What a Whirlwind Week! - October 22

This week just FLEW by! I hope that it was a bit more relaxed in your home!

Language Arts

Go Away Big Green Monster!, by Ed Emberley was our source of inspiration this week during Writer's Workshop. We talked about the author's carefully picked describing words, or his word choice, that help us not only see with our eyes, but imagine in our minds, what the Big Green Monster looks like even if we didn't have the pictures in the book. Each student made their own Big Green Monster using brightly colored paper and a green paper plate. The students then used their own word choice to describe one part of their monster - nose, teeth, hair, ears, mouth - and spent a lot of time writing down as many sounds as they heard using their inventive spelling.

This week we learned two new letters, Aa and Gg. The students are really settling into the routines of Fundations and have learned 11 letters - a, b, c, f, g, i, m, n, o, t and u!

One of our goals for kindergarteners this year will be for them to retell familiar stories with little prompting from an adult. This means that students can tell you about a story's setting, characters, problem(s), events (beginning, middle and end), and the ending. To begin our learning together, we read the book The Legend of Spookly the Square Pumpkin, by Joe Troiano and worked together in groups to retell the story. The students did an amazing job for their first time working in groups cooperatively together and making sure they added the right details to each poster for the setting, characters, problems and the ending. We'll begin working on retelling events in the coming weeks.

Math

We're almost to 10! During our Math In Focus this week we looked at the numbers 8 and 9. The students are also learning and using a lot of different math skills in our Daily Calendar Math. We've been learning to count on, predicting and place value.

Science

We've begun learning about our Five Senses! This week we used our eyes to explore colors, mixing colors and talking about all of the things we use our eyes to do.

Important Reminders

• As we look forward to our Halloween Parade on Wednesday, October 30th at 2:00 pm, please remember to send your student's costume to school in a bag with their name on it. Also, there are no weapons allowed in the school. I hope you can join us for the parade and party!
• Please remember to check the share calendar on the website for your student's new share date. We've gone through one cycle already and are ready for new shares from friends!
• Our Kindergarten Winter Concert is scheduled for Wed. December 18th at 9:15 am.