Today in your child's orange folder is an informational sheet about number sense and ways to help develop this along with a packet of math games that I have collected from various resources. They vary in level of difficulty and skills, but hopefully there is at least one that will appeal to everyone.  We have played Five Frame Fun and Build a City in class and your child should know each of these.   If your children are like my son, they may enthusiastically play the games at school, but prefer not to play them at home- that's fine!  I'm sending them along as an option, but not something that has to be done.

Katie Babic, our guidance counselor has been meeting with all of the boys and all of the girls on alternate Thursdays to work on friendship skills.  Each group has gone once and both loved it.  While on group is with Katie I have the opportunity to do similar work with the children who remain in the classroom.  Coincidentally both groups worked on friendship skills today by building.  The boys who were with me worked in 3 groups of 3.  Each team had the same 30 blocks to create a structure.   When they were finished we were struck by how different each structure was, even though each group used exactly the same blocks.  The  7 girls worked as a whole group building a tower with Katie.

It is getting chilly and our playground is notoriously windy.  Please make sure your child come with good clothing for recess.  At this point everyone should come with a jacket- we can always remove them if it is too warm.  Thank you for your help with this!

We have a very enthusiastic bunch of writers in our class.  During Writers Workshop the last couple of weeks children have been working on making books with a beginning, middle and end.  We started with planners to help us map out our stories and then we have used these to create the pages of our books.  Many children are starting to write some if not all of their own words as well.  When the books are finished we have been putting laminated covers on them and children have been using permanent markers to write titles. (This step is very motivating as I have almost every color marker!)  We have a basket in our room that holds a growing collection of kid written stories.  After we have had a couple of weeks to enjoy them here they will be sent home to make room for the next batch!

In science we have been documenting the rapid transformation of our corn seeds.  Children have been making scientific drawings in their science notebooks showing the change that has been taking place over time.  We are working hard to show the different colors we see and to label our drawings.  As our discussion of living things has shifted to plants we have also been checking out the different kinds of trees that we have growing around the school and collecting leaves from these to make leaf books.  We were slowed down just a bit by the damp weather this week, but hopefully our books will be completed by the end of next week.

During ECO on Wednesday we did a scavenger hunt looking for colors of the rainbow outside.  We are now representing all of those colors in a class weaving.  We have a stick loom hanging on our wall and are slowly weaving in the different colors.  I have loads of yarn for this, but if anyone has brightly colored ribbon they would like to donate we would love to have it.  In preparation for our walk back from the Wu Forest during our next ECO session today we took advantage of the fantastic weather and walked down the sidewalk about halfway to Bridge Street.  We will try to take at least one more practice walk next week.

Enjoy the three day weekend!

We had a fantastic first day of ECO despite the rain!  It was pouring!  The children didn't seem phased though and they were wonderful participants for the two hours that we were outside.  We engaged in a variety of activities around the playground from playing a tag game to creating our faces with clay to gathering all of the colors of the rainbow- ask your child what was his or her favorite part.  Thank you to everyone for sending your children prepared- being dressed appropriately makes a huge difference in  comfort and happiness!  Also a huge thanks to our two volunteers, Keegan's mom Stephanie and Lucy's grandmother Maria.  For our next five sessions, which will take us through December 12th, we are planning to visit the Wu Forest, accessing it via the cemetery just over the Bridge Street covered bridge.  We will be traveling there by bus each time and walking back to school at the end of the morning.  While we had a fantastic day today, the playground itself can be a bit distracting and our options for exploration are somewhat limited.  We are very excited to get into a forest setting.  Please let me know if you would like to join us for any of the sessions.

OUR FIRST DAY OF ECO IS TOMORROW!  You will notice a little tag attached to your child's backpack reminding you of this.  You can just leave it on the backpack and I will collect them tomorrow!  Please make sure your child comes fully prepared.  We expect to be outside from 8:00-11:00.  While it is forecasted to be fairly warm, it also may be wet (even without rain the ground is pretty damp early in the morning).  Rain pants, rain coat, and mud/puddle boots will be essential.  If you indicated you were missing items from the check list I sent home, I have extras for your child.  Also please make sure your child has  snack and a water bottle.  Something easy to carry and easy to eat outside is ideal.  If your child usually gets hot snack at school he can still plan to do so.  You will also notice a similar note in your child's purple folder.  Sorry to be redundant- I really want everyone to be prepared!  We have a very exciting morning planned.

It was so nice to see most of you at Open House on Tuesday evening.   The children were very excited about sharing the classroom you!

Today we visited the computer lab for the second time.  Last week children were given an introduction and an opportunity to explore the computers.  This week we challenged them to draw a butterfly and two things it would need to survive.  They did a fantastic job with some pretty amazing pictures.  These will go into their science notebooks, but feel free to have your child share his or hers anytime.  As we continue our study of living and non-living things we have begun talking about the difference between plants and animals.  Yesterday we planted corn seeds and we will be carefully observing these during the next few weeks.


Children were introduced to the letter sounds and formations for m and n this week.  We have spent lots of time practicing the formations, writing letters in the air, on paper, and on white boards.  We have also been working really hard on proper pencil/ marker grip, by pinching with our first two fingers and letting the writing tool rest on our third finger.

Our first day of ECO is next Wednesday from 8:00-11:00.  We will stay near the school for the first few sessions.  We have a very exciting day planned!   I will put reminder tags on your child's backpack next Tuesday so everyone can come prepared- we have noticed that it has been a little chilly and wet when we go out for our morning recess.

We have been spending lots and lots of time talking about treating each other respectfully, being good friends, including others, and branching out to classmates we may not know all that well.  In an effort to mix up the group, each day during snack children choose a labeled craft stick and match it to a table to determine their snack seat for the day.  We began the year with dots 1-5 and have just switched to sight words.  This creates a random mix at each table every day and ensures that nobody is left out during snack.  We have also started doing some partner work and games.  Today the class worked in pairs to find groups of objects outside.  Each partnership had a hoola-hoop to place their objects in with number labels.  Everyone seemed to enjoy this and all of the pairs worked really well together.  Some of the things collected were rocks, sticks, leaves, pine needles, burdocks, milkweed pods, ants!, trucks, and pieces of mulch.

In an effort to help kindergarteners get to know other children in the school, each Friday we have been meeting with 3rd grade learning partners from Mrs. Hale's class.  Thus far we have done a scavenger hunt, read together, and worked on a caterpillar/butterfly project.  We will continue meeting every Friday throughout the year,  changing partners periodically.

We survived our first rainy day with no outside time and actually had a very productive work day, with lots of free choice filtered in between.  Today in your child's folder there is a bit of information about the Fundations program, including the letter formations we will use when learning lower case letters.  So far we have worked on the letters t, b, and f, and we will cover approximately two letters each week until we have completed the alphabet.

This week we have also spent a lot of time talking about respect and the importance of making the classroom a place where all classmates feel welcome and comfortable.  I challenged everyone in the class to do something that might make a classmate feel particularly welcome or included and I encouraged them to do this for someone who they don't know very well or  play with typically.  There has been a flurry of interest in board games the last couple of weeks, which is a great avenue for children to get to know different classmates.

Open House is next Tuesday, September 25th from 5:30-6:30 p.m.