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