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!