Friday Five

We made the best of a rainy week this week during indoor recess!

We are learning all about apples and pumpkins in class.  We are learning about how to find facts from stories.  We have read several stories about apples and pumpkins and have learned a lot!  Here is our bulletin board out in the hallway.  We had a great time making apples and pumpkins, balancing "apples" (bean bags) on our heads to match the book 10 Apples On Top, and creating an apple fact sentence.

During our writing block, we are learning what writers do.  This week, we talked about how stories need a picture and some words.  We also talked about how when you think you are done, you have just begun.  This means to check your words to see if you can add more and to check your picture to see if you can add more details.

Last Friday's Leadership Challenge had us working together as a team to make a standing house out of 20 index cards and 1 long piece of tape.  The class did an excellent job!

Friday Facts...

Happy Friday!  It has been another great week at school!  We have been learning so many new skills and still working hard at learning everyone’s name.  It was a great crazy hair/hat day for all!  We had so much fun.  We are trying to reach our next fundraising goal in order to have an all school PJ day!

Here’s our Friday 5 for this week in class:

1.  During our OG time, we continue to introduce a letter a day.  This week’s letters were: u, m, r, c, and g.  We talked about how the letter g is a “rule breaker” because when you make that letter, it breaks the rule and goes below the line that we are writing on.  I also “bumped” up the skills for the kids. We are doing such a great job with working with letters that I have introduced what we call finger spelling.  This is where we take the letters we have learned about and make them into words.  We use our fingers to help us spell these words.  Next week, we will work with five more letters and start working on recognizing the sight words “a” and “I”.

2.  We wrapped up Chapter 3 in Social Studies by talking about how to make good choices at school.  We also talked about rules at school and home.  We listed several different rules that we would find at home and at school. 

3.  We started writing block in class and talked about the different kinds of writing we might see as we are all learning.  Everyone was encouraged to try to write in their own way about what they like to do outside.

4.  During our math block, we have been working with pattern blocks, sorting buttons, practicing recognizing and making shapes, and practicing recognizing and counting numbers.

5.  We started our Daily 5 stations in the classroom on Friday.  This is where we work on our language arts skills.  Everyone did a great job learning how the many different stations work.  This is something that we will be doing each day in the classroom.

I hope everyone has a great three day weekend!

Friday Facts...

Happy Friday!

This week has been jam packed with skills!  I have introduced most our routines and everyone has been doing a fantastic job learning the new skills.  We have been working hard during our OG time.  I have introduced the letters a, t, b, l, f, h, p, and s.  I have introduced them in that order.  During this time, we work on proper formation of each letter, learning the sound and how to correctly say it, and the keyword to go along with each word.  We have also been using a strategy called skywriting to help up learn this.  This is where we pretend our fingers are a pencil and we write in the air.  Next week we will continue to work on more letters and add in a response sheet during this time block.  If you would like to help practice this at home, you can ask your child what sounds does ___(a letter)___ make or what is the keyword for __(a letter)__.

Our centers this week have been focused on basic letters and numbers.  We have eight centers each week.  Our red center is where we practice math skills.  This week, the children worked on number recognition skills.  Orange and Green centers are computer centers.  This week, we worked with the website abcmouse.com.  We will do various programs throughout the school year.  Yellow center is our writing practice center.  This week the children practiced writing the letters of the alphabet.  Pink center is where we practice fine motor skills.  The kids had dry erase markers and boards to practice writing skills at this table.  The next center is purple center.  This is our word work center.  This week, the children practiced recognizing upper and lower case letters.  The final two centers are blue and white.  These centers are used for the children to work on skills with my assistant, Mrs. Rohan.  This week the children learned how to make a graph and analyze it.

We have started our first Social Studies Unit in class.  We are learning about what it means to get along with others.  During this chapter, we have been talking about how it is important to be a good listener by taking turns when talking and why it is important to look someone in the eyes when you are talking.  We will continue to work on this chapter next week as well.

We have officially started our NWEA testing.  On Wednesday and Friday we took the math portion of the test.  Everyone has been doing a great job!  Next week, we will work on the language arts section of the test.

Finally, we met with our fifth grade buddies on Friday.  Our buddy classroom is Mrs. Thiel’s room.  The children spent some time getting to know their buddy and we worked on making a paper person to help describe each partner. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

First Week Fun!

Wow!  What a great first week of school.  We have been working hard learning about all of the new routines and daily activities in class.  Everyone has been doing a great job!  It is hard to believe that we are going to be gearing up for the 2nd week of school.  As we get ready, we are going to be enjoying the eclipse viewing in the afternoon, weather permitting.  We have talked about what an eclipse means and how to safely view it with our glasses.  We will also watch a video that talks about safe viewing before we go out.  Everyone that viewed the eclipse will be bringing their glasses home with hem on Monday.

As we are all learning the new routines of school, I wanted to pass along some information that might help day to day things go easier for you.

• For easier access of daily afternoon changes, download the school dismissal app for your phone.   From personal experience, it is really easy to make a daily change if necessary!
• Please make sure your child has lunch money in their account.  There is another app you can get for your phone from EZ School Pay to help manage accounts when not using a computer.  

Don't forget about our Meet the Teacher night next week.  This is our chance to go over classroom specific information.  Short and sweet this week!  Have a great week!

A great first day back!

We had an amazing first day back at school!  The kids are learning all kinds of new routines and procedures.  We sure had fun!

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to another school year!  I am so excited to see everyone and look forward to a great school year! 

Friday Facts...

What a great few weeks it has been!  We are so excited around here to see what chicks will hatch.  If everything goes as planned, we should start having chicks hatch around May 2nd.  We will be taking them back to the farm on May 5th.  We have an assortment of eggs (small white, large brown, light green).  We have been making predictions about what type of chick might hatch.  While we are waiting for the eggs to hatch, we have been filling out our science journal and learning about how the chick is developing in the eggs each day.  Each child is drawing what these changes look like just like a scientist would do in their own notebook.  Today we explored what food the chicks will eat and learned about how they will get water. 

Monday is the deadline for the 100 Book Club.  If you are wanting to reach that next step, please have your book turned in on Monday.  If your child reached 100, their t-shirts will be delivered near the end of the school year.

Our flowers from the flower sale will be coming in soon.  PTO still has some volunteer slots to fill.  If you are interested in helping out, here is a link to the sign up sheet:
https://m.signupgenius.com/#!/showSignUp/20f094aaeaf2baaf49-carmel2 

Also, the flowers will be delivered on Friday, May 5th.  Due to this, we will be eating in our classrooms on the 4th and the 5th.  Please no visitors on those days due to lack of extra space in our classrooms.

Today your child is bringing home a yellow paper about our annual Kindy 500 at Carmel Elementary.  This is such a fun time that we look forward to every year!  Please check your child's backpack for more information.

We are going to be collecting leadership binders on Friday, May 5th.  All of the pages inside will be yours to keep.  I just need the empty binders back. 

Now on to curriculum... :)
During our writing time, we have been working on writing informational stories.  I have talked about how we are looking for stories to have a beginning, at least three details, and an ending sentence when writing.  We have been writing about a lot of different topics including a favorite toy, a favorite person, a favorite season, etc.  All stories were sent home today from the month of April.  One goal we had was to see if we could write a story a day. 

During our social studies time block, we have been working on learning about different cultures around the world.  Some of the things that we talked about were how to say hello in different languages and how some laws are different in different countries.

It is hard to believe that we only have 18 more school days left!  Have a great weekend!