October 8th-12th

Reading & Writing
This week we finished up our first section of phonics and then reviewed our first ten letter/sound combinations. Yesterday and today I spent some time assessing the class one child at time so I can determine which letters need a bit more practice before we move on. Today the students did a whole group writing assessment during which I said a sound and they needed to write the letter that corresponds with the sound I said. I just went through and scored those assessments and I was really impressed with the letter formation that I saw. I can tell that practice with the Letter School app has contributed to neat writing!

Our letter of the week was "S" and our sight word was "like." Our country this week was Switzerland and the kiddos learned how to say hello, goodbye, and thank you in German which is one of the languages spoken there.

During small groups this week I introduced a game called the Alphabet Mystery Box. The kiddos had to read into the mystery box and pull out one of the objects. Then they had to identify the initial sound and the letter the item starts with. We had a lot of fun with it!

Math
This week we worked a bit on graphing and comparing numbers. First I introduced what a vertical graph looks with two bars and talked about how we can look at the graph and determine which side shows more and which side shows less. Then I asked the kiddos to create their own graph by asking 7 classmates whether they are five years old or six years old. They had to color a square on their graph for each response and then determine which answer had more responses and which answer had fewer responses. They enjoyed interacting with one another and "interviewing" each other. Today we talked about the words "same" and "different" and the kiddos drew pictures of two things that were the same and two things that were different to demonstrate their understanding of the words.

Coming Up
Monday is the first day of Extended Day Kindergarten. If your child will be participating, a new bus schedule was sent home in his/her Friday folder today.

Next week we will start Science! We don't do Science as often as we do Reading, Writing, and Math, but it's a lot of fun when we do! Our first objective in science is for the kiddos to understand what "science" is and to understand how they can observe the world using their senses. On Thursday, they will make observations about pumpkins and use StoryKit to photograph a real pumpkin and record their observations.

Reminders
Don't forget to save your empty pop cans and water bottles for the Drive By Can Drive.

Please sign and return the permission slip for our field trip to the Pumpkin Patch on October 30th.

Have a great weekend!