Friday Facts!

What a great ending to today!  I had everyone clip off of the clip chart!  When you clip off of the chart, you earn a bead on your clip, or we say you get to add some "bling".  After five beads, we retire your clip and start over with a new one.  Next week, we will be starting our clip chart paper.  Each Monday, your child will get a paper to track where their clip lands at the end of the day.  It will be their responsibility to color in the circle at the end of each school day.  You will need to keep their clip chart paper in your child's folder each day.  If their paper is in their folder on Friday, the children will earn an extra clip up.  I will replace the chart each week.

We really have been working hard on routines this week.  After being in school for almost 20 days, our routines have gotten a lot easier!  After Labor Day, we will be bumping up some of our expectations and start to put more responsibility on the children during our centers and independent times.

We are almost done officially learning the letters of the alphabet.  Each day, we continue to practice naming letters, saying the keyword, and saying the letter sound. As this skill is mastered, the kids become more confident when attempting to write independently in the classroom.  This is a great skill to practice at home.

This week in class our focus letter was the letter Mm.  We have read some books with that letter, looked around the school for that letter,and came up with a list of words we could think of with that letter.  We also worked on identifying rhyming words, practiced making and extending patterns, and learned about what it means to sort things.  We also continued to work in our Handwriting books and practiced proper letter formation.  We finished up our "Frog Jump Capitals".  See if your child can tell you why we call them that (you have to move your pencil up to the top of the paper or frog jump to form that letter correctly).

Below is a message from Mrs. Douce, our school services coordinator: 

Carmel Elementary is partnering again this year with Chaucie’s Place, a child advocacy organization in Hamilton County, to bring Smart Steps:  A Body Safety Program for Children to our Kindergarten, 2^nd and 4^th grade students.  Smart Steps is a child sexual abuse prevention and education program that empowers your child to say “NO!” to any unwanted touches that make them uncomfortable from anyone.  

We invite you to attend a Chaucie’s Place Parent Night to learn more about the Smart Steps program.  West Clay Elementary will be hosting on Thursday, September 17th from 6:00pm-7:00pm and Orchard Park Elementary will be hosting from 6:00-7:00pm on Tuesday, October 6^th. ^.    These meetings are open to all parents and/or guardians of Kindergarten, 2^nd and 4^th grade students.  Please be advised that Parent Night is not open to children.  To learn more about Chaucie’s Place visit: www.chauciesplace.org.

I hope everyone has a great three day weekend!