9/27/14

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend! I can’t believe that September is almost over, and October is here. Some things coming up in October are the fire station and pumpkin patch field trips, Grandparents Day, Fun Fest, and Fall conferences (No school 23rd &24^th)! Wow there is a lot=) I will post these on our calendar in your child’s OWL folder. Continue to check your child’s folder every day. We will be sending more information out about each of these events.

**Thursday Pastor Carey will be making lunch for the students so they will not need to bring lunch.

Literacy:

Next week we will be starting our first unit. We have our routines down, which means I can have the chance to work more one on one with the children. We will be practicing our sight words, and reading short stories everyday together. On Monday I will be sending home your child’s first sight word list. We have already begun to work on some of these words, so I hope they can tell you some already. Please practice every night. This list will be tested on October 30^th.

Math:

We have begun our first chapter in Math. You probably have seen the ripped up math pages coming home=) I am hoping they will get better with more practice! So be patient with the crazy looking math pages while we get a hang of it. Also you may notice some of their numbers are backwards. To ease anyone’s mind, it is normal and we will work on it all year and into next year to write them the right way. For math homework, I will begin sending this home on our next chapter which will begin in a week or two. The math homework is optional, but if they do finish it they get a prize.

Bible:

Next week we will be talking about Noah and the ark. Our focus is on obeying what God tells us to do.

Social Studies:

Next week we are kicking off our Pumpkin unit! We will be observing pumpkins, cutting them open, watching them mold and grow, learning about the life cycle, making pumpkin milkshakes, and ending our unit with our pumpkin patch field trip on the 31^st! I would love to do a melted crayon pumpkin craft. If parents can donate small pumpkins, we have a ton of broken crayons=)

Thanks!

Mrs. Lee

Here are our finished people for our community helpers unit.  Each student picked a community helper they would like to be. 

These are our finger paint flowers.  These will be going in students portfolios so you will get to see these during conferences. 

Students made a picture of their favorite place to go with their family, along with their family on clothes pins. In Bible we talked about Cain and Abel, and how important it is to love our family's:) 

April 25th

Time is really starting to fly, there has been a lot of fun things going on.

Literacy-

The students are still practicing segmenting and blending. We have began talking about substituting sounds (What word do I have if I take /c/ from cat and add a /b/). The students caught on so fast to this!

In reading we have been focusing on reading fluently, mainly practicing saying words without sounding them out. This is a big transition for some because they are so use to it!

And as always we are doing tons of writing=)

Math-

The last couple weeks we have been working on shapes and positions. This has been pretty easy because we did a shapes unit in the beginning of the year. Next week we will begin to learn about 3-D shapes though! Most have not heard the vocabulary for this so it is a little harder. The vocab we will be using is: Sphere, cone, cube, and cylinder. 

In math, we will be done with our math chapters in a couple weeks and begin to do review for the last 2-3 weeks. So you will not see math papers coming home as much.

And because I love pictures, here are a couple of students working on the interactive board.

Social studies-

In social studies we will be finishing up our unit on frogs. Our janitor found a live frog in the church and let us keep it for a while, the kids had so much fun looking at it! After next week we will be starting our last unit on plants.

Art- Sonshine students reaching for the stars!

This week we finished our (probably one of my favorite) art projects.

Here is the picture I finished and the student's pictures on the wall.

Notes:

·        Wednesday is pictures day for graduation! The student’s will be wearing their cap and gown in the pictures.

March 28th

Happy Friday! I am so very excited for this weekend. I think around this time every year everyone starts getting spring fever. I think I have counted 10 weeks left! I’m going to miss them though! Look at me I am sad and still have 2.5 months! Anyways...=)

In Literacy this week we are still working on reading fluently, comprehending what we are reading, and sounding out words in our heads. In writing we are learning how to write stories about our lives. They have learned how to pick a topic, and write about the 5 W’s (Who, what, where, when, why). They are finishing up their rough drafts, and next week we will type up a final draft for them to illustrate.

Here are pictures of the kids mailing their letters to Disney characters today. It was pretty adventurous! We had to cross the road and keep all the students in a line because our mail box is by the road. We made it back safely though=)

In math we are continuing to practice addition and subtraction fluency, counting and writing numbers to 100, and lastly measurement and data.

We just finished up our Ocean Books that I would like to send home on the next conference. I picked a few students who tried their very best on the book to win a prize of an extra recess and doughnut. I am really trying to encourage them to do their best on everything.

In Bible we are talking about honesty. Today we sent a letter home explaining more about this. Please look in their folders to read it! Also in bible we are continuing our bible verse, Psalm 23 1-6. I thought it would be helpful if I posted the signs that I am using to go along with the verse.I do the same signs but our bible version is a little different, if that makes sense.  We will be  doing this whole verse on graduation day=)

Psalm 23:1-4

"The Lord is my Shepherd, and I shall not want. He Makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of he shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLKBEHVMS0o

Art pictures! We have some amazing artists!

Notes:

• Friday is our 100 point party. Students may wear PJ's, and we will be watching the Frozen movie. Pillows are welcome=)
• The picture forms sent home today were for graduation pictures, which are on April 30th.
• ·         We are doing a Mother’s day tea party this year. We will send out an invitation next month, but wanted to give a heads up in case you need to take a few hours off work. It will be in the late morning, 10ish.
• ·         Please check student’s folders.
• ·         April 1^st is the last day to get early registration discount for the summer camp and for school.
• ·         In May we are holding an auction for the school. Our class will be doing a basket. I wanted to do a picture of the kids spelling out Love with their bodies. If you have other ideas, or anything you think would go good with this let me know! Thanks!

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Lee

2/8/14

I hope everyone is enjoying this snow! And staying warm. Our week was cut short last week, but I hope we can get in a full week next week, especially because since we have a week off after next week!

Focus Wall

Literacy

      I can blend my sounds together.

      I can identify the middle sound in a CVC word.

Math

      I can subtract numbers.

Bible

      John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Pictures from the Week!

How To make Hot Cocoa: We started of by drinking some Hot Cocoa of course! Then we started our writing of how to make Hot Cocoa using our transitional words (first, then, next, last). Lastly, we made our fun craft!

Our Trip to the Library. 

Our Art/ Valentines craft- We practiced drawing and cutting out hearts. It took a lot of practice and paper=) But they did great and projects turned out very cute. 

Important notes!

      

• Next week is spirit week!

Monday- Pajama Day,

Tuesday- School colors, red & yellow,

Wednesday- Crazy hair/ hat day,

Thursday- mismatch day,

      Friday- pink/red/ hearts

• On our next field trip we are going to the Portland Aquarium. This will be fun because it will be right after our ocean unit. We are expected to go on March 14^th, let me know if you would like to volunteer as a chaperon.

• SNACKS – we have decided to start having students bring their own snacks.  We think this will make it easier for everyone. Just put a healthy snack in a zip lock bag for students, and in the morning they will put them in a snack basket that they will grab out after recess.

• Our Valentines and 100’s day party is Friday!!! We are doing some fun games and crafts, and need a few more volunteers. Please let me know if you or a grandparent can come=) If you would like to bring goodies, or snacks that would be wonderful too! Lastly, a heads up I will be sending a project home on Monday for the kids to bring to build something, with a 100 some things to present to the class. I will give more specifics and examples on Monday.

Here is the class list for valentines day, I can also send the list home on Monday.

2/3

I cannot believe we are in to February already! Next week will be our half way mark through the year!

Here are a few notes about things coming up:

·      

•  Our field trip to the Library is on Tuesday! We will be going for about two hours to hear a story, and explore the library. I had first told parents that we were not bringing library cards, however after more thought I think it would be okay. So if you would like your child to check out books you can send them with a library card, or you can print the application online at  http://mylibrary2.fvrl.org/local/docs/LibraryCardApplicationKids.pdf 

    Kids would just bring the application and we can get     them the card while we are there!

•    I am using a new behavior calendar. This one has the whole month on it. The students or I will color how they did each day like normal, but it gives you a whole month view. It looks nicer and I am saving on paper=) (and if anyone would like to donate any printer paper it would be very appreciated=))

• We have our Valentine’s and 100^th day party coming up on the 14th if anyone would like to volunteer to help, or volunteer to bring goodies.
• If your child would like to bring valentines please bring at least 18 for both classes because we like to share these fun times together=)

Our focus wall for next week,

Literacy:

• ·        I know the middle sound in a CVC word.
• ·        I can blend my sounds together

Math:

• ·        I can subtract numbers!

Bible:

• Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”
• Miss Jones has also been talking with the students about filling a bucket during bible. If your child comes home talking about this and you are not sure what it is, it is a way to explain to kids how mean words can make others feel sad and empty inside and how nice words make people feel happy and full inside. They have become very good at expressing this with each other too! I hear kids saying "you just dipped into my bucket", or "thank you for filling my bucket". It is pretty cute!

Social Studies:

• ·        Ground Hogs/ Ground Hogs Day

Here are some pictures of our art lesson this week. We played with water color on top of crayon and we splatter painted=) (So sorry if any kids came home with paint on thier clothes!)

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Mrs. Lee