Field Trip Information

Our Baker Farm field trip is coming up on the 13th of October.  If you have not yet returned your child's permission slip please do so tomorrow.  Your child will not be able to go on the field trip without a signed permission slip.  Also, if you did not return your lunch request form today please do so tomorrow.  They will need to order the food for our trip soon so we need an accurate number.  Drinks will be provided for the trip so please do not include one in your child's lunch.

Next week we will begin studying the farm to prepare for our trip.  This is a fun unit that the children really enjoy.

Today we began blending sounds together to make words.  We talked about the "at" family and sounded out words in that family.  Try writing a few "at" words like cat, rat, mat, flat, bat and sat on  a piece of paper and sound them out with your child.  They were very excited to be reading the words!

Letter Sounds

Today we worked more on our patterning in math and letter sounds.  Beginning letter sounds are our main focus at the moment.  The more you can work with your child on this the better.  You don't need anything other than the two of you to get started.  When you are in the car, taking a walk, waiting for an appointment or even when your child is in the tub you can ask them what sound they hear at the beginning of words.  Any words with any beginning sounds will work.  You can begin with familiar words like names of friends, relatives and stores and move on to any word you can think of.  This is critical to their reading development.  The more practice the better! 

Patterns Everywhere

Today in math we worked on patterning.  This is something we do every day during calendar, but today the children were given opportunities to create patterns with objects in the classroom.  This is a fun activity that they can easily do at home with different cereals, M&M's or other candies, or just a piece of paper and a few crayons.  This is a skill I will be testing them on for the first nine weeks report card.  Please work with them on  this at home.  Thanks!

Topsy Turvy Monday!

Our room was a mess for a while this afternoon!  We needed a new program installed on our computer and in order to do so we had to move the student computer across the room so we would have an Internet connection.  This had to be done when the children came back from P.E.  They were very helpful by sitting quietly for me.  I really appreciated it!

Beginning tomorrow the children will be able to visit the computer during literacy centers and free choice centers.  I know they will really enjoy the sites that I have selected for them.  I will put links to some of the sites up so you can check them out and visit them with your child from home sometimes.

We are getting another for our computer in a few weeks and we would love more.  If you or someone you know has one they would like to donate that would be great!  A printer would also be wonderful to have so they could print their work from time to time.  Just let me know!

This week we will be discussing the letter Aa, which means we will begin blending letter sounds to make words.  Very exciting!!!

If you have not already done so please read the post on "Our Apple Day Glog" and visit the site.  There are lots of cute pictures and videos from Apple Day last Friday on the Glog for you to see and share.

Our Apple Day Glog

Please click here to visit  Our Apple Day Glog .  A Glog is an online poster that contains pictures, video and text that you can design for any topic.  They are a lot of fun to make and best of all it's free!  This would be a fun rainy day project for you and your child.  If you ever make one please share it with me.  I hope your weekend is going well.  See everyone Monday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHNNY APPLESEED!

We had so much fun today celebrating Johnny Appleseed and apples!  We began the day with calendar time as usual, but the rest of the day was very special.  Instead of only having a few children share for Daily News all of the children were able to share their favorite kind of apple.  Best of all we could all read the news!

We then began our apple centers.  The following stations were set up for the children: match the number of seeds in an apple with the correct number, make patterns using small apple cut outs that have the letters we have studied on them thus far, a sight word memory game, making stained glass apples to hang in our windows, and a page in our Johnny Appleseed book.  Felix's mom came in today and helped with an art activity where the children made an apple core.  They are really cute!

Seth was our first Big Dog of the Week and his mom was our Mystery Reader today.  She read one of Seth's favorite books and answered questions about Seth.  The children enjoyed interviewing her!

We really enjoyed tasting different apple treats.  We had apple pie, apple juice, apple cider, apple cookies and apples of course!  We tasted red, green and yellow apples and dipped them in caramel dip, cinnamon caramel dip and apple butter.  The children all tried everything and most of them ate every bit of their treats.

Thanks to all of you who sent something in to make our apple day a success.  We even have a few leftovers for extra snacks and treats.  Pictures of the day will be posted on Monday so please check back and see how much fun we had today.

Mark your calendars now for our next special day on Wednesday, October 20th, the 50th day of school.  We will have a special 50's Day Celebration dressing like the 1950's and listening to the golden oldies.  We will explore the number 50 and celebrate the half-way to 100 mark.  More information will be coming soon!

Tomorrow is Johnny Appleseed Day!

We cannot wait for Johnny Appleseed Day tomorrow.  We made cute hats today that look like the pot Johnny wore on his head.  We will get to wear them tomorrow.  We listened to some new letter sound songs today from Dr. Jean.  She is one of our favorite artists.  One is cause Letter Aerobics.  We got quite a workout!  As you read with your child and point out letters ask him or her what the letter sounds is. Everyone needs help with this.  It will help them so much as they begin to sound out words to both read and write.

Thanks to everyone for all of the goodies you have sent in for tomorrow.  We are going to have a GREAT day!!! 

This Week

The Reading Binders are coming home today along with the children's red folder.  In their red folder you will find a yellow note from the counselor and a blue note from me about apple day on Friday.  There is a list of items on the apple note that we would love to have for our celebration Friday.  If you can send something in that would be great!  There are a lot of choices for the big day.  Please send them in by Thursday (even though the note says Wed.).

Your child's first homework assignment is coming home today too.  These will be coming home now whenever your child returns one after three days (at least) of working at home.  This is an excellent way to review letters and sounds at home and to reinforce the ones we have introduced at school.  Please take the time to work on this with your child on a daily basis.  The more reinforcement the better!  Your child will get a special treat when they return their homework.

Please remember PTO is tomorrow night at 6:30.  There will be some great information about Dibels testing and our reading program presented at the meeting.  Hope to see you there!

Great Week!

We had a great week at school this week!  The children really seem to be settling in to our daily routine and the expectations of our classroom.    They have really enjoyed our apple study and learning about Johnny Appleseed. I will post pictures Monday of the precious Johnny's they made today.  They did a great job following directions!

I am in the process of setting up my desktop computer and moving files from my laptop to it.  Because of this I did not send our regular weekly reports today.  They will be coming home again next Friday.

Have a great weekend!

Hooray for Math Books!

We received our class set of math workbooks today.  The children were so excited!  I gave then a few minutes to look through the book before we tore out our first page.  We had to look at pictures and decide which object did not fit in with the other pictures.  Sometimes it was because of the color of the object and sometimes it was the object itself.  The children did a great job!  They will not be bringing the math book home, but will bring completed pages home that have been torn out of the book.  I will have it available during our conferences for you to look through.


Great job on the reading logs last night!  The children were excited to share what they have been reading at home.  Keep up the good work!

Look What We Did!!

Our new clothespin name center.  The children clip the letters in their name 

above the letter on the name card. 

We made a block tower by working together and listening to positional words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Building Johnny
Appleseed's house for our books.

We had a lot of fun today as you can see!

Apple Math

We had a lot of fun working on our apple math today!  This week we are studying positional words and this math activity gave us an opportunity to show how much the children are learning.  The children were asked to color blue above a crease in their paper and green below.  They were then asked to place the tree trunk in the middle of their paper.  Next, they were given green paper that they had to cut in to a round shape for the leaves and glue it on the top of the tree trunk.  They were then asked to glue apples on top of the leaves.  Finally, they were asked to cut out a basket and place it on top of what they had colored green, next to the tree and fill it with apples that would be glued on the top of the basket.  They then counted the apples in the basket and wrote the number on their paper.  They were great listeners, mathematicians and artists during this activity!  I will upload a picture of the finished product to our blog tomorrow.  Stay tuned!!!

Johnny Appleseed

Today we began our unit on apples and I introduced Johnny Appleseed to the children.  They love his name and that he wore a pot on his head.  We began illustrating our books on Johnny Appleseed and will continue working on them through next week.  We are working on creating a list of words to describe apples.  They used some great descriptive words today.  We will continue adding to our list tomorrow.  We are also going to be illustrating a book called "The Little Red House With A Star Inside".  This will be one of their pocket chart stories during our literacy centers.  They will also be solving name puzzles, stamping their names and our list of Star Words.

Please continue reading to your child every night.  I am working on their reading binders and hope to send them home Wednesday for the first time.  Please review them with  your child daily.  The binder will be compiled of poetry that they are familiar with and should be able to read to you or with you.  You will also include the name of the book(s) you read with your child each night.  This will become a very special part of your day when, hopefully, your child will share about our day at school and impress you with their reading.  Make sure to point out the following Star Words when reading with your child.

                                                          Star Words
                                                          
                                                       I    a    my    the

Class Newsletter

Please follow the following link to our September 13th Weekly Newsletter:

Sept. 13th Newsletter

Busy Days

We have concluded our Nursery Rhyme Unit and will begin our Apple Unit next week.  Your child will be bringing their Nursery Rhyme Book home next week for you to keep at home.  Please review the rhymes with your child.  It is a great way to work on their reading skills, even if you are doing most of the reading.

We are continuing our letter of the day study as well.  Today we searched for Uu's in our names and daily news.  Next week we will complete our letter of the day study and will have an alphabet celebration next Friday.  It will be a lot of fun! 


Congratulations to Emma Grace our first Star Student!  She attended a  Star Student party on Wednesday complete with playground time and slushes ~ What fun!!!  Everyone is working hard to be the next one selected.  Good luck to all of you!!!

New Centers

Today we began working at  new centers to help the children become even more familiar with the letters in their names and their friends' names.  They put name puzzles together for themselves and classmates, looked for the letter Rr in their names.  We also got the Play-Doh out to form letters on letter mats and sorted letters A-E printed in many different fonts.  This is an important skill that will help them to immediately recognize letters regardless of how they look.

Tomorrow I will be sending home information for our first Scholastic Book order.  Please look through the selections with your child to find the perfect book.  If you need any suggestions don't hesitate to ask.

Class Update

Our class web page on the LES site has been created.  There are pictures of your precious children, a copy of our weekly report, discipline information and a copy of our schedule to get us started.  I think you will find this a great way of keeping up with our class and things we are working on (like our first nine weeks star words).  Please check this site frequently for important updates.

LES Mrs. Trucks' Class
I hope you are all enjoying a great long weekend.

Surprises this Morning

This morning when the children arrived they found a new brightly colored floor mat in our circle time area.  The rug that had been there has definitely seen better days! 

We are already to letter Pp in our letter a day study.  Today the children completed a following directions pizza activity by themselves, painted a purple Pp on pink paper, and made a long list of p words.  Try pointing out Pp words and making the /p/ sound with your child over the long weekend.  I think they will have a lot of fun and discover Pp is a popular letter!

The Scarecrows Are Here!

We don't have to worry about crows on the kindergarten hallway this September.  Our class has created some very cute scarecrows to scare them away.  Please stop by sometime this month to see them hanging in our hallway.

We had a very good day at school today and learned a lot about the letter Oo.  We painted an octopus O, practiced writing Oo's and learned about words that begin with Oo. 

We read the book Kelly In the Mirror.  Kelly does not think she looks like anyone in her family.  Her parents think her brother and sister look like them, but no one says anything about who she looks like.  Kelly finds some of her mom's things from when she was a little girl including a scrapbook.  She finds a picture of her mom that looks just like her.  That makes Kelly feel very special. We talked about who people think we look like.  I showed them a picture of my family's three new kittens.  They are brother and sisters, but look nothing alike.  This can be true for humans too!