Habari Gani?

It is hard to believe that we are down to the last two days before winter break!  This month has flown by.  This past week we focused on learning about Kwanzaa.  Kwanzaa is a celebration that honors African heritage and begins on December 26 and lasts until January 1.  We were fortunate to have Dr.  Tehia Glass, from UNCC, come and speak to us this week about this time of wonderful celebration.  Dr. Glass brought some special artifacts, that have been passed down in her family, that she uses to celebrate Kwanzaa and shared these with our class.  She explained that there are seven days of Kwanzaa, and each day represents one of the core principals that they celebrate.  These seven principals are unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.  Some of the artifacts, or symbols of Kwanzaa, she shared with us were a Mkeka, or mat, on which other symbols are placed.  She showed us her Kinara (candle holder) which has three red candles, three green candles and one black candle in the middle.  The black candle is used to light the other candles.  One candle is lit each day during Kwanzaa.  She also brought in corn and fruits and vegetables to show us, as corn is the primary symbol for both decoration and dining, and fruits and vegetables are grown or bought from a farmers market to represent African idealisms.  She also brought her special unity cup to show us.  The family drinks water out of this special cup to represent family unity and to give thanks.  The greeting for each day of Kwanzaa is Habari Gani? which is Swahili for "How are you?"

In our centers this week we made a book about Kwanzaa.  We have been talking about doing our best work when making books.  We also have been practicing reading these books to a grown up when we are finished.  Please have your child read his/her book to  you when he/she brings it home.  Have him/her point to the words as he/she reads.  If you have a shoe box let your child decorate it and keep his/her special books that he/she makes in the box.  Revisit these books frequently, as familiar rereads are a great way to help emergent readers.  It builds confidence and fluency!  Our cooking center this week was using red and green M & M's on pretzel rods to make a Kinara.  Your child should have brought home the recipe for this.   This is another great way to practice reading as well as following multi-step directions in a fun way.  Next, we worked on our fine motor skills by beading Kwanza bracelets using red, green and black beads.  We also created a Kwanzaa necklace using the symbols of Kwanzaa.  See if your child can retell you about the many things they know about this holiday by using the pictures on the necklace as a guide.  Our final center was creating a unity cup glyph.  This was our first time creating a glyph and the students did really well with this.  Students had to choose certain symbols to put on their cups based on questions they were asked.  For example they had to put a zig zag line on their cup if they were a boy and a curvy line on their cup if they were a girl.  They had to put a certain amount of dots on their cup to represent pets or no pets, etc.  See if your child can explain their glyph to you when he/she brings it home.

Our reading lessons this week focused on using pictures to help us think about the story.  I read the students the book Carl's Christmas.  This is a wordless picture book.  We discussed how even though this book had almost no words at all in it I could still read the story just by using the pictures.  We talked about how even though right now we might not be able to read all the words in books we are all still readers because we can use the pictures to help us think about and read the story.  We practiced this on our own during our readers workshop time.  Students were given three sticky notes to find three places in the book where they used the pictures to help them read or figure out what was going on in the story.  They did an EXCELLENT job with this!  We then transferred this skill into our writers workshop time.  We read a book called My House.  In this book the little boy talks about all the rooms in his house.  He shows all the many different things he does in his house by using pictures and he also adds labels to his pictures.  We talked about how labels can help the reader better understand what a certain picture may be expressing.  Ms. Joy came to our class last week to talk about the athletic field and asked us to draw pictures of any ideas we might have for our new facility.  We drew pictures for her of this and added labels so that she would be able to know exactly what our ideas were.  Some of our students have BIG plans for Ms. Joy! :)  We also wrote thank you letters to Dr. Glass.  We drew our favorite Kwanzaa symbols and labeled them for her as well.

In math this week we focused on greater than, less than and equal to.  We played a game using five frames where students rolled a die.  They had to place the number of cubes they rolled on the frame.  Their partner then rolled and did the same.  Partners had to determine who had the highest number and the lowest number.  The highest number got all the cubes until one of the partners had all of the cubes.  We also talked about good sportsmanship and how at the end of a game whether we win or we lose we shake hands and say, "good game."  The students did very well with all of these concepts.  Our book buddies also taught us a new math game using ten frames.  It was called Race to the Top.  Students rolled a die and recorded the number he/she rolled.  The first number to get to the top of the grid was the winning number.  Students had to determine which number he/she rolled the most and least amount of times.

Don't forget that we are making gingerbread houses on Tuesday at 1:00.  All parents are invited to attend/help.  We would love to have someone from each family attend so that each child will have someone to help them.  However, if this is not possible it is totally fine, just let us know and we will gladly assist your child.  Because it will be near the end of the day if you would like to take your child once we are finished you are welcome to do so.  It is going to be great fun!


Upcoming Events:

Tuesday, December 19 @ 1:00 - Gingerbread Houses

December 20-January 2 - Winter Break

January 3 - Classes Resume, first day back from Winter Break

January 9 - Parent Advisory, 7:30

January 11 - Lottery Open House, 9:15 and 6:30

January 12 - CSD vs PLP home basketball game

January 15 - No School MLK Day

January 17 - Pancake Fundraiser at the Egg in Davidson 4pm -8pm

January 26 - No School, Teacher Workday

January 29 - No School, Teacher Workday

January 30 - 100th day of school, Lottery Open House, 9:15

Festival of Lights...

This week we "traveled" to Israel to learn about the origin of the celebration of Hanukah.  Our new friend, Mrs. Jen Chaffman, who works at the high school, came to share about how she celebrates Hanukah.  She brought her menorah and explained how there are eight nights of Hanukah.  She told us the story about how long ago the Jewish people were fighting with the Greeks over a temple. During this fight they ran out of oil for their lamps.  They found only enough oil to light their lamps for one night.  The oil somehow lasted long enough for the lamp to burn for eight days and eight nights.  That is why we light the menorah with nine candles for eight nights (the ninth is known as the shamash, or "head candle," and you use it to light the others.) She shared that often times people who celebrate Hanukah will eat foods fried in oil to represent the oil from the lamp.  Latkas, or fried potato pancakes, are a favorite to eat during Hanukah with some applesauce (not syrup) on top!  A favorite game played during Hanukah is the dreidel game.  We learned how to play this game during our centers this week.  We also each got to taste some yummy gelt (chocolate coins) that Ms. Jen brought us.  Ms. Jen also brought along her guitar and we sang the dreidel song with her.  This quickly became a class favorite!  We also learned that the Israeli flag has an important Hanukah symbol on it, the Star of David.  We used watercolors during centers to paint the Star of David, and we also talked about how many points were on the star, how many lines, how many small triangles and how many large triangles could be found on the star.  We marked where Israel is on our classroom map.  We decided that so far it is the furtherest country we have studied from the United States.  We learned that Shalom is a way to say hello in Israel, that Israelis consume the most fruits and veggies in the world per person, and that bank notes in Israel have braille on them.  We talked about what bank notes might be and also what braille is.  We discovered that the signs outside of our bathrooms have braille on them, which is a way to help those who can't see be able to read.  One of our favorite centers this week was "cooking" dreidels.  We spread icing around the sides of a marshmallow and rolled them in blue sprinkles.  Next we used the icing to stick a Hershey's kiss on top, and we put a pretzel on the other end.  When you turn the marshmallow over and hold it by the pretzel it looks just like a dreidel.  Each child brought home their own recipe in case you want to make these at home and to practice reading.  Next week we "travel" to Africa to learn about Kwanzaa.  We are very excited to have a guest speaker from UNCC on Wednesday morning come and share about this special holiday.

In math this week we used "menorah candles" (rods from the base ten blocks) to measure different items around the room.  Student worked with partners to measure tables, rugs, books, pencils and chair legs to discover how long each item might be.  They practiced making the "candles" touch each other to get an accurate measurement.  We also used unifix cubes to estimate how many would fit on one of our menorah mats.  We then filled the menorah with the cubes and practiced our one to one counting of objects.  Our next center was Count the Room.  We "hid" several gift tags with objects on them around the room.  The students had to find these gift tags, count the objects and match them to the corresponding item on their recording sheet.  Finally, we worked with blank calendars to create a December calendar.  We put special stickers on the dates for St. Nicholas Day, Las Posadas, Hanukah and Christmas.  We talked about what day of the week the first day of December was, as well as how many total days there were in December.  Students wrote their own numbers on the calendar so that we could formatively assess how we are doing with our number writing into the teens and higher.  We glued these calendars into our math notebooks that we will be sharing with you.  We also played a listening game where students had to listen to how many times I rang the jingle bell and write that number on their white boards.  They seemed to have great fun with this game.  This worked on listening for a number, counting and number formation.

This week we added some more new words to our word wall.  We added her, him, and, an and the.  As you read to your child see if he/she can find these words in the books your are reading.  We practiced building these words with letter tiles and writing them, we used word mats to build words out of play dough and then write them with a special Vis-a-V marker.  A favorite this week was writing letters to Santa.  I modeled for the students how we start a letter (just like Gobbles and Tinsel start their letters) and how we end them.  We also talked about what we might want to say to Santa.  We came up with a sentence we wanted to write and counted the words in the sentence.  Next, as a class we practiced sounding out how to spell each word.  Students helped be the "spacers" in between the words, because we noticed it is very difficult to read words when there are no spaces between them.  We also decided that a list is a great way to write to Santa as well.  Students wrote their letters and put them in a giant green Santa envelope for me to mail for them.

Addie was our Marvelous Me girl this week.  We found out that Addie has three vowels and two consonants in her name.  Her name starts with a vowel and ends with a vowel.  She also has double letters in her name.  How marvelous?! :)

Tinsel has been busy writing letters to us this week.  He told us that many reindeer live in Canada.  We found Canada on the map, and sure enough there was a picture of a reindeer as one of the symbols for Canada!  He also shared with us that reindeer get their antlers when they are very young and their first set of antlers are called Rudolph antlers.  We love finding out facts about reindeer, as well as seeing what Tinsel is learning from us in class!

This week we will go to the Laurels nursing home on Tuesday.  This will be our first trip and I can't wait!  The nursing home is one of my favorite places to visit.  The residents get very excited to see us and they love spending time singing, playing games and doing crafts with us.  If you would like to join us on this field trip we would love to have you!  We will board the bus around 9:50 and are scheduled to be at the Laurels from 10:30-11:30.  We will return to school around 12.  If you would like to join us please let me know.  Anyone is welcome and you may ride the bus if you would like.  Please send me an email to let me know if you would like to join us and if you will be riding the bus or driving separately.

We will need milk cartons to make our gingerbread houses on the 19th.  Mrs. Coppola has a friend who can get us most of these for our class.  However, if you have any extra please send them in.  They need to be the quart size or smaller.  Also, we will need a parent to volunteer to help hot glue the graham crackers on so that we can get these ready for decorating.  Once I get all the milk cartons from Mrs. Coppola I can let you all know, but we would LOVE any and all parents who want to help hot glue graham crackers to join us! :)  This will make the decorating go much easier!  If you are willing to help do this just send me an email and let me know.  This is a job that we can send home with you if you would like.

Reminders: 

We have had several children who have been sick this week.  I know lots of germs are going around right now.  Please remember that if your child has a fever or is throwing up he/she may not return to school until he/she has been fever free or not throwing up for at least 24 hours.  This is very important, as we do not want anyone else in our classroom to get sick, especially during this very busy time of the year.  Thank you in advance for your help with this.


Upcoming Events:

December 12 - Field Trip to the Laurels 10:00 am
December 19 - Making Gingerbread Houses 1:00
December 20-January 2 - Winter Break - No School

Traditions Around the World...

What a busy week we have had as we kicked off our unit of study on Traditions Around the World.  We began our "travels" in the Netherlands.  We learned that on December 5th, St. Nicholas Day,  children fill their klompens (wooden shoes) with hay and carrots as they wait for the arrival of Sinterklaas.  Sinterklaas is a kind man, who wears a long red robe and tall hat that comes to a point.  He rides on a white horse.  The horse eats the hay and carrots from the children's shoes and in return Sinterklass fills their shoes with treats.  We are very excited and hopeful that Sinterklass will be paying us a visit this week.  During rest time we will place our shoes in the hall filled with carrots and hay and hope that when we are done with our rest time that our shoes will be filled with treats. To celebrate, we are going to have pajama day on Tuesday, December 5.  Have your child come to school dressed in their favorite jammies for a day of fun!  They will still  need to wear their tennis shoes with their pj's. :)  We also learned that children in the Netherlands bake a letter cake in the shape of the first letter of their name to eat during the St. Nicholas Day celebration.  "Prestige Kerstdagen" is the holiday greeting in the Netherlands. Pine wreaths and glass ornaments are used to decorate during this time.  I was excited to share with the students that when I was in college I did a study abroad and one of the places I studied in was the Netherlands.  I had a pair of real wooden klompens and a glass ornament to show them that came from the Netherlands.  They were excited to check these items out! :)

In our centers this week we made our own letter cakes.  Students carefully shaped their bread dough into the first letter of their name.  After their letter cake baked they got to spread on some butter and add some sugar sprinkles to make the sweet bread treat.  We traced, cut out and decorated our own klompens and added some "hay and carrots" to the picture as well.  Students practiced writing this new word on their pictures.  They are hanging in the hall for you to see.  We also made a book about the Netherlands, as well as a fancy hat that tells all about the things we learned on our "travels" to the Netherlands.  Finally, we began talking about Las Posadas, the Mexican celebration.  We made beautiful poinsettia ornaments to hang on our trees.  Right now they are hanging on the board outside our classroom for all to enjoy!

Next week we will continue talking about Las Posadas.  We have marked both Mexico and the Netherlands on our class map so that students may see where they are in relation to the United States and North Carolina.  I have a beautiful art print to show the students by the Mexican artist, Diego Rivera.  Rivera was known for his beautiful murals, so we will work to create a class mural in the style of Diego Rivera.  We will also continue to sing Feliz Navidad, one of our new favorites, make a book about Las Posadas and string some Mexican pattern necklaces to celebrate this holiday.  We will also introduce the celebration of Hanukkah.  We will "travel" to Israel and learn about the origin of this special holiday.  We will talk about some of the special symbols that are important to Jewish families.  We will paint the Star of David and talk about the triangle shapes we see in it, learn the dreidel game and much, much more!

In math this week we continued playing one of our favorite games...Monster Squeeze.  We played as a class, and each child also got to  make their own game to take home and play with family and friends.  Have your child play this game to work on number recognition, discussing where numbers fall on the number line, and are numbers higher or lower than the "secret number" you are trying to guess.  Students also played roll and record, where they rolled two dice and counted and combined the number on each die to record the sum on their recording sheet.  It was great fun to see which sum they rolled the most and which sum they rolled the least.  We also played the domino parking lot game.  Students used the dominoes to count the dots and combine them on each side of the domino to decide where they should "park" their domino on the parking lot sheet.  They had lots of fun counting and adding the numbers to park their dominos in the right spot.

Our literacy centers had us writing words around the room.  After we wrote them we practiced reading them to a grown up.  We also made high frequency word ornaments to hang on our class tree.
Student had fun painting wooden letters and combining them to make new words they recognize.  We added several new words to our word wall this week.  We added: she, he, to, two, my, me, like and you.  We will continue to add new words each week.  Have your child look for these words when you are reading to them or see if there are places they can look for these words as they begin to become more familiar with how to read and spell them.  Paige was our Marvelous Me girl this week.  We discovered that she has a strong man "e" in her name that gives the /a/ in her name the courage to say its long vowel sound.  We also talked about how exciting it is that the /g/ in Paige's name makes the /j/ sound.  We discovered that /g/ has two sounds.  Its most common is /g/ as in goat, but its second sound makes the /j/ sound like in Paige and giant.  How marvelous is that?!  :)

Finally, this week Gobbles, the turkey who had been leaving us notes and hiding in our classroom decided to sneak out and head back to the farm.  We were sad to see him go, but are very excited because in one of his final notes he mentioned his good friend Tinsel may be paying our classroom a visit.  We can not wait until Monday to see who and what Tinsel is!  Many think he is an elf, others think he is Santa himself.  Stay tuned to find out on Monday who Tinsel might be and what he or she might have to say to us! :)  Have a wonderful week and a huge thanks to all of you for all the wonderful supplies you have been sending in for us to use to cook with and to help with our unit of study.  We really appreciate all your help!  One item that we are in need of is a new class basket to carry our PE equipment in when we go out on the field.  The one that we had has seen better days.  If anyone could send in a large basket (think laundry basket) we would greatly appreciate it!


Reminders: 

-Don't forget to send in an extra set of clothes for your child if you haven't already.  
-With the weather getting colder we have lots of jackets, mittens and hats at school.  Make sure you label your child's items so that if they get lost we know who they belong to.  
-Tuesday is Pajama Day!

Upcoming Events:

December 5 - Love and Logic Parenting Session 8:30 am
December 12 - Field Trip to the Laurels 10:00 am
December 19 - Making Gingerbread Houses 1:00
December 20-January 2 - Winter Break - No School

The Ants Go Marching...

What a fun filled week we had together!  I have to say I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to be spending my days with your sweet children!  I have so enjoyed getting to know each of them better, I really think I hit the jackpot with this great group of children. :)  We were busy bees (or should I say ants) this week.  We wrapped up our unit on Creepy Crawlies by learning about ants.  We read several ant stories this week, and a class favorite seemed to be Two Bad Ants, by Chris Van Allsburg.  This book is written from the perspective of an ant.  It was so much fun trying to figure out where the ants were and what they were doing in this story.  The children had to look carefully at the pictures and listen to the clues given in the book to make an inference about where the ants were exploring.  We also read some non-fiction books about ants and talked about their life cycle.  Each child recreated the life cycle of the ant and discussed the different stages it goes through.  We read the book One Hundred Hungry Ants, and then did some estimating and counting on ten frames with some plastic ants in our classroom.  We also created a scene that we thought an ant might enjoy, such as a picnic, and painted the ants in the scene using Q-tips and toothpicks.  Finally, we made delicious ants on a log.  Each child got a recipe to read and follow and then made their own yummy snack!
     In math this week we made our own domino book, based on the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  Each child had to match the dots in their book to the number they were given and then read their books.  Have your child practice reading his/her book to you at home.  We also used dominoes to begin talking and thinking about number bonds (fact families).  We counted the dots on the dominoes to match them to a number written on the table.  We made math pumpkin pies by adding whip cream (cotton balls) to match the number on our pie shape and then recorded it.  This seemed to be one of their favorite centers.  Finally, we began creating our math toolkits (journals).  This is a place where the children will be recording and keeping important math work that we are doing.  I will send these home periodically for you to take a look at and talk about with your child.  We started our toolkits by talking about how numbers are written as numerals, written in words and how they can be represented by a picture.  I look forward to seeing their progress as we add to these.  A favorite class game this week was Monster Squeeze.  One child thought of a "secret" number represented on the number line between zero and ten.  We held one monster at zero and one at ten.  The rest of the students tried to guess the secret number.  Each time a guess was made the monsters would "squeeze" closer to the secret number by determining if the number guessed was higher or lower than the secret number until someone figured out the secret number.
     We had lots of fun reading and writing this week.  One of our favorites was Write the Room.  We had turkeys with high frequency words on them hung all around the room.  The students used a clip board, pencil and paper to go around and see if they could write down as many words as they could find.  After they wrote down their words they practiced reading them.  We also created a book about a turkey.  In this book the turkey moves all over the place.  He goes under, over, behind and beside many different objects.  The students have to place the turkey according to where the positional words describe on the page.  Lilliah was our Marvelous Me girl this week!  We talked about how many vowels and consonants she has in her name.  We also talked about why it is important to capitalize the first letter in someone's name when we write it...because they are special and important!
     Did you hear that a turkey has been hiding in our classroom?  Gobbles the turkey has been leaving us daily messages and "flying" to different spots in our classroom each day.  We LOVE reading his messages each day and finding out what he has been up to.  The children are really good at finding words and letters that they recognize in his message.  Each day a different child gets to take home Gobbles letter to keep so that they can read it with their parents and talk about all the words and letters they know! :)
     This week we were very excited to have our 2nd grade book buddies come and visit.  We spent time reading with them and  drawing a scene from our favorite part in the story.  Book buddies was on our list of favorite things this week!
     Our field trip to the Raptor Center on Wednesday was a huge success.  We loved seeing the beautiful raptors and learning more about what they eat, how they hunt, how they fly and what they do at the Raptor Center.  It was a wonderful way to celebrate our unit of study.  A huge thanks to all of our volunteers this week who helped us both on the field trip and in the classroom.  Mrs. Hazlett sent out a sign up genius for me for upcoming volunteer opportunities.  If you did not receive this please let me know and we will make sure you get it.  If for some reason none of the times I have listed work for you just let me know.  You are welcome to volunteer anytime!  We LOVE having extra hands in our classroom.  Just send me an email and let me know when you would like to come in and we will set it up.  The more the merrier! :)
     When we return from Thanksgiving break we will be turning our housekeeping center into a gift wrapping station for some holiday fun!   We will need several rolls of wrapping paper, several rolls of scotch tape, bows and some empty boxes of various sizes to make this happen.  If you would be willing to send in any of these items please let me know, or just send them in.  This will be a great way for students to work on fine motor skills all while they are having fun!
     Our upcoming unit of study is one of my favorites.  It is Traditions Around the World.  If you have any special traditions that you celebrate in your family that you would like to share with our class please let me know.  We would love for you to come in and share your wonderful family traditions with our class family.

Reminders: 

-Don't forget to send in an extra set of clothes for your child.
-Please return your child's rest towel or blanket after you wash it.
-We would love to have gift wrapping supplies for our December gift wrapping station.

Upcoming Events:

November 14 - Love and Logic Parenting Session 8:30 am
November 16 - Love and Logic Parenting Session 7:00 pm
November 22-24 Thanksgiving Holiday - No School
November 24 - High School Football Game Round 3 of the State Playoffs
November 28 -  Love and Logic Parenting Session 8:30 am
December 5 - Love and Logic Parenting Session 8:30 am
December 12 - Field Trip to the Laurels 10:00 am
December 19 - Making Gingerbread Houses 1:00
December 20-January 2 - Winter Break - No School

Halloween and last post

Happy Friday!

We have enjoyed quite a bit of fun and excitement this week. The Parade of Fiction was a great success and it was thrilling to be able to lead the parade! This will be my last post to you as a group.
I hope you know how thankful I am for all of your support and kind words during the last three months. Mrs. Schultz returns on the 13th and with the shorter week and me being out two days I will not do a blog entry next week. I look forward to continuing our relationship and am so excited to still be a part of your child's growth and fun during kindergarten. Starting the 13th, please direct all email communications and questions to Mrs. Schultz.

Upcoming events:
November 7th: Field Trip to the Children's Theater: Please see email and sign up for details

Please don't forget if you are chaperoning that I need your money  no later than Monday. The school needs to pre-pay for the trip. Thank you for your help in this matter.

November 9th: Mrs. Robinson's last day
November 13th: Mrs. Schultz returns
November 15th: Raptor center field trip. I don't have much information on this except it's full day. Once I know more I will communicate it to you asap. The children will need to pack a lunch.

Literacy Centers:

 

This week, we learned the letters of Bailey's name. We worked on lower case b and it's sound. The children practiced matching beginning sounds to each letter, abc order and upper and lower case letter identification. They wrote stories about bats. 

Math:

 



Math was full of fun this week! We counted and sorted candy, used our fidget spinners and fine motor skills to fill pumpkins. The children worked on number order and used higher thinking to add one more while counting. I introduced a new game called " I have, I need to make 10." This is a great game to play at home! We also enjoyed some fun themed centers around Halloween!

 

Thanks for sending in your unwanted candy it made some cute "monsters." FYI they are coming home today so you might want to pull them out of the bookbag.

Many thanks! It is such a pleasure to teach your children!

Hugs, 
Mrs. Hazlett

Bats, pumpkins & spiders

Up Coming Events:

Tuesday, October 31st: Parade of Fiction--Please refer to the email from the school about details. The children can dress up as a book character. Children will need to ARRIVE TO SCHOOL IN THEIR COSTUME with their book! The parade will happen inside of the school and begins at 8:45am.  Please send in a change of clothes if you feel your child may not want to wear the costume all day. Please label clothing items and send them in a bag.

November 7th: Field Trip to the Children's Theater: Please see email and sign up for details

Hi all,

Tuesday's pumpkin carving was such fun! Thank you so much for coming in and enjoying a fun afternoon. Cynthia (Bailey's mom)  and the children made amazing pumpkin muffins! The recipe is going home today. I'm trying to share a link with you so you can see all the pictures.  Hopefully, by the end of the weekend I can figure that out!

Math centers:

 



We have been focused on our numbers! We have completed the HWTs portion of learning to write numbers 1-10. We are concentrating on not writing them backwards. The children have been making groups of numbers, for example eight groups of eight which focuses on 1:1 correspondence. We learned about circumference while making observations about our pumpkins. We are also still estimating, making patterns and learning to count by 2s. We are now rolling two dice and adding up those numbers.

Reading & Writing centers:






This week, we looked at the "at" family. We talked about beginning sounds and made "at" words as well as nonsense words that rhymed with at. We circled back to rhyming with a fun bat rhyming activity. The children put together a beginning sound with the small word at and made a book. They drew and labeled a bat.  We  reviewed all the sounds and letters that went with our Marvelous me friends. We did one more activity with Liam's name. They had to fit his name on a page and then we used glue and leaves to "decorate" his name.




Science:

We learned more about pumpkins and began our unit on bats. We shared our current knowledge about bats and talked about how helpful they can be. We read some great books, Stelluna, Bats and Night Song. We learned about echolocation and the children are in love with this song! Hopefully this link will work! The children made adorable torn paper bats that are hanging in the hallway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OYmHVuguWI


A few weeks ago the children made American flags as part of a school wide effort to support our Veterans. I thought it would be nice if we included a hand written note to go with those cards. If you would like to send one in by November 1st that would be wonderful. I personally, just had my first cousin return early this month from his first tour in Afghanistan. I am very relieved he is home safe and grateful for his service!

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Hazlett

Pumpkins

Tuesday October 24th --Pumpkin carving with Dad @ 1:00pm

Tuesday October 31st-- Parade of fiction @8:45 

Happy Friday! We have had a busy week! It's hard to believe that we had our first skit and then transitioned into a field trip, a new unit of study and a Fall Festival Kickball tournament!! WOW! It was wonderful sitting down with each of you and sharing about your sweet child. Thank you so much for your support. This school is a community and I have felt your appreciation and dedication as we have interacted over the last two months. We are off to a great start! I look forward to seeing the dads on 




Tuesday at 1:00 as we attempt to carve 21 pumpkins!! Go big or go home right? LOL!!! Please see the sign up for details. Each child needs to bring in a pumpkin and these can be brought in starting Monday. 

Science:

This week, we started our creepy crawly unit with the study of spiders. The children have learned quite a bit in our short week. We have compared spiders to insects. As well as learning facts like spiders can spit and zipline but they can not chew or fly. We will continue to learn more next week. We have also talked about pumpkins, how they grow and their life cycle. We will also add to this next week as Tuesday will be "all about pumpkins."


Literacy:

Liam was our Marvelous Me this week. He is the first student to have a small word in his name so we have also learned the word "am" this week. We tried a new activity where the students used special push pins to stick holes in the letters of Liam's name. This was a supervised fine motor activity and the children did a great job! They created a fun book called Spiders can.....Spiders can not....They then drew pictures and tried to write the words of what they could and could not do. They made cvc words, matched rhyming pictures and upper and lower case letters as well during centers. We made salt decorated pumpkins and created a yarn spider web. 

 

Math:

We continued with patterns and grouping sets of eight this week. We learned that spiders start their web with a triangular shape then move out in a circular shape. The children recreated this with Geo-boards and rubber bands. We used  ten frames to make the numbers 8 and 18, we practiced writing the numbers in our handwriting book and counting up to 18. They estimated and worked on positional words. As a representation of learning eight the students enjoyed making an Oreo cookie spider with eight legs and eight eyes. 

  





Field Trip:

 


A long drive but the children had a great time! They learned about corn and how it's in a lot of strange products, took a tractor ride, went down a cool slide and played in a Fooze ball pit. Some of us braved the big corn maze and the children even saw a phone that had a cord and a rotary dial! They sat in a train car that was over 150 years old, fed sheep and picked a pumpkin and some even had their first bus ride!

Thank you for sending in your coins for our fundraiser to build an athletic complex! Keep sending them in!

Have a great weekend!!

Mrs. Hazlett

Fairy Tale skit

Hello parents,

I hope all of you have had a wonderful week! We have had a good week of math fun and play practice. We had a surprise visit from Mrs. Schultz and baby Cooper. They walked to the park with us! I appreciate all of your support this week with volunteering! I look forward to sitting down with each of you next week to discuss your child's progress. If you have not signed up for a conference time please do so at your earliest convenience.

Wednesday October 11th at 11-- Fairy Tale Play
Thursday and Friday October 12 & 13th-- No school/teacher conferences
Wednesday October 18th-- Aw Shucks Farm
Thursday October 19th --CSD Kickball tournament
Tuesday October 24th --Pumpkin carving with Dad
Tuesday October 31st-- Parade of fiction

A note about the kickball tournament.... written from a 3rd grade parent.

If you're new to the school or weren't able to attend last year, this is a great event!  In addition to the kickball tournament itself, there are lots of games for the kids, food trucks, and live entertainment.  It's a wonderful opportunity for the whole CSD community to come together.   Admission is a suggested donation of $5/person, and it is recommended to buy your tickets in advance (at the website link below).

The school needs your help & participation!!  All of the sign ups, including tickets for the tournament, are available on the Kickball Tournament Website   

So how can you help?

1. Sign up to play on the Kindergarten parent team. A full team is 12 (6 men & 6 women) and we need at least 10 to play.  Cost is $30 and includes your entry into the festival and a t-shirt.  Please note, t-shirts will be ordered this week, so sign up before this Wednesday (October 4th) if you want to make sure you have the right size!!  The first game doesn't start until 5:30, so you can sign up to play and still have some time to enjoy the festival with your kids first.

New news about the Field trip. 
In addition to what I posted on the sign up, I also know that we will leave the school promptly at 8:15. There is a $8.50 entry fee for the chaperones and our tour is from 10am-1pm.

Our Fairy Tale skit is next Wednesday at 11:00!!!! We hope you can join us for refreshments afterwards. 

Now for our fun week:

Literacy:

Our Marvelous Me this week was Lydia. We enjoy learning her name and comparing it to the two other names we have learned. 

 

We tried a new spelling activity with Lydia's name. This week, we really focused on learning that big line, little line, big curve and little curve make all the letters. I traced the shapes and then the students had to use them to make the letters of Lydia's name. This really challenged them from a spatial standpoint to fit all her letters on one page. We worked on the correct formation of numbers 4, 5 & 6.
During one of my most favorite activities, the students changed a story component of one of our fairy tales. For example, they might change setting, character or the beginning, middle or end of the story. Each child then sat in the author's chair and re-told their "new" story! So exciting! Each week, we work on recognizing letters, matching upper and lower case letters and even reading some cvc words.

Math Centers:

This week, we worked on patterns. We learned about AB and ABB patterns. Our calendar is reflecting a pattern and we used different math manipulatives to create our own patterns. We really enjoyed these activities.

I also want to include each week a few ways for you to ask your child about his/her day.

1. Who are three people you talked to day?
2. What made you laugh today?
3.  Tell me something you did outside today.

I greatly appreciate your support and hope you all have a great weekend.

Mrs. Hazlett