October 21

Fall is in full swing now!  The colors are beautiful outside, the crisp air is refreshing (after our Indian Summer this week!), and the children are settled in like they have been here for months!  Read on to see what exciting things are happening in our classroom!

The trees outside our school are BEAUTIFUL!

Math:  we continued practicing patterning; shapes; # recognition; 1:1 correspondence; counting by 1's, 5's 10's; # before, after, in between; tally marks; we discussed the # 0; we continued to work very hard on understanding the concept of '1 or 2 more' and '1 or 2 less' and the vocabulary 'as many as', more/greater, and less/fewer;

Language Arts:  we continued practicing lowercase/uppercase letter recognition; letter naming/sound fluency of the letters; rhyming; beginning sounds; beats in a word (syllables); stretching out words and writing the sounds that we hear that make up that word (inventive spelling - ie: writing 'fut' for the word 'foot')

Writer's Workshop:  we focused on labeling details in our pictures;  creating stories/books that pertain to only one topic (staying on one topic is quite difficult for a kindergarten child!)  We have continued streeeeeetching words and trying to write some of the sounds that we hear.  Some children are writing the beginning sounds, others are writing the beginning and ending sounds, and still others are able to write many sounds for each word.  It is so exciting to see the children as they explore and realize what they are capable of doing!

We began discussing pumpkins which lent itself beautifully to our Properties unit that we have been focusing on.  We used describing words to tell about the pumpkins that we had in class.  Were they rough, smooth, hard, soft, etc?  We created pumpkins to hang in our classroom.  The children were very creative and had fun while making them!   We also read the story Pumpkin, Pumpkin and completed a sequencing activity by cutting and pasting pictures in the order that they occurred in the story.  We will continue discussing this topic through Halloween.

On Tuesday we had a great time learning about New York State by using a large, interactive map. After taking our shoes off, we were able to walk around on the map and find different places that we live near.  We found Albany, the Hudson river, and the Adirondack mountains among other places. The children had a wonderful time!  Be sure to ask them all about it!

Conversation Starters:

• Where do pumpkins grow?  (in pumpkin patches)
• Are all pumpkins the same color?  (no, they can be white, yellow, and green as well as orange)
• Were you able to find where we live on the large interactive NYS map?

How You Can Help:

• Please be sure to send your child's library book back each Monday so that they can take out a new book.
• Even though we have had warm weather this week  - please send a sweater, sweatshirt, or coat, etc. with your child daily when the weather turns cooler as they go outside everyday for recess.
• Please practice your child's birthdate, phone #, and address with them.  We go over one of these each day when we do the attendance.
• Grassroots Givers donation - K - puzzle books  - due October 27th 

Looking Ahead:

• Letters reviewed next week:  Daniel Boni
• Someone Special reminder: Hh - Hattie's Hat;  Kk - Katie Kangaroo