Saturday, October 26, 2013

10-21

I hope everyone is enjoying their three day weekend! I am happy to say I have all of the report cards done, and am looking forward to seeing everyone next week. I will be sending a reminder home on Monday for the dates and times for conferences.

Focus Wall:
Literacy:     Beginning Sounds
Math:    I can count to 25
           I can recognize and write my numbers 1-8
Bible: Psalm 119:10 – I will seek the lord with all my heart.
Social Studies: Pumpkins

This last week I tested all of the students on their reading levels so I can begin sending home books with students that is at their right level. Most students are starting at a level A. By the end of the year our goal is to be at a level D.

As well, as most of you seen I have begun to send home decodable readers that we practice at school. These are great to practice sight words and to build fluency. We practice about 2-3 a week and I will continue to send these home. If students read it 5 times to someone they can earn a pint for our class. Last week we earned 7 points towards our party! We need 50 more to earn the party.

In math we will start working with teen numbers and beginning concepts of addition.

In social studies we are learning about pumpkins, which will go great with our field trip next week! We started using our science journals this week. We measured how big around our pumpkins were, weighed them, predicted if they float or sink, and labeled the parts of a pumpkin. I wish I would have taken pictures of this! Science is one of my favorite subjects to teach, the children get so excited over it.

Important notes for next week:
Field trip: we will be leaving at 8:30ish and return around 11:00ish. Please dress students based on the weather. You can bring an extra change of clothes if they are staying for after care as well. Please send students with at least $5.00 to get in and get a pumpkin.

Parent Conferences: Thursday and Friday are conferences. I look forward to seeing everyone!

Tuesday volunteer: If anyone would like to help in the classroom on Tuesday afternoon we will be cutting open our pumpkins and taking the seeds out. We will be attempting to grow our own pumpkins inside of the old ones. I have not done this before but have heard it works well.  It should be a fun experience.


P.s. I am sorry for not having any pictures this week. I will make sure to have some next week. 

Sunday, October 20, 2013

10-21


We had such a fun week! We baked cookies, had grandparents day, Learned about colors, and more.

Our focus wall this week included:
Literacy:     I can identify beginning sounds.

Math:         I can count to 25
                I can recognize the number s 1-8
                I can write my numbers 1-8

Social studies: I can name the rainbow Colors and prime colors

Our Grandparents day went wonderful. It was so fun having the grandparents in our class, the students were sad to see them leave at lunch.

During the morning grandparents read to their grandchildren, did a fun fill-in-the-blank, and did some writing in their grandchild’s writing journal. Grandparents were also able to see what students are learning in library, music, and Bible.

In math grandparents had the chance to sit with the children and work at math workstations.

We ended our morning wonderfully with pizza and pictures, and a gift thanks to Shelly at Umpqua Bank. Thank you Shelly! The pictures will be printed off and one will be sent home with each child.

Here are some pictures of the students making cookies for our grandparent’s day.

In social studies we explored colors. Here are some pictures of the stations students went to while learning about colors. 

Just a reminder that picture day is coming up on Wednesday! You can send the picture form back anytime this week.


Another reminder is that there will be no school on Friday. This is a teacher work day.

I hope everyone has had a great weekend. I hope you enjoyed the pictures! (My next purchase is a new camera though! my pictures are very blurry=( )

~Mrs. Lee
























Saturday, October 12, 2013

10-11

10-11-13

I cannot believe we have been in school for a month! Though I also can believe it because of the progress I have seen in the students already! This week we started learning to write sentences to go with our pictures, and they are doing amazing! I cannot wait to share them with every one during conferences.
Conferences will be held on Oct. 31st and Nov. 1st. I sent out an e-mail to schedule a conference date. If you did not receive one, please let me know.

Field Trip
Our Field Trip to the fire station was a lot of fun. They took us on a tour of the station, we were able to see where they sleep, eat, exercise, and study. We even had the chance to watch a fire fighter slide down the pole! They gave us a tour of the fire trucks, and all of the students had a chance to sit up front. Here are some pictures.

















Literacy
In Literacy we have been working on rhyming and letter sounds. Next week we will be moving on to recognizing the first sound in a word.
Ways you can help at home is by practicing with your child by asking what the first sound in a word is. For example you would say “what is the beginning sound in Car?” and they would say “/c/”. This is an important skill as students learn to spell and read. Later in the year we will focus on ending and middle sounds.

Math
In math we have worked up to number 5. Next week we will begin working on numbers up to 10. Things you can do to help at home are practice counting as high as you can, play I spy with numbers, and help them practice writing the numbers.

Important information
-Please sign up for your top 3 conference times if you have not done so already.
-Next Friday is Grandparents Day. Grandparents can come in from 8:15-12:30. We have a lot of fun activities planned, and there will be a gift for the grandparents.

- We are planning a field trip to the Portland Children’s Museum on November 19th. I will be sending additional information home soon. I wanted to give advance notice for parents who would like to join.

-Halloween: We are not celebrating Halloween in our classroom, so we ask that students do not wear costumes to school. We will be going to the pumpkin patch on the 31st, so we will still have a lot of fun! As well, we have the fall festival on the 26th with a lot of fun games and activities.  

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend!

~Mrs. Lee

Sunday, October 6, 2013

9-30-13

I hope everyone had a great weekend! My husband and I have had family in from Korea so I am just now able to post about last week. We have had a fun weekend too though.

In literacy we are continuing to work on our letters, letter sounds, rhyming words, and syllables. Some things you can do at home with your children is practice rhyming words, point out letters in books as you are reading to them, and what sounds the letters make. A fun thing I like to play is I spy. In this game you spy different letters in books. Constant repetition with letters will help students build a strong foundation for when they begin reading.


In math we have we have worked on reading, writing, and counting up to 5. Next week we will begin numbers 6-10. In our workstations we are working on counting games, practicing our number writing, and we have even started some beginning addition concepts.  


Timothy and Eli are playing a butterfly board game
Eliza and Lilian are playing Make 5

Ava is practicing writing her numbers on our white boards




My favorite part about this week was our theme on community building. We did a lot of activities where we had to work as a team. Here are some pictures of what we did.

We started our week off talking about how we are a community and we all affect each other.We should that we are connected by making a classroom web.


 In this activity we had to work as teams to build something with marshmallows and toothpicks. The students loved this and they did great!





Here is our classroom picture!


Our class hand print heart to show that we all love each other!


Tuesday is our field trip to the fire station. We will be leaving around 8:40 and be returning around 10:30. They will be showing us around the fire station and talking to the students about fire safety. I am excited to share the pictures of it with everyone next week!

Another note- if you are able to provide some snacks for our class for snack time that would be wonderful! We are beginning to run low on our supply.

Thank  you,
Mrs. Lee