February 4, 2011

Conferences were wonderful! Thanks for taking the time to come and see your child’s work. The children love to show off all they’ve learned.
Math: We are making number books focusing on numbers 10-20. We are practicing making our numbers correctly as well as how to spell correctly. Try practicing these skills at home.
We also colored little kittens with mittens and used them to construct a number line to help us understand how to count by two’s the kids are really getting good at this skill.
Next week we will begin to read the story Caps for Sale (see below for synopsis of story). We will make patterns with hats, count monkeys in the trees, and learn a little about money. If you have any extra hats you would like to donate to the class it would be appreciated. We are going to set up a hat store.
Literacy The children have continued to work in their small reading and phonics groups. This week we worked on the word family ot and at The class brainstormed and came up with lots of word for each family.
Next week we will begin reading Caps for Sale by Esphyre Stobodkina. The story is about a peddler who sells caps by stacking the caps high atop his head. He walks down the street, calling out “Caps for Sale!” One day he awakens from his nap to discover his caps are gone. He looks up to find a tree full of monkeys with each monkey wearing a cap. The children will write about what they would sell if they were peddlers, construct a story map, make a monkey and write about what they liked best about the story. We will also learn a little about monkeys and apes.
We will determine whether we think it would be hard to be a peddler who balances so many caps on your head. The kids will give it a try. First we will begin with two hats and then we will add a third. We will walk from one side of the room to the other without dropping a hat (this should be interesting!). It will be fun to find out just how many hats the kids can balance.
We will also discuss different kind of hats people wear for jobs in our community.

Big Buddies: This week it was so beautiful out we went outside and played with our buddies. We all had spring fever for one short afternoon.
Little Buddies: We read Frankin’s Valentine Day and made our Valentine bags for our party. We also made “Cool Cats” from heart shapes to decorate our classroom.

Dates to remember:
1. Valentine party February 14th. You are welcome to start sending your Valentines in next week. It will give your child time sort them into the right bag right bags. Please keep your Valentines non-edible (no candy or baked goods, please).
2. February 11th is the 100th day of school. Please have your child bring in 100 of something. (example: 100 small matchboxes cars or 100 marbles) whatever you can find in your house.
3. Seussical date is Friday ,February 25th
4. Don’t forget to read Quick Notes published every Tuesday on the Community School website.



Please let me know if you have any questions. Enjoy your weekend!