October 19th-23rd

Hello!

It has gotten quite chilly! Be sure to send a jacket or sweater for recess.

We have been busy this week starting our new unit. Thank you again for helping us wrap up our fairytale unit by attending our play. It was awesome! Huge thanks to Michelle Skaggs for making all of our props and costumes. ;)

**Dad Pumpkin Carving is Thursday at 1!

**The Parade of Fiction is next week on October 28th. I sent an email about this, but please have your child dressed and ready that morning with a change of clothes in his/her bag. Join us for the parade if you want! Please be sure your child has his/her book to hold with his/her costume during the parade. No weapons or full face coverings please!

**No sign up genius needed for next week as we have a short week due to conferences.

Reader's Workshop:

This week we worked on letters and letter sounds. We got to write letters in shaving cream on our tables! I would call out a letter or a sound and the students would write that letter in shaving cream. We also played an alphabet matching/memory game. Students had to match the uppercase letter to the lower case letter. If they got a match, they got to keep the letters. The person with the most matches at the end of the game wins.

We also continued with "Marvelous Me" and handwriting.

Our first class "Big Book" started making it's way around as well. Big books are great for so many things! When students are touching each word as they read it works on one to one correspondence. These big books are great for repetition, using pictures to get clues when reading, sight words and name recognition (when we have class names in the book). Please use the pointer in the bag when reading with your child! Please keep the book in the bag and return it the next day.

Writer's Workshop:

Our writer's workshop lesson this week was writing about small moments. Writing about a small moment in time is harder than it sounds! Here is an example: I am going to write about Disney World but in order to write a small moment story I am going to pick 1 thing to write about rather than tell about the whole trip. I might choose my favorite ride or snack at Disney and write about that as opposed to telling about my entire trip.

Thematic Unit:
This week we started our creepy crawlies unit off by studying spiders! We learned spider webs are very STRONG! Spiders have 8 legs and up to 8 eyes. Spiders are very helpful to us because they eat other bugs. Spiders can also be furry! We also studied the "writing spider" which makes the coolest web. We rotated through 4 main centers.

1. Spaghetti Spider Web Art: Use cold spaghetti to make a spider web and discuss how things stick to the pasta like they do on real spider webs.
2. Non-Fiction Spider Fact Book: Illustrate and read your book to an adult!
3. Spider Web Weaving: Use yarn to weave a web on a black paper plate. Glue a spider on top!
4. Spider Hat: Make a hat look like a spider and choose 8 legs to glue onto your hat and up to 8 eyes.

Math Workshop:

This week we have been focusing on writing numbers 1-20. This is still hard but we have been playing "write it quick" on our white boards. I call out a number and the students have to write it with an Expo maker. We also learned a new game called "Chickety Chop." It goes like this:

"Chickety, Chickety, Chop.
How many times before we stop?
Chickety, Chickety, Chop!"

The students look at a domino card that I hold up with a certain amount of dots on it. We clap for the amount of dots. It gets harder and harder as the game goes on.

Science:

Last week Landon's grandmother brought a science experiment into our class where we tested candy corn pumpkins in different liquids to see if they would float or sink. We also noticed when we placed them in water their "skin" started to peel! It was neat. We cannot wait to see what Katherine's mom brings this Friday!

Hugs,
Mrs. Schultz