September 15th-18th

Happy Thursday!

We have a short week next week so there will be no volunteers needed! We are off September 25th and 26th. I will probably send home an email with an update rather than posting a whole blog post for the short week. Look for that email Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning.

Thematic:
We have been studying Rumpelstiltskin this week and discussing names. We played a game where we took an index card and wrote our real name on the front and then a new name we would give ourselves on the back. After that we tried to guess who would be who! The next day we made a huge chart and compared our name to Rumpelstiltskin's. His name was the longest by several letters! It was interesting to see this difference on paper. The last day we sequenced the story. We read several different versions and compared this fairytale to the others we have read so far. We may even attempt to weave a basket out of construction paper this week or next! We need to practice that skill and it would relate to this story really well.

Reader's Workshop:
We are still practicing writing, reading with a partner and reading independently during reader's workshop. We added another poem to our poetry journal and highlighted "colorful words" (words that we can visualize in our mind). We practiced many site words and our word study words doing various activities during this time. We have magnetic letters, shaving cream words, play dough words, stamping words, scented markers to rainbow write etc. Feel free to repeat these methods at home with word study words or frequently missed site words while reading. We also met with our reading groups and worked on reading strategies with Mrs. Schultz. If a leveled book comes home, look for the sticky note on the front cover. That will tell you what strategies we are working on for that particular book and your child. Sometimes we send home a book that may appear "easy" but we have a specific goal. We may be working on fluency, stopping at punctuation, comprehension or expression. There are so many things that we are working on right now! Reading is about so much more than a "level' or a challenge. We want kids to enjoy reading, learn to comprehend what they are reading, learn new vocabulary, feel confident and so much more. We are working on being independent but it is still hard so thank you to the parents who have volunteered so far!

Math Workshop:
This week we worked on ordering numbers from least to greatest and greatest to least. We started by using math manipulatives and then moved to number cards. Each child was given 4 number cards and they were to order the numbers from least to greatest. We continued to play "Fix It" from last week. This game is really powerful and addresses many great concepts. One child calls out a number from the number strip and another child "fixes" the amount of cubes that are on the game board.
EX:
Number caller: 2
Number Fixer: I will add 2 to make 2.
Number caller: 6
Number Fixer: I will add 4 to make 6
Number Caller: 1
Number Fixer: I will take 5 away to make 1

We also began to learn greater than and less than. We introduced the official sign. EX: 6<9 (that would read 6 is less than 9). An easy way to remember the way the sign goes is that the "alligator" always wants to eat the bigger number. So the < sign would need to have the "mouth of the alligator" eating the 9 and not the 6 since 9 is bigger. Use this language at home because it helps! This is a very new and somewhat difficult concept, so practice as much as you can.

Each day your child brings home a book for you to read to them. Please take the time to do this every night. Reading aloud is so important! If you do not have time to read a book that evening, keep it for one extra night.

Have a great weekend!
Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz