October 26-30

ANNOUNCMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Tomorrow is an early release day!  Please plan accordingly.

Conferences are continuing this week!  I have a few of you scheduled tonight and also on Thursday.  Looking forward to meeting with all of you.  Remember, if you have any specific questions you would like me to answer, please send them ahead of time.  I want to make sure I designate time to answer your questions and also be able to gather the appropriate resources to answer your question.

Friday is our Monster Mash!  Thank you in advance to anyone who is able to donate snacks or volunteer to help with games and/or food.  If you are sending something in, please send it to school by Thursday.  That way, I will be able to pick up anything else we need after school.

Your child's fundraiser paper went home yesterday.  You should be able to see a picture of their artwork as well as a price listing for the items you may purchase with their art on it.  The team really did work hard on creating pieces they thought were special and that you and your friends and family would enjoy!

THIS WEEK IN...

Phonics:  We are working with the short and long /i/ sounds.  Our focus words are:  did, rip, fin, mix, pick, five, nine, side, pipe, and hike.  

Spelling:  We are working on unit 3.  Our new words are:  will, each, about, how, and up.

Vocabulary:  Our new words are:  deaf, language, signing, cultures, relatives, and celebrate.  We'll define these words, build connnections to them, and then search for them in the short story "A Special Camp" by Kate Jones.

Comprehension:  We will talk about main idea and supporting details again.  The main idea is what the story is mostly about and the supporting details give us more information about the main idea.  We will practice this skill while we read Meet Rosina by George Ancona.

Grammar:  Last week, we focused on the subject of a sentence.  This week, we will focus on the predicate.  The predicate tells what the subject does or is.  

Math:  We are continuing to explore the world of shapes through many different activities.  First, we played "Swat-a-Shape" where we used fly swatters to "swat" the shape that was described.  Then, we played "Spin-a-Shape" where we spun a spinner 10-20 times and selected pattern blocks to use.  We used these pattern blocks to create a picture.  Some of us made cats, some of us made cars, and some of us chose to make a pattern.  When we finished creating our picture, we wrote how many of each shape we used.  We'll also use triangles, squares, rhombuses, trapezoids, and hexagons to create a geometric Jack-O-Lantern.

We also introduced some math fact games and practice ideas.  Everyone was introduced to a great program called XtraMath.  You should have received a paper describing the program yesterday.  It is a web-based program that gives targeted math fact practice for each student and keeps track of their progress.  We also played a fun math game where we rolled two dice and added the two numbers together.  It was important for us to check our answers with our partner and practice appropriate ways to agree or disagree with them.  

Science:  Pete and Penelope have to us again and have requested that we make them a guide to help their crew!  The crew is confused by all of the different landforms and bodies of water they are seeing.  So, we are creating a flip book to help them out!

We also received some healthy choice bracelets.  These bracelets help us keep track of the fruits and vegetables we are eating every day.  To go along with the PEP grant that GNG received, we'll be recording the data.

Read Aloud:  We are loving Chocolate Fever!

Words to Think About:  When life hands you lemons, make some lemonade!

Festive and Spooky Fun:  We have a LOT of fun projects we'll be doing this week!  Here is a quick glimpse at the fun.

Crankenstein:  We read a great story about Crankenstein and how he is cranky much of the time.  The story made us smile and giggle.  Then, we had the chance to create Crankenstein pudding cups out of green pudding and oreo cookies.  We had to take special notice of how we did it though, because we wrote how-to stories that can be shared with someone else so they can make Crankenstein pudding too!

Spiders:  We read a great nonfiction story about Spiders from National Geographic.  As we read, we collected a ton of facts.  Then, we began creating colorful webs and spiders to help us display some "facts that will make you crawl!"

Monsters:  Starting on Wednesday, we are going to read a fabulous book called The Little Shop of Monsters.  It's an amazing book I recently purchased at the book fair.  After reading the story, we will fill out Monster Adoption Applications to see if we are able to adopt a monster of our very own.  Once our applications are approved, we'll then design the monster we would like to adopt and write about how we plan to take care of it.  Later this week, our poor monsters will go missing! A friend in the classroom will have to write a description well enough for everyone to know exactly what our missing monster looks like so that they can be returned to the correct student.

Bats:  We will watch an episode of The Magic School Bus that is all about bats!  Then, we'll create a sunset picture of a bat to help us display some "Wing Flappin'"  facts that we have learned.

Monster Mash:  As you know, we'll be having a Monster Mash on Friday.  Students are invited to dress like non-scary monsters (think Monsters Inc.) to help us celebrate our monster projects!  We'll play some fun minute to win it games and enjoy some festive fall snacks.