Halloween

No late start on Monday!! Come at 8:20 dressed in costume for the party.  No need to bring a backpack or snack.  The parade will begin at 8:45ish followed by an assembly for the kids until about 10:30.  We will come back to the room to begin the party at 10:30 and start cleaning up around 11:20.  All parents are welcome to join :)  Robyn and Shelby's moms will be in the room a little early (while we are at the assembly) setting up if you would like to assist.

**Kids who do not celebrate Halloween will go straight to the music room in the morning where they will have fun fall activities to enjoy :)

Centers

Fall poem writing at the poetry center

Este and the Fast Math and computer links center :)

Carson writing a friendly ghost story at the writing center

Practicing ABC order and word chunks with a fun bat game :)

Shelby practicing addition and subtraction facts with spooky cupcakes 

Anthony at Fast math!

Field Trip Pics!

At the pond catching bugs!

Walking the woods exploring nature

What's down there??

Eleanor and her bug collection--wow!

Looking up our finds in the bug reference books

At the pond :)

Thursday, Oct. 27th

Don't forget that the Insect Project is due tomorrow!! Makes sure to also send the sheet with the name and characteristics of your insect along with the actual project.  I can't wait to see them--the kids have been talking about them all week!!

Tomorrow is a PBS reward day for kids who have been on GREEN this month (with 2-3 yellows being 'forgiven').  We will be playing a game in the classroom to celebrate :)

Ask your child tonight to tell you a few things they have learned about bats this week.  We have been reading non-fiction and fiction books about bats and doing writing activities to help further our comprehension of the texts.

The haunted Garage has been rescheduled to this SUNDAY the 30th from 3-5pm (due to rain tonight)

Wednesday, October 27th

First of all, I have to say THANK YOU to all the volunteers who came and braved the weather at the field trip o Tuesday!! The kids loooooved it! Ask your child what they caught in the their net at the pond and what they saw on the nature path in the woods :) Unfortunately my camera is currently not working very well but many of the awesome parents who came with us offered to send me pictures from the trip--I will upload them onto the blog as soon as I get them :)

Today at school we had our first town hall meeting.  We talking about being kind to others and listened to the big kids read their writing--wow--what a great job they all did!!

In class today we practiced "frame and arrows" in math (which is like input/output charts or patterns) and we also worked with graphs.  I am noticing that many of the students don't have a lot of experience with reading graphs so I have decided to do a little mini-unit of graphing this November in addition to our usual math lessons--hopefully we will all be graphing experts after that :) Details to come!

**We are in need of gallon size or larger resealable baggies--I use these to store and organize educational games for the kids to work on during centers. If you can, please donate some to the classroom. Thanks!!

Lastly, here are some pictures I took on Monday of the kids doing their regular things in the classroom. Enjoy :)

Monday, Oct. 24th

OUR FIELD TRIP IS TOMORROW!!!

**All students MUST:
Pack a lunch to bring in a disposable lunch bag
Bring a booster seat if they are 7 or younger
Wear warm clothes and shoes that can get dirty

Parents who are driving should arrive to school at 8:45 so we can leave at 9. I am sending home a map tonight so you can look it over and do some extra google-mapping if need be!

Friday, Oct. 21

Happy Friday!

Homework went home today--spelling, reading log, and math pages.  Remember that the insect project will also be due next Friday :)  I found 2 blank insect project sheets today in the classroom and do not know who they belong to! if you don't have one tell me ASAP so I can get it back to you!

Remember that we will have our field trip next week on Tuesday! I have plenty of parent drivers now and am looking forward to seeing the kids exploring and investigating the insects at the center.

Have a great weekend :)

Thursday, Oct. 20th

Today we did not get the chance to read with the therapy dogs-- all the kids in the entire school will be given a chance and today was apparently not our day. The kids were a little disappointed but I told them that the dogs will be here the entire year and that one Thursday will be our day. On that note, I had a handfull (about 5!) of kids who got their card flipped today because they heard the dogs were down the hall (froma student who ad just come back from the bathroom) and so they jumped from their seats and ran into the hallway! yikes! We had to have a talk about how the therapy dogs are used to be in quiet places and shouting and running at them would scare them. We also had to review the very very very important rule about never leaving the classroom without permission. If your child was on yellow, this why!

Other than that little hiccup, our day was very good! We wrote silly stories about monster--ask your child their monster's name was and ask them to describe their monster! We are working on describing people and things in our writing.

In math we worked on telling tell and I was VERY impressed!! The majority of the class did SUCH a good job with the clocks and thought it was "so easy." Thank you to all of you who I know are practicing this skill at home :)

Our field trip is on Tuesday. We will go no matter the weather so please start looking ahead to make sure you have all the appropriate outdoor clothing for your child as it starts to get cold outside.

**and sorry for the late post-- I have a TON of things going on in my life outside of school right now and it is making it hard for me to find the time and remember to blog when I get home! :)

Wednesday, Oct. 19th

Today in class we finished a fun spider project :) I wish I brought my camera because they turned out so cute! I will have to remember to bring it tomorrow.

We also started new centers this week. We have fun monster themed cupcake addition, trick or trick odd and even candy count, pumpkin compound words, computers, a new play, and some candy corn subtraction :)

There is a permission slip coming home today for your child to read with therapy dogs. These dogs are trained to work with patients so they are very very calm and obedient. The kids will be practicing their reading aloud skills by reading to the dog! Please sign the form and return. Thanks!

Tuesday, Oct. 18th

Yesterday we let free our butterflies! We learned about the migration they will ne doing toward the south and said good luck to them as they flew away. The kids really wanted to keep them for longer but were okay with it once I told them that they needed to start on their journey to the south.

Today willl be our last day with the mealworms. We did our final observation with them this morning. I will be sending home the observation journals on Friday so you can see what your child has written the past several weeks.

In math yesterday we had a math test. Today we will be starting Unit 3 which starts out with place value and base-10 blocks.

In science today we read an article about the differences between insects and spiders. I remeinded them that they are NOT to make a spider for their homeowrk project because it is not an insect. We learned about eh characteristics of spiders and got osme good practice reading non-fiction articles.

**The field trip is next Tuesday. We now have exactly enough drivers for all the students-hooray! I still need permission slip from C.H. and M.W. Please send them asap! There is no cost to this trip :)

Friday, Oct. 14th

Our Christopher Columbus project-- I also added the short Christopher Columbus You Tube video we watched to the You Tube tab above.

5 of our butterflies :)

Thursday, Oct. 13th

Tomorrow night is the Fall Festival at Poupard! It starts at 6pm and cost only 50 cents to enter! They will have some games, races, snacks, and a chili cook off :) Come if you can!

Wednesday, Oct. 12th

Today we made a classbook about a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Each student made their own page. Ask your child what they wrote about!

In math we had math boxes-- which were reveiwing subtraction story problems, fact triangles and counting by 7's.

In science we are just wrapping up our Insect ABC books and our observation books. We will be letting our butterflies free outside on in the next couple days :)

You will be getting a form home on Friday about the pumpkin decorating contest.

Have a good night!

Tues. Oct 11th

Today in class we learned more about columbus (I will upload a pic tonight with a fun project we did to learn the names of his ships) Ask you child if they remember what important piece of land he traveled to and the names of his ships :)

In math we did input and output charts. We had to add and subtrct using mental math.

The Pumpkin Decorating contest is about to begin! pumpkins will be due on Oct. 24th in the library. They will be judged and the winner announced on the 31st :)

Please return the permission slip for the field trip!! Drivers needed!

Monday, Oct. 10th

Our butterflies have metamorphosed!! We now have 6 butterflies in our room :)  We fed them sugar water this morning and are hoping that 2 little ones are able to open their wings a bit better by tomorrow.

We also did a short short short lesson on Christopher Columbus today and read some poems about his contribution to American history.  Will continue learning more about him tomorrow as we ran out of time today to finish our discussions and activities :)

**On Friday 2 items came home in the orange folder that need to be returned to school. First, a field trip permission slip. Please fill it out and return it.  I am also in need of drivers for this trip.  All children age 7 or younger MUST have a booster seat for this trip.  Secondly, a halloween party flier came home.  Robyn's mom is coordinating all the snacks for our party and has made a list of items we will be needing.  Please return the note if you are able to donate something.  Shelby's mom is going to be organizing a game for us to play at the party :)  

Thursday, Oct. 6th

Today we observed our mealworms (and our butterflies who are STILL in their cocoons...this is quite a surprise to me and I am hoping that we get some butterflies soon or I might be having to go catch some outside one evening to stick in there if you know what I mean...)

We also read the book Alexanders Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and did some text-to-self connections.  We will be making a class book next week based on this book :)

We did some new centers today and I had a few (one in particular) excited students who loved working with the new centers materials (counting by a certain number, adding 10, base ten blocks, ect.)

Cassady said "can I have my picture? I've been working soooooo hard on this!"
Of course you can!

and now everyone wanted to be in the picture once they saw the camera come out! :)

And in math we worked with spring scales and balances to determine how many pounds or ounces something weighed.  We used the balances to compare items.

Tomorrow I will not be at school :(  Please call the office if you need anything as I will not have email access and don't want to let any important messages get lost.
Thank you!!
Have a super weekend :)

Wednesday, Oct. 5th

Today in class we talked about leaving people out and read a book about a girl who learns a lesson about including others. We practiced making self-to-text connections and used sticky notes to write out our thughts and stick them on to the page that we were reading when we made the connection.
In writing we continued to work on our Insect ABC books. We are stuck on O right now. Anyone know an insect or insect word that starts with o??
In math we worked on fact families and the relation between + and - problems. We also did subtraction story problems and wrote our own story problems to share and solve with the class.

we saved Game Day until the end of the day and the kids LOVED it! They did a great job sharing their games. Thank you to those who sent in a game :)

Tuesday, Oct. 4th

**I added a new tab on the blog!! Look above to see that tab titled "Calendar" This has the current calendar with the ABCD Days and the school-wide events on it. Hopefully this helps you keep everything in order :)

Today in reading groups (your child might not be in my reading group! Ask them to see who their reading teacher is!) we talked about how vowels are the "glue" that hold all letters together. All words have vowels. We need to make sure all our word in writing always include vowels. We also worked on the EN v. AN sounds.

In writing we all worked on retelling a story. This is the first step in learning how to summarize a story. We also worked more on capital letters. The kids seem to know where capital letters belong (and where they dont belong) but are not using this information when doing their daily writing. It is imporant that they always reread their work to make sure it is correct. We are working on this!

**Walk to school Day is TOMORROW!
**Game day is TOMORROW!

Monday, Oct. 3rd

*******Please email me or write me a note if your child is NOT allowed to come to the halloween party and/or do halloween songs at music, go to the haunted gym on gym day, read halloween stories at library, or make crafts for halloween at art. Thanks!!

Walk to school day is this Wednesday. We are meeting at the Harper Woods City hall and walking all together :)

The first PBS reward day is also Wednesday. We will be playing board games in the classroom. I do not have a lot of board games so I am asking students to bring a favorite game to the classroom that day. We will be playing from 2:40-3:10. All children who have been on green this past month will be able to play!!

Today in class we had our first day of reading group :) Ask your chld how it went for them.
In math we did more mental math and then did math centers. We also worked on writing math story problems. Ask your child what they decided to write into their story problem (some of them were so creative!)