Thank you everyone for your help with Halloween. It looks like we will have plenty of treats and plenty of help! You are all appreciated.
For information on costumes, please be sure to revisit my previous post on that topic. This week we will light our Diyas and learn a bit more about the Indian New Year, which begins tomorrow. It is called Diwali. We are on Unit 1 Week 5 in Reading. The Home-School connection is a great place to print materials and have your child practice what he/she is learning at school. The digital books and games are excellent as well. This week's reading question is, "How does your body move?" We will be reading about how animals and people move. Movement is a key component in our classroom. We take lots of movement breaks, and we learn to speed up our body when needed and to slow down our body when needed as well. We are learning about what speeds or zones our body needs to be in for different parts of our day, and we learn to regulate our body accordingly. We talk about the Red zone being very active, the Yellow zone being "in between" and the Green zone being calming. We do many gross motor and breathing exercises to maximize our learning. We will begin a new math unit. This unit will focus on adding and subtracting with larger numbers, showing how we get an answer to a problem (moving beyond our fingers or "I just know it".) We are learning to "show what we know". The following week will be our Artist in Residency, and it will culminate with an Open House and a performance. Information came home about this last week, and more information will come home on Thursday. Be on the lookout for that. At the Open House, I will have conference sign ups. I am hoping that I will have the opportunity to sit down with each family and to share your child's growth. After that initial sign up, I will post any remaining times on my "Sign Up" page. A few essentials that you can be working on with your child. 1. Reading to your child. Your child wants to share what he/she knows about reading, but it is also important to read material above your child's reading level to your child. Reading picture and vocabulary rich books to your child will go a long way with your child being a life long reader, increase vocabulary, and increase curiosity. Plus, it makes memories. 2. Handwriting and the ease at which your child writes is so very important. Be sure that your child is forming letters and numbers from the top or middle to the bottom. Many children are making letters from the bottom up. This slows down their writing fluency and increases reversals. We work on our handwriting daily! 3. Drawing and Coloring. Drawing and coloring builds stamina, challenges children to notice details and to make choices. Many children are rushing through this component of our work. Encourage your child to use more than one color. Ex. If your child draws a person and then is coloring the person, encourage your child to use different colors for the shirt, the pants, the shoes, the hair. Children at this level are ready and expected to use multiple colors in a drawing or coloring activity. 4. Notice Numbers. Numbers are everywhere. Use a number on a sign or in the store as an opportunity for a challenge. You see the number 29. How many tens in 29? How many ones? What is one more? What is one less? What is ten more? What is ten less? Monday will be the 40th day of school. Your children have grown so very much! Our reading theme is about friends and the activities they do together.
Many of the students have shared that they are using the digital resources at home. These are excellent practice opportunities. The kids love the math games, but be sure that they are also using the reading component. As a reminder, the School to Home tab will give you access to the weekly spelling words and some activities to support phonics and comprehension. I am changing our homework routine. You can expect the reading book to come home on Tuesday. Math will come home on Wednesday. We will be learning about Diwali and making Diyas (lights). Would anybody be out and about and be able to donate a class set of 22 LED tea lights? If you have not sent in your child's t-shirt order, please do so by tomorrow. Please let me know if this is a difficulty. Thank you for your responses for Halloween. I will utilize that sign up method for future activities and events. It seemed to work pretty well! Please check your child's extra clothing in their backpacks. The nurse has requested that all children have a seasonally appropriate change of clothes in their bags. Our days are getting chilly and mornings on the playground can be cold and windy. Our science work this week focused on being weather watchers. We learned about 4 observations that can help determine the weather. (Appearance of the sky, clothing being worn, movement of things such as flags and trees, and if anything is falling from the sky.) We then used this information and applied it to the seasonal weather shifts. We then made a model of a tree now, and then made a "claim" and drew a model of what that same tree might look like at the end of the fall season.
Our reading and social studies work was about the places we live and the country of India. The children are full of facts about India! Your children did a great job on their spelling assessments. We are still working on understanding the components of a sentence. You will see on the assessment that I have marked the items your child was able to do, and what he/she is working on. We will "practice" dictation for another week, and then I will begin to grade that portion of the assessment. We will be reading about pets next week. During our study of India, we will connect this study to the animals that make India their home. Our Halloween parade will be on October 31st. Children are invited to bring their costumes to school. We will change into costumes at school. Children should be able to see easily out of their costumes, be of proper length to avoid tripping, and should not depict blood, guts, or gore. Accessories are okay as long as they are not weapons. Be sure to label everything. The parade will begin at 1:00. We will have a few treats afterwards. I have a new tab on my website called Sign Ups. This is new, and I'm hoping that it will be an easy way to sign up for things. I've made a sign up on that tab for the Halloween Party. You can sign up by commenting. I'm hoping that this works! The Halloween Party sign up will be its trial run! This week, our reading and learning will revolve around what it is like where we live. We will learn to differentiate between the city and country (rural).
We will also learn about India. We are studying India over the course of the next few weeks. This is a part of our Artist in Residency. The full residency will begin in November. In math we are working with understanding more or less. We are also beginning to work with missing addends. Ex. 8+_ = 10. Right now we are using Ten Frames to think about how many more we will need to make 10. We are also working on the 1 less/1 more concept. We are learning that in order to equal the same sum, we can take one away from one side and add it to the other. Ex. 10+0 = 10, 9+1 = 10, 8+2 = 10. If we take 1 from the left addend, we can add one to the right addend, and our sum will stay the same. This week we will focus on the short i pattern. On the spelling paper, you will see two words highlighted in the Extra section. Those are challenge patterns, and next week your child is invited to try the challenge. This is in addition to your child's regular spelling words. This means that your child has been given the option to try the challenge pattern. For instance, one of the words has a "ck" pattern. I will give your child a word on Friday, not necessarily the word highlighted, with that pattern. I will do the same with the other pattern. If your child takes the challenge, he/she will have an additional two words on his/her spelling test. We are also beginning sentence dictation. We are still practicing this, and soon it will become a part of their weekly assessment. Last week we learned about the U.S. Constitution. We focused on connecting it to the school rules of being safe, being respectful, and being responsible. We made a class book on how we can be safe, respectful, and responsible citizens. |
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