Today in your child's backpack you will find a shiny, new, laminated orange folder! This will take the place of the tattered blue folders. Inside there is a sign up form for the Thanksgiving lunch which takes place on Thursday, November 17th.

Please remember to schedule a conference for your child using the online scheduler, which opens tomorrow morning. I am holding conferences on the afternoons/evenings of November 21st and 22nd. If for some reason you can't make it on either of those days please let me know as soon as possible and we can try to find a different time.

Our class received many compliments on their performance this morning! Writing the song, learning the words, and practicing performing for an audience took a lot of effort on the part of students. They did a fantastic job!

As we are wrapping up our science unit on living and nonliving things we have been creating a game based on what we have learned. We have read a little bit about endangered species and discussed the hardships they face and what need is not being met for them to thrive. We have used this information to make cards for the game that move a player either forward or backwards depending on the situation. Everyone has been excited about this process and eager to actually play the game. Many students have also expressed an interest in creating their own games so this may be a future station!

Our tile bucket is nearly full. We will most likely have a small celebration on Tuesday for all of our acts of kindess and respect.

Today during Writers Workshop we took a few minutes to clean out our writing folders! They were getting very full. Everyone had a chance to look through their work, decide what they might like to keep for further work. The rest should be coming home today.

We have been very busy during the last few weeks. Some of the things we have been talking about/ working on include:

-measuring to determine whether objects are shorter or longer than 10 cubes

- sorting sets of objects

- showing numbers to 10 using math hands, and then showing the numbers a different way

(eg. showing 5 with 4 and 1 and then 5 and 0)

- counting the tiles in our kindness bucket which is up to 39 so far

- working on books about our families and things we like to do with them

- observing, drawing, and labeling corn and bean seeds as they begin to sprout

And practicing, practicing, practicing our song for our performance on Friday morning.

Assembly starts at 7:45. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOUR CHILD ARRIVES BY 7:40 ON FRIDAY!

The song is brief and your child will miss it if they are late.

Perhaps you have heard about our new tile bucket. Whenever we have an example of someone being polite or kind a tile is added to the bucket. Likewise tiles are taken out when we are not respectful. This is to help us remember to be nice to each other. We have been brainstorming and role playing lots of examples of being respectful and treating each other with kindness. An area that we are placing particular emphasis on is sharing. We will have a celebration when the bucket is full.

We will be singing out song at a very brief assembly this Friday. Assembly starts at 7:45. PLEASE have your child here by 7:40 so they don't miss the song!

Please make sure your child has appropriate footwear (sneakers) for gym on Mondays and Wednesdays. Mr. Drake has noted that several children are consistently unprepared and are unable to fully participate in gym class. As we move into colder weather it is fine to leave a pair of sneakers here if that is easier. Thanks for your help!

This week we have been reading books that portray non-living things as living. When we have been making t-charts of the living and non-living things in the books, having some really interesting discussions and hopefully clarifying some misconceptions. Yesterday we read Happy Birthday Moon, by Frank Asch and Papa Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle. When we were done someone noted the moon was a living thing and all but one student agreed. We talked about why the moon might be living: it grows and changes and it moves. We had some interesting discussion about whether the moon needs food, water, and air. Finally I asked what the moon was and someone replied rock. We were then able to conclude that if the moon is made of rock it must not be living, because rocks don't need food, air, water, or light. This was a really great discussion and we'll continue to look at similar books for the rest of the week.

Pictures have arrived! If I did not give you your child's pictures this morning you should find them in his/her backpack. Class pictures have not come yet, but should be here soon.

Several people have asked about Halloween next Monday. While I know the holiday will be in the front of many children's minds, my intent is to keep the day as routine as possible. With our half day schedule it seems kids will have lots of opportunities to participate in Halloween activities later on. Hopefully maintaining some normalcy at school might help kids last until trick-or-treat time!

During Writers Workshop some children have been writing very creative but violent stories. Today we began our workshop with a discussion about this. While I want to encourage writing in every possible way, I'm not comfortable with stories about killing. We brainstormed alternative ideas (magic, having problems resolved in a friendly way) and decided that a good rule of thumb is that a topic is okay if I would read it to the class. If it's not the kind of story I would read to the class then it is probably not an appropriate topic to write about.

Today in your child's blue folder or backpack you will find a copy of the student directory. This has addresses and phone numbers for all students in the school!

This week we read the book Leaf Man by Lois Elhert. I intended to give the children the opportunity to gather materials on the playground for their own leaf creations, but our attempts were thwarted by the wet weather. Instead children will be working on this in a station next week. Hopefully we will have a chance to gather things at school on Monday, but I also encourage them to find things at home this weekend and bring them in in a labeled baggie. Good things to look for include all kinds of leaves, seeds, flowers etc. Flatter items work best.