Friday, January 21, 2011

Snow Days and Piggies

Friday, January 21, 2011

Happy Friday! NO SNOW TODAY, YEA! I am so tired of the cold weather……I am ready for the January cold to be over. Speaking of cold weather, a reminder, we go out on cold days. Please remember to dress your child for the weather. Also, I am sending home their extra clothing for you to exchange. So many children have grown out of their extra clothing.

Show and Share is always Friday Morning.

This morning we had the opportunity to walk over to Hollins and watch the play “The Little Mermaid”. The performance was awesome and The Cool Cats were a great audience. I was very proud of them.

Please don’t forget next Friday is conference day. Let me know if you need to change your time. The times are listed in Quick Notes.

Morning Meeting: We are continuing to work on our calendar notebooks. They are really improving at recording the day and month of they year. Please continue to practice the days of the week and the months of the year. Keeping a calendar at home helps children to understand the importance of using a calendar. Learning to spell the days and the months is a good skill to work on. Try using note cards with the months written on them. Mix them up and have your child put them in the right order.

Literacy: We have completed our class study on The Snowy Day. We are now studying the story “The Three Little Pigs”. It is amazing how many different versions there are of this story. So far we have read three different versions. Next week we will compare and contrast the stories using a Venn diagram.

This week I also started our phonics reading groups. I meet with each group about twice a week and individuals once a week. The kids love having their own book to work with.

Math: “The Three Little Kittens” have lost their mittens. This unit works with number operations, patterns, algebra, and problem solving. To reinforce some of the skills, we are working on counting by one’s to 100,by two’s to 24, by three’s to 36, fours to 48 and five’s to 100.

Buddies: Last week we traced our feet and decorated them with encouraging words. We are hoping to send some cheer and support to the troops overseas.
This week we read books written by Denise Fleming. We made birthday cards for her. Our hope is that we will receive a letter back from her. Among her many books are, In the Small, Small Pond and In the Tall, Tall, Grass. We will let you know if we hear back from her.

Little Buddies: We built homes for our three pigs. It was fun exploring with different materials and building our homes for the three little pigs. We also painted our own little pigs.

Future date to remember: On February 25th we will be attending the musical “Seussical”. It will be at the Roanoke Performing Arts Center. I will need one parent driver so please let me know soon if you are available.
Have a great weekend!

Friday, January 7, 2011

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful vacation. Getting back into a schedule is always difficult. The children seem very happy to be back at school.

We started the New Year with new calendar notebooks. Each morning we use our personal notebooks to record the day of the week and the number of the day. We also practice how to write and spell the number of the day. We sing a song every morning that helps the children learn how to spell the number words one-ten. We also practice counting by one’s to 100, by two’s to 24, by three’s to 36, four’s to 48 and five’s to100. These are great skills to practice in the car.
In Literacy: We read “The Snowy Day”. The story is about a little boy, Peter, who awakens one morning and finds snow has fallen during the night. His adventures in the snow include making tracks with his boots, climbing Snow Mountains, and having snow “plop” on his head. The story led to a class discussion on weather
and different activities we might do depending on the type on weather. As a follow-up to the discussion children then created their own individual charts to tell what they like to do on different kinds of days; rainy days, sunny days, and snowy days. I am really amazed at how well the children could express themselves. They thought of so many fun things to do!
Next week we will begin our small book groups! Each child will be reading their own book and completing activities for the book they are studying. I am looking forward to sharing this with you at conference time.
In Math: We have had so much fun with the nursery rhyme “One Two Buckle my Shoe”. We are making patterns, spelling number words, reinforcing number recognition, sorting by attributes, and making up addition and subtraction problems. Next week we will begin working on fact families.
Buddies: The kids were so excited to meet with their older buddies after the holiday break. With our buddies we worked on vocabulary words that described the cold climate of Antarctica.
With our little buddies (Tulie’s) class we had our holiday party we missed because of snow day. It was so much fun. Next week we will begin a unit on “The Three Little Pigs”. We are going to introduce the children to different versions of the story.