The last day of November - hard to believe!  Anyway, we finished the month and week making a graph of the weather for the school days this month.  It will be in your child's folder so please take a look and ask your child what she/he notices about the weather for November. 

You will also find a Scholastic Book Cub form.  If you wish to order any books, the form must be returned with a check by Friday, December 7th.  I realize that is only a week, however, if the order is to be received by the start of the vacation we have to get it sent in quickly.  If you are buying books for gifts, please attach a note to that effect and we will let you know when the order arrives and make arrangements to get the books to you without your child knowing.

The next month is always a very exciting one for students as the holidays approach.  While we do work on holiday activities we do try to keep everything pretty low key.  We discuss the history of each holiday (Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and Christmas) and complete some activities that are representative of the symbols of each holiday. 

Students are in the process of writing about their ''stuffies''.  When their pages are complete, they will be assembled into a little booklet which your child will eventually bring home.   The emphasis right now is on learning about capital letters at the beginning of sentences and periods at the end as well as practicing ''inventive spelling''.  Please encourage your child to sound out words and accept any reasonable phonetic spelling.  This is preparation for beginning Writer's Workshop in the new year.  

Enjoy the weekend.  BA

Novenber 28th

I know it has been a while so let me recap our activities for November.  Most of the month was spent finishing up our pumpkin activities and then doing an apple unit.  We read lots of stories about apples and the seasonal life cycle of an apple tree, we made patterns using apples and learned some songs and poems about apples.  After tasting a piece of red apple, yellow apple and green apple, we graphed the results and for the first time ever, most students liked the green apples best!  The culmination of the unit was an apple sampler snack where we were able to taste the applesauce and apple crisp we had made along with some apple jelly and some apple cider.  We all decided that apples are a very versatile food and one that most of us like in many different forms. 

This week in Math, we are working on making comparisons by finding names and items in the classroom that are longer and shorter than our name tower.  We have also been discussing the meaning of the abbreviation am and pm as well as things we do during the day and things we do at night.  Since this is the l;ast week of November, we are trying to finish up all our November activities in preparation for December. 

Starting next week, we will learn about the history behind Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and Christmas as we make some projects related to each holiday.  It is a very busy and exciting time for our class.  Don't tell, but, I'm quite sure we will be having a visit from the Elf on the Shelf at some point!

I am concerned about the reading log homework.  In the past, I have usually had 100% (or close to it) participation.  So far this year, there have been at least 5 or 6 children not returning the reading log each day.  I'm not sure what the problem is.  As we discussed at interview time, I do want this to be your child's responsibility, however, if your child is one that you know is constantly leaving his/her rreading log at home, please help them out with reminders such as "What do you need to pack in your backpack?" or ""Do you have everything you need for Ms. Bennett today?"  You might also help them find a spot at home where they can put their reading log every day and putting a pen or pencil in the plastic bag makes it easier to remember to get the log initialed each day.  I'm hoping we can get this working better. 

Mrs. Adams would very much appreciate more donations of clorox wipes for our tables each day.  Also, now that we really do seem to be getting colder weather, please be sure that all your child's winter items are labelled.  We have our coat racks set up and children are now hanging their coats on hangers each day which gives us more room in our cubbies.  This classroom does get quite cool when the sun is not shining so it might be a good idea to send in a sweater or sweatshirt that can stay here for the cooler days.  Children should not have to wear boots all day so if you can send a pair of indoor shoes to stay that would be great but at least please be sure your child has shoes in his/her backpack. 

Have a good evening.  BA

What a beautiful day and the weekend looks to be much the same.  We took out center time outside this afternoon (after practicing quiet transitions a couple of times!) to enjoy the sunshine after so many dark, cloudy days.

Since Monday is Veteran's Day, we took some time this morning to talk about why we celebrate this day.  The children have little booklets they are bringing home and we made Veteran Day medals that they will also be bringing home.  Please be sure to reinforce that meaning of this special day and its significance in our lives.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if this was the generation that brought peace to all!

This afternoon we were able to go to the computer lab for Math and work on number sentences!  We worked on a website called linktolearning.com that has some wonderful activites for all ages.  We use the computer lab every other Friday if Ms, Pearson, (a former Leeds teacher) is able to come in and get the computers set up for us.  If any of you know of age appropriate websites that you think could be useful, please pass the web addy along!

Just a reminder that next week we will be making apple crisp and apple sauce.  If you can supply us with some apples it would be most appreciated.  Thanks in advance. 

Precious Moments:  I was reminded last week that one of the students in our classroom has a father that is a teacher at a local community college.  After conferences, I asked the child what her dad  taught at college and she quietly replied, "Students!"

Enjoy the weekend.  Barbara Ann

Good evening all.  By now, you have helped your child with his/her homework and the reading log is tucked safely into the backpack to bring back to school tomorrow.  The class was very excited to be getting homework like the older kids!  Thank you for supporting the efforts of our emergent readers.

Today was a pretty cold day and some of our children were not dressed for the change.  I spoke with them at length today about how important it is to have mitts, hats and a warm coat for the winter.  I also encouraged them to wear snow pants when it is cold even if we don't have snow.  Tomorrow I will bring out our coat hangers and we will practice tucking mitts into hats, hats into coat sleeves and then hanging our jackets on hangers.  We do have some extra mitts and hats at school.  Whenever someone borrows a hat, Mrs. Adams very kindly takes it home and washes it so hats are always clean for students to use as needed.  If you are having difficulty finding appropriate clothing for you child for the winter, please let me know so we can help out. 

For the next week and a half, we will be working on an apple unit.  Today we started with an apple tasting so students were able to taste a piece of  red (Fuji), yellow (Golden Delicious) and green (Granny Smith) apple.  The majority of students chose the Granny Smith apples as their favorite!  We will be graphing our findings tomorrow.  Next week we will be making applesauce and apple crisp.  Donations of cooking apples will be gratefully accepted. 

Stay warm - the weekend looks great for a bit of a warm up.  BA

This storm has really made a mess of the schedule for this week!  I do not know yet how the district is going to handle the cancellation of parent teacher conferences from yesterday.  Mr. Smith was going to attend a meeting that will hopefully resolve the issue and as soon as I know what will happen, I will pass that information on to you. 

Another thing I was planning to do yesterday was to have the children carve our extra pumpkins.  When I went to school this morning, I had all intentions of carving the pumpkins today, however, when I got to school, neither Mrs. Adams or I could locate our pumpkin carving tools!  We are still looking but we would really like to do the carving tomorrow so if you have any kid friendly pumpkin carving tools that we could use tomorrow, please send them in with your child in the morning.  Thank you so much. 

I am looking forward to the rest of the conferences this week.  Please remember to be prompt and if you have questions, write them down so we can address all issues as best we can in the 20 minutes we have together.  Again, if we need more time, we can always schedule more time next week.  Thank you.  Barbara Ann

This has been a crazy week.  I think the late start Wednesday was a bit confusing for all of us since it was something new.  There is one more day like that in March so we'll see what is decided for next year!

This week we began our Unit 2 work in Math which is all about counting and comparing.  Students will practice counting and connecting nyumber words, numerals and quantities in the first half.  In the second part of the unit, students will compare the length of objects and the quantities of different sets.  they will also practice ordering by length and quantity.  This week we were able to learn a game called Roll and Record that gave us much needed practice in writing numerals.  We also made pumpkin men and used eyes made of different shapes containing a number of dots in one eye and the corresponding word and numeral in the other eye.  These will be on display on the bulletin board outside our classroom during conference week.

Speaking of conference week, it is next week and hopefully you all have your time posted at home.  Mrs. Clark has a copy of my schedule so if you forget your time, please call the office.  It is so hard to fit all our news into just 20 minutes so please be prompt for your appointment and I will try to be sure to end conferences at the designated time so I do not have to keep anyone waiting.  If you (or I) feel we need to talk further we can always schedule another appointment for next week to continue our discussion.

Since next week is all half days with dismissal time at 12:20, we will have snack in the morning at about 11:00 which would normally be lunch time.  The children who are getting bag lunches will eat them at that time.  The rest of the class will have a their snack or lunch if you want to send a lunch in for them.  In the past I have found that most parents send in a substantial snack and then give their child lunch when they get home after 12:20.  Either way is fine with us. 

This weather has been perfect!  Will it continue?  Next week looks a little tricky at this point.  We will be sending home your child's change of clothing before Thanksgiving so you can exchange it for more weather appropriate clothing for the winter.  As the children start to wear more clothing for outside, please be sure to put names or initials inside all articles of clothing.  Thanks so much.

Enjoy the weekend.

Precious Moments:  This week we had bananas at lunch and there were a few that didn't get eaten so Mrs. Adams brought them back to the classroom in case we needed to use them at snack time.  Sure enough, there was one student who had forgotten to bring a snack.  Mrs. Adams said, "You are so lucky,  Here is a banana with your name on it."  The little boy looked it all over carefully, then looked at Mrs. Adams and said very seriously, "I can't find my name on it."

We 'wrote' our first stories today!  Well, actually, the children drew pictures of the story and Mrs. Admas and I scribed the words for the story.  This was part of our initial writing assessment.  It will be interesting to see the progress throughout the year and with the final assessment in May.

In Math today we started our Counting Books.  As you know we have been working on identifying numbers through 20 (more for some of the children), making one to one correspondence as we count and showing pictures to depict numbers.  The counting book is a culmination of all those skills as well as beginning to associate a word with each number.  These books usually take quite a few days to complete but hopefully by the end of the week, most of them should be finished.  Parents are usually quite surprised that their child does not know all the numbers they can count.  One of the major math goals is to get children identifying numbers out of sequence. 

Our carpet and floor were very dirty today.  The playground and grounds in general are quite wet in spots and the dirt sticks in the indentations of the childrens'shoes.  Then of course it gets tracked in the classroom and on the carpet which they have to sit on.  Several children have brought shoes specifically for indoor wear.  If you have not sent in extra shoes, please do so if at all possible.  Also, we have a number of children who do not have an extra set of clothing yet.

Precious Moments:  Last Friday when I was struggling to get the VCR to work, one little boy sitting close by commented, "Ï have a TV just like that at home, except it works!"

Enjoy this fabulous weather.  BA