October29th-Novemeber 1st

Goodbye October, Hello November!

It was so great to see everyone at conferences! I hope you all enjoyed seeing how much your babies have grown.

We also made it through our first Parade of Fiction together! Everyone looked great.

The Dad Pumpkin carving was a success! We had a blast. I am so thankful everyone could make it. The kids were so excited. I hope everyone stops by to pick up their pumpkin TODAY if you have not done so already.

Although this was a short week, it was full of learning! They started a new unit on Tuesday and will finish that next week. They began the study of creepy crawlies with spiders. They will all go to 4 centers.

Centers are as follows:
1. Spider cookie- (oreo, pretzels and icing). They have to follow a recipe and then they are supposed to teach you the recipe when they get home sometime this week or next!
2. Spider web art- Spaghetti made into a web on black paper with a spider and glitter!
3. Nonfiction spider facts: They are supposed to draw a picture of a real spider and tell what they know about spiders using facts that they have been learning about this week.
4. Spider hat: Sentence strips with black paper to make 8 eyes and 8 legs!

They also made a spider web using yarn and black paper plates. These will go home today! This was great for our fine motor skills!

Literacy:
They added another reading strategy to their reading bank this week! The new reading strategy is getting your mouth ready and looking at the beginning sounds of words. When you are reading, if you get your mouth ready for that first sound it will help you get the words out! Even if you have never seen that word before. The more reading strategies we add to our reading bank, the less we will hear them say "I don't know" when they come to a tricky word when reading.

They played "Eat My Words" this week as well. They were given a site word and they had to read it, build it (out of alphabet cereal) and then write it. At the end they were allowed to eat their words! This is another great game to play at home. You can find the alphabet cereal at Target. Call out sounds or words to your child, have them build it with the cereal and then eat it!

To continue reinforcing our reading strategy we read Brown Bear Brown Bear and practiced getting our mouth ready while we read. We also made our very first big class book and it will get passed around to each child! Practice tracking the words and getting your mouth ready when it's your turn to read.

Math:
The kids learned two new math games this week. the first game was Apples to Apples. Ask your child the chant to this game. They play this game in partners. One partner picks a handful of cubes and drops them slowly one by one in the bucket. As they drop them in the bucket, the other person has their eyes closed and they have to use only their ears to count how many cubes are being dropped. At the end, the two players check their math and switch roles.

They also learned Handy Dandy. Ask your child this math chant as well! One player gets two handfuls of counters and places them behind her back (I used mini erasers shaped like pumpkins). The other player (without the counters) picks a hand and has to count that hand. The other player then shows the other hand and they count together to figure out which hand has more and which hand has less. They can practice "counting on" as well as counting starting from one for each hand.

Announcements:
We have children frequently forgetting their water bottles! We usually just fill a cup from the water fountain. We do not have any more cups! If someone would not mind bringing in a stack of small Dixie cups that would be great! These are perfect for kids who accidently forget their water bottle.

We will also be needing oatmeal containers and coffee containers (to make drums in a few weeks). If you can start gathering these and sending them in that would be great! No rush, it will be a few weeks.

If you can start saving ketchup bottles (the kind you squeeze) that would be great as well! We like to use these to fill paint. It is super easy to fill old ketchup bottles with paint and then squeeze the right amount of paint out when we paint. Start saving them and sending them in!

We have also started to label things around the room such as: door, bathroom, chair, dramatic play etc. You can do this at home as well! You can label toys in the playroom or drawers in their bedroom for clothes. This develops fluency and helps them learn to be organized! The more children see words the better they become at reading and recognizing those words in the world and in their books.

have a safe night trick or treating! Don't forget to brush your teeth! :)

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz

Short Week!

Hello! Please remember:

1. Half day tomorrow (dismiss at 11:30) and no school Friday and Monday.
2. Conferences are tomorrow and Friday! See you there.
3. "Dad Pumpkin Carving" October 29th 12:00-1:00. If dad cannot come, one other adult may come! We just ask that only one adult come per family due to limited space. Be on the lookout for a note coming home about what to bring to this event. The note went home today.
4. Parade of fiction is October 31st 9:00-9:45. Dress up as your favorite fictional character from a book! Hope everyone's costumes are coming along.

We will be starting a new unit next week....creepy crawlies! We will begin with spiders!

This week we continued to review and wrap up our math and literacy studies. We also got to learn about the parts of a leaf and do a leaf rubbing. We searched for different leaves on the playground and field and brought them inside. We became investigators, using magnifying glasses and looked at the veins and stems of the leaves. We used oil pastels and rubbed a leaf (or two). We also compared our rubbings to the actual leaves. It was neat!

Literacy:

Please correct the ch blend and the th blend to ch digraph and th digraph. The kids and I were mixing those up! That is totally my fault. We had a big class meeting on this and everyone has started using the term "digraph" but I wanted to add it in my newsletter as well! :) Two other digraphs that we will visit some day are the sh digraph and the wh digraph. But right now were are focusing on the ch and th digraphs around the room and while we read.

We started using the Handwriting Without Tears books to begin learning how to make our letters the correct way. We also revisited our literacy games such as: Roll, Say Keep, Letter/Sound Bingo and Letter/Sound Matching. 

Math:
We worked with ten frames this week, finished up our troll graphs and played more of our old but favorite games. We will be moving right along with patterns next week! We also played Say it Fast with new dot cards and higher numbers. We continue to work on writing our numbers with the correct formation. We are getting better everyday at writing our numbers 1-20!

Please remember to bring in battery powered tea lights (found at the dollar store) for our pumpkins after they are carved! We only have a few so far!

We will be needing:
Spaghetti Noodles (one whole box, cooked)
Oreos (1 package)
White icing (Dunkin Hines-please make sure there is no dairy...if you want to check with Maxwell's mom, please do!!)

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz

We Survived!

This blog post will be short and sweet because we have something to celebrate....we survived our first play together! I think it went great! Everyone remembered their lines and songs. There were some "sillies" for sure. :) But we had fun, and gained a great experience!

Literacy:

This week we had a lot of review of the recent reading strategies we have been learning. We practiced tracking, return sweep and taking a picture walk. We also added another blend to our 'reading bank'. Charlie was our marvelous me yesterday and we noticed a new blend in his name. The Ch blend is in Charlie's name! Ch makes the same sound as a "choo choo train". So as we read this week we were looking for the ch blend and the th blend (that we learned last week). We also discovered something neat while reading the months of the year during calendar time. We learned that several months end in -er. So we also looked for other words that ended in -er. We were searching all around the room for ch and th blends and words that ended in er! This is another neat activity you can do at home. While you are reading, have your child look for words that contain these blends and have an -er ending. They get so excited! Our word sorts next week will definitely contain some of these blends because they love them so much.  Tomorrow we will be making letters and words out of play dough! This is a great opportunity to talk about where letters start (at the top). We will also talk about the different characteristics that letters have such as: big lines, short lines, half circles, full circles etc. I will call out a sound or word and the kids will build it out of play dough. Another great hands on activity that is easy to do at home!

Writer's workshop was really neat this week. We focussed on stories containing beginnings, middles and ends. We broke apart the Three Little Pigs story into beginning, middle and end. We also discussed why it is so important to have a beginning, middle and end when we write. We then took our own books and made sure to include a beginning, middle and end to our story this week. I kept all of these books to share at conferences! We also remembered to include a title and author (both are concepts we have learned previously).

Math:

We have been playing all of our review games this week and wrapping up our unit on counting and sorting as we move onto patterns next. We have really been enjoying all of our counting games and plan to still play these frequently. The kids were allowed to choose their math games this week. They chose from: Chickity Chop, Let's Go Fishing, Roll a Tower and Say it Fast. We also learned about graphing this week. Each child was given a bag of bridges, goats and tolls to sort and then graph. They had to count how many they had of each and then graph it. This was still hard, as graphing is still somewhat new....but very cool!

We finished our unit on fairytales this week by completing a hero vs. villain sort. This was displayed right outside of our classroom. We have been studying the different elements of a fairytale and this was a great way to show off some of that new knowledge! Today we had another fairytale sort. There were pictures of all of the fairytales mixed up on a sheet of paper. They had to cut out each picture and sort them according to the right fairytale and glue them in the correct column. It was hard work!

We will not be going to the park next week as our park day is a half day (the 24th) and we are already super crunched for time!

Don't forget that the Dad Pumpkin Carving is coming up (October 29th at 12:00) as well as conferences (24th and 25th of October)!

We will be needing:
1. 2 small bags of plastic spiders (not the spider rings just the small plastic spiders) to go in our sensory table
2. toilet paper rolls (no limit on these)
3. 10 one pund bags of rice (for our sensory table)
4. 2 pack of clothes pins (dollar store)

**Remember next week we have a half day on October 24th and no school on October 25th or October 28th.


Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz

Preparing for the Play

October 7th-October 11th 

I think I am saying the play lines in my sleep! We have been practicing the play twice a day everyday this week. We added "costumes" and props today. They had a blast! We have worked really hard to make this play great! We are all so excited to share it with you.

**Important note about siblings coming to the play. Younger siblings are more than welcome to come to watch the play! Space will be limited, but we would love to have them join us. We are asking that you keep your older children in class so that they can continue learning! Do not forget that the play is October 15th at 11:00 am.

We finished our unit on The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Everyone should have come home with a marshmallow/toothpick bridge, and a torn troll (this was fabulous for our fine motor skills)! One other center was acting and retelling, where each child got to act out the story. The other center was a troll grass head. We planted grass seeds in a cup that we decorated to look like the troll. We already have grass growing! I think Mrs. Schultz is secretly more excited than the kids! They loved planting and have been enjoying watching them grow.

Math:

We played a new math game this week called "Let's Go Fishing." The chant goes like this...."Down by the river, down by the sea, Johnny and Sally went fishing with me. How many fish did they get?" Johnny would pull out a handful of "fish" from the "sea" (paperclips from a bowl) and then we would count them. Then Sally would pull out a handful of "fish" from the "sea" and we would count them. We would then look at who caught the most amount of "fish" and who caught the least amount of "fish." This is a great way to reinforce more/less/equal to. You can play this at home as well! We also revisited monster squeeze and a few other favorites.

Literacy:

We discussed a new reading strategy this week! Last week we talked about taking a picture walk before we read. This week we talked about "tracking" our words and remembering to "return sweep" at the end of a sentence to move to the next sentence when reading. We got to use witch fingers to help us track our words this week. How fun! We practiced tracking our words with the Five Little Pumpkins poem. One of our favorites!

We practiced more of our sight words and sounds with pretzels and marshmallows. What could be more fun? I am not sure if we did more eating or spelling, but we had a blast! This is another fun way to get practice with sight words and sounds. For sight words, you can call out a word and then have your child make that word out of pretzels and marshmallows. If your child needs more practice with certain sounds, you can call out a sound and have your child build that letter with pretzels and marshmallows. At the end, you must eat them! :) At least, we did!

We also did a very similar activity with yarn, glue and paper. I would call out a word and the kids had to spell that word with yarn and then glue it down. The same goes for sounds and letters. I called out a sound and the kids had to glue that letter down. We kept these at school, so that we could add to them next week!

We will be needing lysol wipes in the near future! We wipe down tables after snack and lunch to keep the germs away. We also wipe down at the end of the day. Lysol wipes are quick and easy! If you find them on sale or have an extra tube of lysol wipes at your house, send them in! As winter approaches, these are a must to help protect us from the germs!

We also need a few more people to send in battery powered tea lights. We will be using these to place in our pumpkins after we carve them! You can find them at the dollar store.

We are going through stickers like crazy! We love to add stickers to our books and pictures. If you ever find cute, cheap stickers...send them in as well!

Our park adventure was a success! Thanks to all the volunteers! We will go again next week.

Conferences are coming up! Please make sure you check the sign up genius and be sure you have signed up for a convenient time.

Dad Pumpkin Carving: October 29th. Don't forget!


One other reminder.....Don't forget to check out the Shutterfy website that our room parents created. There are some cute pictures up! We have been trying to remember to take more pictures during the day to post to this website! We have some very photogenic students. ;)
https://mrsschultzkand1stgradeclass.shutterfly.com

Enjoy this beautiful weather! Get outside and play this weekend!

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz

Fall Craziness

Fall Craziness

I am just going to go ahead and warn you all now. The upcoming month is going to be crazy! But crazy fun! This newsletter will be long. But please read it. It is all important information!

1. Please bring in a pumpkin by October 11th. We will be turning our dramatic play area into a pumpkin patch! We will then be using these pumpkins to carve during our dad pumpkin carving event on October 29th at 12:00. If you cannot get a pumpkin by October 11th, just bring one in as soon as you can. I understand that it is short notice! The "Dad Pumpkin Carving" that will be held on October 29th at 12:00 is a great way to get dad's involved! If dad cannot make it, an uncle, grandparent, cousin or older brother may come. If that is not possible, any adult from your family may come! We just ask that you only send one adult per child so we have a seat for everyone. It will be a blast!

2. The play is still on for October 15th at 11:00. Please make sure your are practicing your play lines every night! We will only practice as a class a few times. Make sure you are reminding your child who is speaking before them and who is speaking after them. Thank you!!

3. Conferences are coming up! This is a great time to catch up on how your child is doing and all of the wonderful things they have been creating! I will be sending out a sign up genius next week for you to sign up for a day/time to come in. The conference week will be the week of October 21st. I will send out specific details soon. Be on the lookout.

4. The Parade of Fiction will be October 31st. Our school celebrates the end of October with this parade. This is a school wide event where every child dresses up as their favorite fictional character from children's literature! It is so much fun! We highly discourage dressing up as super heroes, comic book characters and cartoon characters. Some past favorites are Clifford, Skippy John Jones, Madeline, Cat in the Hat etc. Please let me know if you need help brainstorming character ideas/costume ideas!

5. One of our room mom's Stephanie Mack has created a sign up genius for snacks for our play in two weeks. Thank you Stephanie! Please look at this sign up genius and see if you are able to bring anything to the play.

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F0F49AFA92EA02-October

 

6. I will be sending out another sign up genius for volunteers for next week. I know there is a lot going on and it can be overwhelming. I am so sorry for all of the dates, events and sign up genius' but I promise that the kids love it!

 

7. PARK PARK PARK!! We are finally going to the park! Yippee!! Our first park experience will be next Thursday at 9:45. We will need at least 3 adults to go with us. If we do not have at least 3 extra adults, we will not be able to go due to safety. The volunteer sign up will be sent out soon! The kids are so excited!

 

**Now for the good stuff! The learning!

 

Literacy:

 

We bean discussing beginning, middle and end. We also experimented with our first activity using a word bank. It was hard, but we will get better and better each time we practice! We discovered a new reading strategy this week. That strategy is called: a picture walk. A picture walk is where you take the book that you are reading and before you start reading the words, you look at all of the pictures. Looking at the pictures first, helps us get our brain ready for what the book will be about! That helps us with words that we might come to that we do not know. Pictures help us tremendously with words! Next time your child stumbles across a word they do not know, ask them to check the pictures and try again.

 

We also played a game called Swat. We play this game two at a time. We lay sight words on the floor and two people stand in front of the words with a fly swatter. Mrs. Schultz calls out a word and the first person to see it and swat at the word, gets to keep the word. This is a great game to play at home! You can use chalk and write words on the sidewalk. Call out the words and have your child jump to the word you called. Fun! This helps us with our reading!

 

Math:

 

We learned about a number line this week! We also increased our speed for identifying dots on dot cards by playing "say it fast" and by playing chickity chop. Both of these games are reinforcing that numbers can be represented in different ways. We added more dots as a challenge this week. Instead of dot cards 1-6, we played our games with dots 1-10. We still have to count certain patterns of cards, but most of the time we can say the number as soon as the dot card is flashed. We also made our own dot card/domino book to take home! Making dot cards at home is easy. Take a white sheet of paper and a black marker and go to town! It is really fun to let the kids make their own dot cards and play say it fast with their cards. You can make dot cards with any pattern and any quantity. I like to stick with dots 1-10 because the goal is not to count, but to be able to see the dots and quickly say the number.

Please email me with any questions! We have a lot coming up, so make sure emails and newsletters are being checked!

Enjoy the weekend!
Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz