:30 in the auditorium. This should last until about 1:00. Please bring your families so they can see all of the work we have been doing!! 

Also, this week we will be giving lots of assessments to close out the 2^nd quarter. Please make sure your child is rested and has ate a great breakfast!! I want them to be fully ready to show me how super smart they are!!

I think that’s all!! I hope you have a great week before our winter break!! I will hopefully be sending home some homework to do over the break in our Wednesday folders this week to keep practicing all the things we have learned!

Ms. Kristen and Ms. Carli

Last Thursday was our practicum students last day and we will very much miss Ms. Kristen and Ms. Carli. They helped us with so many different things this past semester and Mrs. Woita really doesn't know what she would have done without them. We are very lucky they were assigned to our room - they truly went above and beyond - they came in early, stayed late, and even came in to help us with special projects. They helped us learn more about numbers, patterns, shapes, and story problems and they even listened to my friends read and helped them during writing. We wish them both the best of luck with the rest of their college classes! Here is a short video to say thank you to them for being so great!
                        

Queen Isabelle

Isabelle was the Queen of the Jungle this week and she had a great week. Isabelle loves everything about the movie Frozen and she brought in a super cool Elsa wand that sang our favorite song to show us and her mom and dad even got to come in and read the book Frozen to us. Her dad came in and read the first half of the book and then her mom came in the next day and finished it and we all loved it! We really liked the pages with Olaf and Sven! When Isabelle is at home she likes to color and she uses every color of the rainbow. Isabelle likes every animal and she also really likes any Disney Princess but I think Elsa might be her favorite! Isabelle enjoys gymnastics and eating bananas! She is a special kid because she is silly and smart and she gives great hugs! When she grows up she wants to be a singer. Isabelle had a great week being the Queen. Please check out her video!

                        

Happy Birthday Mrs. Miller

We are so lucky to have some wonderful paras that work in our classroom with us during the day and  Mrs. Miller is one of them and she is with us in the afternoon and yesterday was her birthday! We didn't realize it but Confetti was in our room and was hiding from us - he left a note for Mrs. Miller and of course some confetti on the chair she sits in! Once we saw the confetti we went on a hunt to find that sneaky birthday elf - after searching for awhile we finally found him and then we sang to Mrs. Miller and made her a gift. Mrs. Miller is a wonderful person and is always helping us all out so we can be the best kindergarteners we can be! When the kids asked how old she was she said that she was turning 25 and I will tell you I don't know how many years she has celebrated her 25th birthday :)  but I do know that we really are so lucky to have her in our room. We hope Mrs. Miller had a fabulous birthday! Here are a few pictures!

                                   We are singing Happy Birthday to Mrs. Miller!

                                         Here is the note Confetti left for her.
             (sometimes our elves write letters backwards but we are working on showing them the right way to make letters throughout the day!)

                                                 Birthday Girl - Mrs. Miller!

Happy Half Birthday Ayden!

Today we were all very surprised that Snowflake AND Confetti were back in our classrooms. We were happy to see Snowflake but were puzzled why Confetti was still here and then we found the note that he wrote us telling Ayden Happy Half Birthday! And then I realized that yesterday was Ayden's half birthday and since we will not be in school in June we are celebrating it now. We made him his gift and sang him Happy Half Birthday! Here are a few pictures of Ayden from today...

                                         Ayden with Confetti and Snowflake!

 

Ayden's friends singing him Happy Half Birthday!  

                                                  Ayden and his friends!

                                                   Birthday Boy Ayden!

Busy Times

So as I am sure you all know our elf, Snowflake, came last week to keep an eye on us during the holiday season and has been moving around our room since he arrived in his makeshift hot air balloon! Snowflake even left us a poster with Santa’s Tips for staying on the nice! Unfortunately Snowflake left our classroom at lunch on Friday and we were all super sad and a little nervous because we are hoping it wasn’t because of our behavior. I just know that this week we are all going to be trying very hard to stay on the nice list! Here is a picture of the poster he left in our room.

In Unit Studies we will finish up our Around the World book and will be packing/making a suitcase and getting a passport so we can start traveling the world to learn about more cultures and their celebrations. We will be traveling after our afternoon recess to different countries/classrooms and learning about celebrations people have in Africa, Israel, Holland, and Germany. We will be learning about Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, the wooden shoe, and the Christmas tree. It is going to be a super fun week of learning about different cultures – we will also learn some songs and will start practicing for our program that is Friday, Dec. 19^th at 12:30 in the auditorium! We hope you are all able to come!

In Math we will be continuing to talk about teen numbers and seeing the group of ten and ones. We will also be looking at different attribute cards (which is a fancy name for shapes) and will be exploring with them to sort them by color, shape, and size and we will make patterns with them too! We will also be learning about the equals and not equals signs and comparing numbers. We will continue to tell and solve more story problems and a great time to practice story problems at home is during dinner – for example you could say “we had 6 rolls on the plate and we ate 3 of them, how many do we have left?” or “I ate 3 chicken nuggets and then had 2 more, how many chicken nuggets did I have altogether?” or you can even ask your child if they can come up with a problem of their own.

During Literacy our essential question this week is “How can people help to make your community better” which is a wonderful topic to discuss and I am excited to hear the conversations we will have this week about pitching in and making our community the best that it can be! We will be reading the following stories – “Roadwork”, “A Community Garden”, and “The Bundle of Sticks”. In our crabby books we will be reading “I Can You Can” and in guided reading your child will either read “Can you Fix It” or “We Clean”. Our vocabulary words are community, improve, confused, harvest, and quarrel. Again this week we will be focusing on those key details of the story and answering and asking questions when we read. This is actually a review week and next week we are suppose to learn the word “my” and focus in on the letter H but we will be switching those around because next week will be a little crazy with our program so this week we will learn about “my” and “h”! I will also be assessing quite a bit this week for report cards! Always so much to do!

It is sure to be a fast and fun week again in Kindergarten! I hope that Snowflake has nothing but good news to report!

Happy Birthday Chloe!

Today Chloe turns 6 years old and we were lucky enough to celebrate her birthday yesterday when we were at school. Chloe brought all of us pencils and her mom came in to read a Pete The Cat book - it was a great day! Also yesterday at school something crazy happened... Mrs. Woita realized that Snowflake our scout elf is NOT our birthday elf. I had thought that Santa sent down Snowflake during birthdays but I was wrong. My friends and I were very surprised to see TWO elves hanging from a zip line when we got to school on Friday (we couldn't believe our eyes - 2 elves and a zip line made from christmas lights) - we looked closely at both elves and realized that they were different! All this time we thought it was Snowflake that came on our birthdays but we are lucky enough to have a scout elf at Christmas AND a birthday elf - we all decided that we needed to name our birthday elf and after a very long discussion and vote we decided to call our birthday elf - Confetti (which is very fitting seeing as this birthday elf seems to leave confetti all over our classroom)! We all hope Chloe has a fabulous birthday today! Here are a few pictures of our Birthday girl and our elves...

                 Snowflake and Confetti hanging from the zipline!

                       Chloe, her mom, and Pete the Cat!

                  Chloe's desk and lots of confetti!

                   Singing happy birthday to Chloe!

                           Chloe and her friends!

                        Check out these cool pencils!

                                Birthday Girl - Chloe!

Queen Hayle

Hayle was our Queen of the Jungle this week and it was an awesome week! She brought in a super cool book called "The BIG Blue Book of Beginner Readers" and it had 6 awesome stories in it - although we were only able to read one of the stories we still all thought it was great - we got to read "Put Me In The Zoo". Now a little bit about Hayle - she likes swimming, pizza, and giraffes. Her favorite song is "Do You Want To Build A Snowman" which we all agreed was a fabulous song! She likes the movie Despicable Me 2 and her favorite book is "I Can Read With My Eyes Shut" by Dr. Suess.  Hayle is a special little girl because she is silly and makes us all laugh and smile. When she is at home she likes to do puzzles and when she grows up she wants to be a singer AND a zoo keeper! Hayle had a wonderful week please check out her video as Queen....


              

The Holiday Spirit is Here...

I hope that you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving and my friends had a good break. I also hope that they are ready to get back to school and are ready for a fun, fast 14 days! We will be doing a lot over the next 3 weeks and we don't have any time to waste!
I am thinking that one of Santa's scout elves will probably be coming to keep an eye on us during this crazy time to make sure we all stay on the nice list! Our elf, George, came to my house this past weekend to keep on eye on Henry, Lily, and Macy so I am sure Snowflake will be arriving anyday now to keep watch over my friends while they are here at school! I am crossing my fingers for excellent behavior because like I said we have lots to do!

In Literacy we will be focusing on the letter d and the word "do". Our vocabulary words are appreciate, culture, prefer, proud, and tradition. We will be reading "What Can You Do With a Paleta?", "Cultural Festivals", "A World of Festivals", and in our crabby books we will read "Sid" and in guided reading your child will read either "Neighborhood Party" or "Parade Day". If we can squeeze in any holiday books we will be doing that too! We will work on our comprehension skills as well when we are reading stories and will be talking about the character, setting, and the events that take place throughout the book. We will be blending and segmenting words and also reading silly/nonsense words this week to get ready for our Quarter 2 assessments!

In writing we will be continuing to learn more about what good writer's do - the CAPS man really helps us remember that every sentence starts with a Capital letter, we need Art work to match our story, also Punctuation marks go at the end of every sentence, and between every word we need Spaces! We will also be starting to talk about pattern books and will be making a few of our own class pattern books over the next few weeks!

In math we will be working hard on learning those teen numbers, we are going to practice solving and telling oral story problems and again reviewing the different strategies we can use to solve story problems. We will be exploring with a balance to compare how much things weigh and we will be using vertical and horizontal graphs to show our results! We will also be talking a lot about number partners and working on our counting mats! Ms. Kristen will be teaching us a math lesson on Tuesday that reviews story problems and making numbers using a five-group!

In Unit Studies we are starting one of my favorite units (I know that I say that about all of the units but this one really is a good one) we will start learning about Holidays Around the World. It is so neat to talk about our own family traditions around the holidays but also so neat to talk about how different cultures celebrate. We will be making a booklet and talking about what we might see if we were to actually travel around the world! It is sure to be a fun busy week!

Please make sure you are free to come to our Holidays Around the World Program on Friday, Dec. 19th at 12:30 in the auditorium. You will be getting an invitation soon but wanted to give you a heads up that it will probably last around 30 minutes. I hope that you are all able to make it!

I can't believe it is December and we are almost done with the second quarter of kindergarten!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I wanted to let you all know how very thankful I am...
I am blessed with a healthy family and a job that I love! I am so thankful that I get to work with your children every day! I wanted to share this poem with you all and tell you that I hope that I can be the kind of teacher that teaches your child the importance of being thankful...

Be Thankful

Be thankful that you don’t already have everything you desire,
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?

Be thankful when you don’t know something
For it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.

Be thankful for your limitations
Because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful for each new challenge
Because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes
They will teach you valuable lessons.

Be thankful when you’re tired and weary
Because it means you’ve made a difference.

It is easy to be thankful for the good things.
A life of rich fulfillment comes to those who are
also thankful for the setbacks.

GRATITUDE can turn a negative into a positive.
Find a way to be thankful for your troubles
and they can become your blessings.

Author Unknown

I hope you all enjoy the long weekend!  Please enjoy the video we made!

                            
                      

Short week!

This week will be a quick one- we will be going turkey crazy and talking a lot about the things we are thankful for! Tuesday is a PLC day so it will be a super fast day! If we survive these two days and all the things on the to do list we will all deserve a break!  Although I am sure hoping for a little bit of free time because I have quite a few funny turkey books I know my friends would love!

Queen Gabbi

Gabbi was the Queen of the Jungle this week and it was a great week! Gabbi likes purple and yellow and playing soccer. Her favorite movie is Frozen and her favorite song of course is "Let it Go" so we had to sing and watch the video and all the kids loved it! Gabbi made us all laugh when she told us her favorite food is candy! Gabbi also loves zebras and when she is at home she likes to play games. She is a special kid because she is funny which is so true! This week Gabbi's grandma came in and read us a story which was so much fun - Gabbi even got to read us a story too! When Gabbi grows up she wants to be a teacher! Gabbi was a wonderful Queen! Please check out her video!

                      

Moving Right Along...

It is the middle of November and we are moving right along. We are starting a new unit in Literacy and in Math! My friends did great on their Unit 2 math test and are excited to keep learning more about numbers. Unit 3 will review and build upon our knowledge of numbers 1-10. We will be focusing on teen numbers and seeing that there is one group of ten in every teen number. This week we will be introduced the to “ten bug” who LOVES the number 10. We will continue to work with 5-groups and if we are lucky we will maybe have one more visit from the 5-finder this week! We will also be learning about number partners and how a number is a whole that can be easily separated into partners! Ms. Carli will also be teaching us about different strategies that we can use to solve story problems! Oh how I LOVE math – it truly is so fun to see my friends learning more about numbers!

In Literacy we will be starting Unit 4 “Around the Neighborhood”. This week our essential question is “What do people use to do their jobs?” and I can’t wait to hear the conversations we will have! Our vocabulary words are equipment, uniform, expect, remained, and utensils. We will be reading “Whose Shoes?” and “Workers and Their Tools”, which are both informational texts that give us real information and many times include photographs.  We will also be reading “Little Juan and the Cooking Pot” and in our crabby book we will read “Tom on Top”.  During guided reading your child will either be reading “ You Cook” or “On the Job”. We will be focusing on the letter “o” and learning the word “you” this week as well. As always we will blending sounds together to make words and also taking a word and sounding it out slowly - which ties in so nicely with what we have been working on in writing. We will also focus a lot on ending punctuation marks and how our voices sound when we read them.  We will also be learning that an adjective is a describing word that tells us more about something! For example when we are writing about going down the slide at the park we could say we that we go down the big, red, curvy slide at the park! 

We will be finishing up our sink or float books this week too. We have had way too much fun experimenting at school and from what I hear my friends are having fun experimenting at home as well!

We have another fun week ahead of us!

King Cody

Cody was the King of the Jungle this week – and he had an awesome week! Cody’s favorite color is blue and he likes tee-ball. His favorite food is pizza and he loves tigers! His favorite song and movie is Pokemon and he even shared his very rare Pokemon toy with us. His favorite book is “I Can Read With My Eyes Shut” by Dr. Suess and we loved reading it – my friends laughed almost the whole time! He is a special kid because he is the funniest, cutest kid and is very good at making funny faces! Cody likes to play his DS and minecraft when he is at home. When he grows up he wants to be a teacher like Mrs. Woita :). Cody was a wonderful King of the Jungle – please check out his video!

                   

Veterans Day!

On Tuesday, Nov. 11th we celebrated a very important day in our country, Veterans Day! I talked with my friends about how much the women and men have sacrificed for our country to keep us safe and free. We are so thankful for all of the veterans and for all the men and women who are still serving our country! We are truly so lucky to live in America! Words cannot express our gratitude for all that they have done for us. Every passing day I admire and appreciate our veterans even more.

This year the kindergarten teachers at Meadow Lane challenged our students to bring in candy that they got from Halloween to share with the Veterans in our community. I was amazed at how much candy my friends brought in. We had a blast bagging up the candy to share with others. We also made turkey cards that were made with our hands and feet with the words "from our hands down to our feet we say thanks for keeping us free!" and I will be taking them along with our bags of candy to the veterans hospital this weekend to share with them. A few of my friends even took some home to give to the veterans that they know! Please check out this short video we made in honor of Veterans Day.

                      

Practice Makes Perfect

Your child brought home a packet of papers on Friday and I explained that all of these papers will help us practice the skills we have been working so hard on in kindergarten! I showed them all how to put the papers in their binders so they can practice over and over again :)

Please continue to use the alphabet chart to practice the letters and sounds, we have been working hard to blending sounds together to make words, especially in writing. 

 We are continuing to work hard on making all of the letters correctly – if you notice your child is consistently writing letters or numbers backwards please use these strokes to help your child!

The blue sheet of words are all of the words we are learning in the 2^nd quarter – remember my friends need to be able to read and write these words! Please ask your child to tell you the chants we use for each word. It is still good to practice our 1st quarter words as well!

This yellow sheet is full of activities to use with the colored boxes. Of course you can always make up your own activities. We use something very similar to this everyday during daily math routines to practice writing our numbers in isolation.

We are focusing on our numbers 1-10 and it is so important to be able to write them – please use this sheet to have your child practice.

This week we will be taking our Unit 2 math test – so any extra practice you do at home would be awesome! We will be reviewing this week in preparation for our test!

We are having soo much fun experimenting with different objects to see if they will sink or float. We did our own experiments and watched a video of Cookie Monster testing out different objects. We learned words like hypothesis, displacement, and density – geez we are sure learning lot in kindergarten! We will continue to learn more about why objects sink or float. I sure hope you had fun experimenting at home!

In Literacy we will start Week 3 of Unit 3. We will be reading “Please Take Me For A Walk” and “Field Trips” and will be talking about the different places we go during the week and also focusing on the character, setting, and events that happen in the stories. In our crabby books we will be reading “We Go To See Nan” and “Can We Go?” We will be focusing on the letter c and learning how to read and write the word go! Our vocabulary words will be neighborhood, routine, intelligent, local, and volunteer. During guided reading your child will either be reading “We Can Go” or “Going by Cab”. During writer’s workshop we are continuing to write stories from our lives and are working hard on sounding out words that we don’t know how to spell using turtle talk.

Please have your child wear red, white, and blue on Tuesday – because we will be observing Veterans Day and will be making a few things for our Veterans and of course taking some pictures for this special day.  What a busy week we have ahead of us!

Sharing is Caring

This week we started our new wellness challenge - which challenges us to do nice things for others and to help out in different ways. I sure hope you are all enjoying filling out your challenge sheets at home. I love talking with my friends about different ways we can fill up people's buckets! We know that when we fill up other peoples buckets it fills up our bucket at the same time. What a wonderful feeling it is to help others and put a smile on their face! I am hoping you all have good helpers at home this weekend because all my friends told me that they would be working extra hard to help out at home!
This week I had so many friends bring in candy for the Veterans  - next week we will be bagging it up and making a special gift for the Veterans! This week we also started our Food Drive here at Meadow Lane and it is our goal to bring in 100 items of food for the Food Drive - and so far we have 24 items so I am hoping that we can continue to bring in some more food for this very worthy cause!
Our friend Josiah is in a cast this week as I am sure you all heard and at the beginning of the week was in crutches and all of my friends did such an amazing job helping him out. He wanted to do something nice for his friends so he bought popcorn for the entire class - so if you are wondering why your quarters returned home that is the reason. I know that my friends will continue to help out Josiah until he gets his cast off. There are so many times throughout the day that my friends are helping out others and it truly does bring a smile to my face. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend with your families!

Queen Chloe

This week Chloe was the Queen of the Jungle and she had a fabulous week! Chloe loves the color pink and swimming. She brought in her Pete the Cat stuffed animal and her favorite book Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons - which we all loved reading and we even got to watch a little bit of the book on the internet! We all do love Pete the Cat! Chloe's favorite book is Frozen and she loves the song "Let It Go" of course! She also likes mac n' cheese and giraffes! She is special kid because her family loves her so very much and when she is at home she likes to play in her room. When she grows up she wants to be a teacher just like her mom! Chloe loved being the Queen of the Jungle... please check out her special video!

                      

Fall Fun...

Last week we had quite the time with Mrs. Schroeder and Mrs. Mach’s friends. We decorated pumpkins which we hope you love, we also got to clean out a pumpkin – one of which was a magic pumpkin (as I am sure you have heard about), we planted the seeds and they grew over night! On Friday we started our day off finding our pumpkins and then later on in the afternoon we played games and decorated monsters. It really was a lot of fun – please check out these videos so you can see a glimpse of our fun times… also a special thank you goes out to all of my adult volunteers that made our afternoon go so much smoother... THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!

 

                       

                                            a little photo booth fun..
                        

Fall Back... the time has officially changed!

The time has changed and hopefully you all enjoyed your extra hour of sleep as much as I did! This week we will be trying to get back into our normal routine after the super fun week we had last week! Although we will be gearing up for Veterans Day and Thanksgiving will be here before we know it. Last week you should have gotten a "candy challenge" paper in your child's Wednesday Folder - we will be collecting candy this week to give to the Veterans - I am hoping we will be collecting a lot... my friends always say "sharing is caring"!

In Literacy we will be starting Week 2 in Unit 3. Our essential question is “What are the different sounds we hear?” and we will be reading a super fun book called “Clang! Clang! Beep! Beep! Listen to the City” and also “The Turtle and the Flute”. We are learning about different genres of books and also strategies that readers use – we are getting really good at visualizing the pictures in our mind.  In our crabby books we will be reading “Nat and Tip” and “Tim and Nan”, and let me tell you we really enjoy reading those crabby books! We will be focusing on the letter “Nn” and learning how to read, write, and spell the word “and”. Our vocabulary words this week are listen, volume, chat, exclaimed, and familiar.  We are continuing to work on finding words that rhyme and sorting words by the beginning and ending sounds. We are getting really good at blending words with turtle talk and like writing down the sounds we hear in our sound boxes! This week I will be sending home a few things to put in your binders for you to practice with at home!

In Math we will be practicing writing the number 10 as well as making patterns and showing numbers 1-10 on our counting mats. We will continue to solve addition and subtraction story problems and try and come up with our own problems. We are getting really good at repeating story problems so we know what the problem is asking us. We will also be looking at addition and subtraction equations closely to see what patterns we find. 

In writing we will be go over what we should do if our friends try to help us spell words (we are working very hard on becoming independent writers) and also talking about how sometimes we spell the same words differently and how that is okay! We will learn that good writers touch(point) to their words and reread while they are writing their sentences to make sure that they make sense and also remembering to use punctuation marks at the end of each sentence.

During Unit Studies we finished up our drug safety unit and will now be starting our science unit – Sink or Float! Be prepared to test things at home – I just know that my friends will love experimenting and making predictions about what objects will sink to the bottom and which objects will float! I can’t wait to see all of the fun we have during this unit!

On Friday your child should have given you their report cards along with the pumpkins, toys, and snacks! Sorry I can only imagine your Friday evening when that backpack opened up – that is if you even got the backpack opened up on Friday -I know at my house it was crazy- what a busy day we had! Please let me know if you have any questions about your child’s report card – you get to the keep the actual report card but please send back the envelope so we can reuse it. I told my friends that 3’s are what we are looking for and that 2’s just mean we need to keep working hard and trying our best every day!

Hopefully this week I will be getting a video up of our fun Fall Party! Also please be on the lookout for the November calendar and note for Book It and also for the papers to put in your binder this week! We have another fun week ahead of us!

King Cash

This week Cash was the King of the Jungle and he had an awesome week! His favorite color is blue and he loves the book Curious George and we had a fabulous time reading his story. He loves the LEGO movie and football! He also loves pizza and tigers. He likes the cat songs and he is a special kid because he likes to share his toys. Something he likes to do at home is play with his legos and when he grows up he wants to be either a doctor or a knight. Cash had a fabulous time as our King. Please check out his video...

                              

Happy Birthday Olivia!

We had another birthday girl in our room today - well technically her birthday was this past weekend but Snowflake came to our room today to help us celebrate Olivia's birthday! Olivia is now 6 years old and had a wonderful birthday! Please check out a few pictures from her birthday celebration here at school!

                                                Birthday girl's desk!

                                                   Singing Olivia Happy Birthday!

                                          Birthday girl and her friends!

                                                    Birthday girl and Snowflake!

                                                           Birthday girl - Olivia!

Fall Fun!

This week we will be finishing up our first week of Unit 3 – we are having some great discussions about rules that we have to follow in different places! We will also be reading some great fall and Halloween books this week. Many of my friends celebrate Halloween so we will talk about some of their traditions. On Friday we will be having a little Fall Fun in the afternoon where we will get to play some fun games and make a fun snack – hopefully the weather continues to be nice so we can play them outside! If there are any parents that are able to help out during the games please let me know – I would need you from about 12:30-2. Please just let me know so I know how many helpers I have! :)

During writing last week we met the CAPS man who helps us remember some important rules of writing and we also got to read a funny story called “Caps For Sale” and the kids loved it and begged for me to read it again. I told them that if we started using conventions during writing we might just be able to read it again! This week we will continue to talk about the importance of adding details to our stories and also reviewing how turtle talk can help us spell words we don’t know how to spell.  It is amazing to see the sentences that the kids are writing – I promise you would be impressed!

On Friday we had our all school assembly and got to watch a few videos that helped us get fired up about making good choices and living a healthy drug free life! We will continue to work on our drug free books this week. We will talk about who can give us medicine and the different kinds of medicine that the doctors or parents might give us. We will also talk about things we can do instead of doing drugs. This week is Red Ribbon Week and everyday we will wear our red ribbons and we are also asked to wear a different color to show our support.

Mon. – Oct. 27^th  – wear red – to be bold and say NO to drugs

Tues. – Oct. 28^th  – wear purple - to remember the pledge we say everyday on making good choices

Wed. – Oct. 29^th  – wear green – to help us grow up healthy and strong

Thurs. – Oct. 30^th – wear yellow – to see the light that comes from making good choices

Fri. – Oct. 31^st – wear Meadow Lane colors because we will stand together as a school and say NO to drugs

In Math we will continue to tell addition and subtraction story problems and act them out when we can. We will also practice making the number 9 and have fun creating and extending patterns. This week we will also be using a new manipulative during counting mats to help us see numbers 1-10. Ms. Carli will be teaching us a lesson on Thursday that focuses on patterns. Here are a few pictures of things we have been working on during counting mats… we love making numbers with our square inch tiles and with pennies and five groups!