September 21st-25th

Everyone loved their hands! We read The Kissing Hand and picked a safe spot for our hands. Some friends wanted to take their hand(s) home and that is fine too! We gave them a big kiss. How special!

Building marshmallow and toothpick bridges for the troll to live under!

Sweet Allison and Sarah holding hands on the field. 

Hello families!

We had another great, short week this week.

DATES TO REMEMBER!

1. Fairytale Celebration: October 15th at 11:00 in our classroom. Next week we are starting to work on "costumes" and "props." So exciting!

2. Dad's Pumpkin Carving: October 22nd, at 1:00 in our classroom. You will need to bring a carving pumpkin, your design and any carving tools needed. Remember, if Dad cannot come any family member can!

Thematic Unit:

We finished our Three Little Bears centers and we started studying Three Billy Goats Gruff. We rotated through 4 main centers. We also graphed our porridge taste testing data. We had 3 people who did not like porridge and 17 people who liked it.

1. Marshmallow and toothpick bridges……these are turning out to be so awesome!
2. Torn paper trolls: use different colored paper and use your thumb and index fingers (only) to tear paper to make a troll. This works on fine motor skills!
3. Three Billy Goats Gruff mini book: color pictures and read the book to an adult to work on tracking words.
4. Graph the characters from The Three Billy Goats Gruff story.

Math Workshop:

We learned a new math game called "Gone Fishing" and we also started our first "teacher tables." Gone Fishing goes like this:

Down by the river, down by the sea,
Jim and Bob went fishing with me.
How many fish did they get?

Two children pull out a string of "fish" (paper clips strung together in different quantities). Children compare the amount of fish they pulled out and use phrases like "Jim had more fish than Bob." We count  each amount and then place the fish back in the sea.

We also started puling children for teacher tables. This is how we can differentiate the best during math. Children who need to be challenged are working on specific math concepts. Children who need to work on number recognition and counting can work on that! These are small groups or one on one.

Book Buddies:

We met our book buddies this week! We interviewed each other and got to know one another better. Next week we will read together! We try to meet once a week. Our buddies are in Mrs. Washam's second grade class. We cannot wait to become better friends. This is a great way to connect our school and get to know other students from other grades.

Reading:

We are still working on Marvelous Me and studying names, letters, sounds, syllables, vowels and consonants. We also played a new game called Roll Say Keep. We will play this again next week. You place 6 letters face down on a game board. Roll the dice and whatever number you land on, you say the letter name. If you get it right, you get to keep it. For children who need a challenge, we do letter sounds or site words.

Science:
If you have not signed up for Sci Fri yet, definitely try it sometime. It is becoming a class favorite! Last week we tested dropping hard boiled eggs in different materials to see which would keep the egg from cracking and which would allow the egg to break. We sent the recoding sheets home, so hopefully you got a chance to check it out. So fun! We can't wait to see what Margot's mom has planned for us tomorrow.

We are heading out of town this weekend because my Pirates are playing Virginia Tech. If I am slow to responding to emails, that's why. Cheer for my team if you are watching the game! :)

Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Schultz