October 29th-November 2nd

Wow! I can't believe it's November already. I realized in posting this that I missed a few weeks of posting, so I apologize and I will fill you in on what we've been up to in the classroom. We had a fun week with our field trip to Baggenstos and our Halloween celebration. I managed to get pictures in the rain at the pumpkin patch which I emailed out, but didn't get any during the business of our Halloween activities. 

Here are a few of Halloween at the Toppel house :)

Reading & Writing
In the past two weeks we have covered the letter/sounds /c/, /k/, /ck/, /u/, and /r/. The kiddos are making great progress in remembering their sounds and many students are already able or starting to be able to sound out words. We have also been practicing the sight words "a," "my," and "see." I've started to do some simple writing activities in class once a week where we being by writing a sentence starter together such as "I like my ..."  or "I am a..." (on Halloween). When I model writing I am showing the class where the letters go on the lines and how we use a "finger space"in between words when we write them. I remind them of the sight word songs we have learned because I expect the children to spell sight words correctly in their writing. I also remind them that a sentence starts with an uppercase letter and ends with a period. Then we write the sight words together (I on my paper and them on their paper). After that, they choose how they want to complete the sentence and try sounding out the word(s) they want to write. This is where the children are using the "break it down" skill to hear the different sounds in the word in order to write down the corresponding letters.

Today we did a pre-writing activity where students were asked to draw a picture of one part of our field trip to the pumpkin patch on Sketchio and then record where we went, two details about what we did there, and then a feeling about the field trip. That activity was done so students could practice retelling a personal narrative which is one of our writing standards. As they become more competent in writing, they will also write words to go along with their dictation. Some students did not finish yet, but if your child finished I forwarded you the email with their story.

Math
We have been continuing to focus on numbers 1-10. In class, do several finger games to show different numbers and we've been using our number cards to practice line em up. We do this in two ways. First, I give out one number card each to a group of students and ask them to line themselves up so their number cards are in order from one to ten. We do this a few times with different groups to practice putting the numbers in order but also to practice teamwork. Then students get their own set of number cards from 1-10 and have to put the numbers in order. Once the cards are in order we do a series of activities to help the children practice identifying, counting out, and arranging tiles to show a specific number as well as comparing different numbers. The extensive focus on numbers 1-10 is to build automatic recognition not only of the numbers themselves but of quantities of those numbers and different amounts that make those numbers when put together.

Science
Before visiting the Pumpkin Patch we read a book called From Seed to Pumpkin to learn about how pumpkins grow and what they look like as they are growing. We are continuing to practice making observations of what we see in the world around us.

Social Studies
We talked a little bit yesterday about the upcoming presidential election and the two main candidates. I read a book called Grace for president which talked a lot about what presidential candidates do, but in the context of a little girl running for class president.

Other Stuff
Thank you to the parents who were able to come with us to the Pumpkin Patch. It's always great to have parents with us and it was great to talk with so many of you last week during conferences.

Our Hygiene drive is starting up. Our class item is hair conditioner, so please contribute some if you can.

Have a great weekend!