Newsletter 9-30-11

Reminders

Return Picture money as soon as possible. 

Volunteers are needed for Fall Festival!  Please sign up to help support our school.

Donated Gift certificates are needed for the silent auction.  If you have any connections with businesses that would like to donate a gift certificate for goods or services, please send it in to the school.  Thanks!

Scholastic News

Thank you so much to those of you who have sent in the money for scholastic news.  That really helps my pocket!  Also, I am not sure when the book orders will be in but it should be shortly.  The first order sometimes takes the longest.  As soon as they come in I will send them home. 

Reading

I am so proud of the reading and writing progress I am seeing.  Many have mastered the letters and sounds and are working diligently on the first Dolch word list.  I have some great readers already who are taking Accelerated reader tests and doing well.  Keep up the great reading work at home. 

Sight words: and, we, can, go, to, the, like, was, is, I, a, my, red, yellow, blue, my, me and see. 

Math

We are finished with chapters one and two in our math series.  We are taking the assessment that goes along with it today.  So far everyone is making good progress.  The biggest thing is learning to explain their thinking.  That is a hard task for this age group.  Numbers must be written correctly.  Some still are writing them backwards.  If you see this at home have them correct the direction of the number. 

Workshops

1.       Math/literacy/technology- IPADS- WE have used apps on the set of 6 ipads we checked out from computer lab to practice math and literacy skills.  WE LOVE THEM!!!! WE love them so much we are going to keep them for a while!

2.       Literacy- Sight word practice.  We used crayons to write color words on and glued them to a sentence strip.  Let them keep the crowns in their room as a color word resource for writing. 

3.       Literacy- Writing Workshop- We read the book The Biggest Leaf Pile and wrote about the most fun thing we could do in a pile of leaves. 

4.       Math/Literacy- We read the book Ten Apples Up on Top and wrote numbers to 10 on the apples.  Then we glued the apples in order to a character’s head we drew from the book. 

5.       Math- Ten Black Dots- We read the book by Donald Crews and are making our own ten dots can make book.  We are writing our numbers counting the correct number of dots and writing the sight word can correctly.  WE went to 5 this week and next week we go to 10.    

^{Pumpkin Patch Field Trip coming up October 7th!  Remember if you want to volunteer to chaperone you must be cleared by the county.  Please send in the permission slips.}