Halloween Party:
On Friday October 29th, we will be having our Halloween Party. Kim and Betsy’s class have organized a party and parade for the early elementary and preschool levels. Our party will start at 10:30 and end around 11:35. The party will end with the children marching in a parade around campus. Please do not send your child to school dressed in their costume, we will change into them right before the party. After the party we will change back to our regular clothing. Please make their costumes as simple as possible. Make sure your child is wearing comfortable walking shoes. We will be walking from classroom to classroom doing different activities.

Fall Festival:
Fall festival was such a great success! Thank you for all of your help. It was a pleasure getting to know all of your families. I would love to hear how you felt about the Fall Festival experience, both positive and negative. Your input helps us plan future activities.

Math: We have been cooking away. First apple sauce and last Friday we made apple crisp. It was sooooo delicious….the kids loved it. Cooking is so much fun…children do not realize they are learning important math skills.
We will be finishing our unit on geometric shapes. The kids have learned to recognize and label shapes in our environment by handling and exploring. Last Friday we made three dimensional shapes with our buddies using tooth picks and clay. Ask your child the difference between a sphere and a circle or a cone and triangle.
Our next math unit will be sorting and classifying. Sorting and classifying activities are valuable because they help to develop a child’s ability to think in an analytical manner. This, in turn, leads to growth in problem solving. In order to sort and classify a group of objects, a child must be able to recognize common attributes of objects. For example, a nickel, a dime, and a quarter have several common attributes. They are all coins, they are all metal, and they are all round. Your child will learn from a variety of experience sorting and classification.

Language Art: This week we read the story “Pumpkin Pumpkin” by Jeanne Titherrington. It is a wonderful story about a little boy who plants a pumpkin seed and watches it grow. The follow-up activity is for the children to make their own sequence book about growing a pumpkin. The activity involves cutting and number sequence and telling or reading the story back to me. Lots of direction!

Have a Happy Halloween and please do not send candy with your child’s lunch next week.