Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Monday, December 14, 2015
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Gingerbread Men
We are "baking up" gingerbread men in class this week. Thank you so much for all of the supplies for our houses. We will be making them on Friday with our 5th Grade Buddies. We have also been reading several different versions of the gingerbread man story in class. We have been comparing and contrasting the stories as we go. So far this is what we have read:
Gingerbread Houses
We all had a great time building our houses on Friday. Instead of sending them home right away we are going to let the frosting set up and then send them on Monday. 
Friday, December 11, 2015
Friday Facts...
We are on countdown mode in here! :) I have a big bunch of children that are very excited about gingerbread houses, our Winter party, and Winter Break! I can't say that I blame them for that excitement. We have a lot of great activities that are planned for the next few days of school. The first exciting news is that we earned our first leadership reward today! The children have been trying to earn leadership tickets for displaying the 7 Habits around the school. We have meet our first goal of required tickets on Thursday so we had a guest reader come into our classroom to read a story. Miss Fernkas was our reader and she shared a book about snowmen. We have also earned our second reward today so on Monday it is Pajama Day at school for Kindergarten. We are hoping to keep earning tickets to earn an extra recess and participate in our all school Bingo game on Thursday.
Earlier this week, I sent out an email from our Lead Room Parent about our Winter Party on Friday. Thank you so much to those that are able to come and help out. If your schedule opens up and you are able to attend, we would love to have you! This is an exciting day at CE and we love to share it with our parents.
We decorated gingerbread houses with our 5th Grade Buddies today. It was a hit! Everyone had such a good time. I did let the children know that they should not eat the candy on the houses. Some of it is old from several years ago. I hope you enjoy them at home as much as we have at school.
I will be doing a binder check on Monday, December 14th. Please send those in so I can return them to you in order to have them back for Winter Break. Report cards will be sent home during the beginning of January and I am excited to share all of the growth I have seen from the children with you then! Over break, please feel free to work on the third set of words that are labeled March if you are looking for something to work on. For those children that have a good majority of words mastered, feel free to have your child sit down and write a story for you. This is a great activity to do over break to keep learning and to help your child practice their sight words. We have been really working hard at writing in class. We are focusing in on making sure a story has a "who", "what", and "where" included in a piece. We are also working to include several details about a single topic in each story. At this point in the school year, I am looking for most children to be able to write at least three sentences for each story. If a child can do more, that is fantastic!
Next week, we will also be switching up the books in the children's book bags. Please make sure they have them in their backpacks so we can give you a new set of books to use over Winter Break.
I hope everyone has a great weekend! Next week will be full of fun surprises!!
Earlier this week, I sent out an email from our Lead Room Parent about our Winter Party on Friday. Thank you so much to those that are able to come and help out. If your schedule opens up and you are able to attend, we would love to have you! This is an exciting day at CE and we love to share it with our parents.
We decorated gingerbread houses with our 5th Grade Buddies today. It was a hit! Everyone had such a good time. I did let the children know that they should not eat the candy on the houses. Some of it is old from several years ago. I hope you enjoy them at home as much as we have at school.
I will be doing a binder check on Monday, December 14th. Please send those in so I can return them to you in order to have them back for Winter Break. Report cards will be sent home during the beginning of January and I am excited to share all of the growth I have seen from the children with you then! Over break, please feel free to work on the third set of words that are labeled March if you are looking for something to work on. For those children that have a good majority of words mastered, feel free to have your child sit down and write a story for you. This is a great activity to do over break to keep learning and to help your child practice their sight words. We have been really working hard at writing in class. We are focusing in on making sure a story has a "who", "what", and "where" included in a piece. We are also working to include several details about a single topic in each story. At this point in the school year, I am looking for most children to be able to write at least three sentences for each story. If a child can do more, that is fantastic!
Next week, we will also be switching up the books in the children's book bags. Please make sure they have them in their backpacks so we can give you a new set of books to use over Winter Break.
I hope everyone has a great weekend! Next week will be full of fun surprises!!
Monday, December 7, 2015
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Jump with Jill
We had a great convocation yesterday where we learned about the importance of eating healthy and taking care of our bodies!
Deck the Halls with Can Foods....
It's that time of year at CE! We have our annual can food drive underway. This is an exciting activity for everyone and a chance to help a local food bank as well. We are collecting non perishable food items until December 17th. Our goal this year is for each child to bring in at least 10 cans to donate and line the hallways at CE. We are trying to get the cans to line every wall in the school this year!
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Gingerbread Field Trip
It was a great field trip. I was so impressed with our Carmel Elementary Leaders. Everyone had a great time trying to catch the gingerbread man!
100 Book Club
Congratulations! Keep up the great work! We are trying to reach 100% participation this year. 
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Happy Sort of Friday!
Happy almost Friday! We have had a lot of fun today in class. Last week, we were nominated as the class of the week. Part of that nomination includes an extra recess. The weather was so nice outside today that we took our extra recess and enjoyed extra play time! We watched the movie Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs in class today for our leadership reward. We also had some time to write about each person's favorite part of the video. For some of the children this is a scary step in our classroom. I keep reassuring them that they can do this by themselves. I know this can be a scary step for some. If you see that your child struggles with this confidence step and is always asking you "how do you spell ....?" My stock answer I give in the classroom is "you try it first, and then we can look at it and talk about it when you are done." Another great confidence booster is to continue to practice the sight word recognition skills in the leadership binder each night. You will find as your child masters more words, they become more confident writers and readers!
I have had some questions regarding the 100 book club. We are trying to achieve 100% class participation this school year. Right now, we are at 65% participation. This is a great activity that can help encourage reading at home. If you read a book or if your child reads a book, that will count! Please consider filling out your child's book club packet if you haven't already. If you have misplaced yours and would like another, no problem! Just send me an email and I will get you another copy. :)
With the snowy weather creeping in upon us, I wanted to remind you that we do go outside everyday as long as the windchill is above 20 degrees. Please send your child to school with appropriate outside clothing each day of school. If there is snow on the ground, we ask that you send in a change of boots for your child in order for them to go play on the snow covered section of our playground. Thanks for your help with this!
Have a happy and restful Thanksgiving Break!
I have had some questions regarding the 100 book club. We are trying to achieve 100% class participation this school year. Right now, we are at 65% participation. This is a great activity that can help encourage reading at home. If you read a book or if your child reads a book, that will count! Please consider filling out your child's book club packet if you haven't already. If you have misplaced yours and would like another, no problem! Just send me an email and I will get you another copy. :)
With the snowy weather creeping in upon us, I wanted to remind you that we do go outside everyday as long as the windchill is above 20 degrees. Please send your child to school with appropriate outside clothing each day of school. If there is snow on the ground, we ask that you send in a change of boots for your child in order for them to go play on the snow covered section of our playground. Thanks for your help with this!
Have a happy and restful Thanksgiving Break!
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Monday, November 16, 2015
Weekly Facts
Happy Monday! It has been a great start to the week! I hope everyone got outside this weekend and enjoyed the weather. We had a wonderful week last week in class. We are starting our Thanksgiving unit. The class is starting to learn about the Pilgrims and Native Americans and their way of life. Today in class, we read a book about what it would be like to be a Pilgrim girl. We learned about the style of clothing they wore, what types of chores a girl had to do, and what types of food was eaten back then.
We are carrying this topic over to our writing workshop time as well. This week and last we have been focusing in on making sure our stories have details in them. The class has really enjoyed being "bumped" up and challenged to write a story with at least two sentences, if not more. We will continue to learn about the Pilgrims and Native Americans the rest of this week and next week as well.
Thank you so much for sending in the leadership binders. The children were so proud of their many accomplishments! Please continue to work with the sight words at home each night. It is really starting to boost the confidence of everyone in the classroom and the kids are so proud of their hard work. It is starting to show in their writing as well. Thank you for your work on practicing the sight words each night to help us achieve our goals!
In the classroom I have been really starting to push the children to apply what we have learned in the school year so far. Some great things you can do at home to work on this would be: practice blending unknown words together. Start with three letter words (ham, top, pet, etc.) and then move on to more difficult words (stop, thin, chat, etc.); challenge your child to try and write in a journal and create stories with sentences using the words they know; read a book to you or read parts of a book to you; practice number writing and recognition skills; or see how high your child can count for you going forward and backwards. These are all things that we have been doing in the classroom during these past few weeks of school.
We had a great Veteran's Day celebration at school last week! The class did a great job in our convocation and hopefully enjoyed hearing from the veteran's that were able to visit and the songs the choir sang.
Hope you have a great week!
We are carrying this topic over to our writing workshop time as well. This week and last we have been focusing in on making sure our stories have details in them. The class has really enjoyed being "bumped" up and challenged to write a story with at least two sentences, if not more. We will continue to learn about the Pilgrims and Native Americans the rest of this week and next week as well.
Thank you so much for sending in the leadership binders. The children were so proud of their many accomplishments! Please continue to work with the sight words at home each night. It is really starting to boost the confidence of everyone in the classroom and the kids are so proud of their hard work. It is starting to show in their writing as well. Thank you for your work on practicing the sight words each night to help us achieve our goals!
In the classroom I have been really starting to push the children to apply what we have learned in the school year so far. Some great things you can do at home to work on this would be: practice blending unknown words together. Start with three letter words (ham, top, pet, etc.) and then move on to more difficult words (stop, thin, chat, etc.); challenge your child to try and write in a journal and create stories with sentences using the words they know; read a book to you or read parts of a book to you; practice number writing and recognition skills; or see how high your child can count for you going forward and backwards. These are all things that we have been doing in the classroom during these past few weeks of school.
We had a great Veteran's Day celebration at school last week! The class did a great job in our convocation and hopefully enjoyed hearing from the veteran's that were able to visit and the songs the choir sang.
Hope you have a great week!
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Wants vs. Needs Lesson
On Wednesday, we were visited by some high school students. They were teaching us a lesson on what a want is versus a need. It was a lot of fun listening in to the conversations about whether or not a Barbie doll, piece of candy, or a bed, for example, was a want or a need. My favorite quote from this lesson was "a toy is definitely a need because my mom says you can live without toys and survive!" :)
Friday, October 30, 2015
Friday Facts
What a great day we have had today! I want to thank everyone for meeting with me for conferences! It was great to share all of the wonderful things that are happening in our classroom!
We had a special convocation today to celebrate CE meeting our fall fundraising goal. We enjoyed Thaddeus Rex!
We also had a great couple of days celebrating red ribbon week.
This week we have been working on describing words in class. We are trying to apply it to our writing. It has been great to hear the detailed sentences the kids are coming up with.
It is hard to believe that November is just around the corner! I will be collecting binders next Wednesday. We will be updating goals and getting them back out to you by the end of the week.
Have a great weekend!
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