One Little, Two Little, Twenty Little Indians...

You may have dropped of girls and boys this morning at school or the bus, but I am returning Indian Braves and Princesses to you this afternoon!  They were so excited to wear their gear today: Indian t-shirts, headbands and necklaces.  We were lucky to go outside for recess and were able to take some cute pictures on the playground which I will post this weekend.

I hope all of you have wonderful Thanksgiving!  Thanks for all you do to make our class a success.

GOBBLE, GOBBLE!!!

WHEW!

This has been quite a day.  All my little Indians have been busy getting ready for our big day tomorrow.  We made colorful macaroni necklaces in many patterns, traced and cut out feathers for our headbands, worked on  reading color words and sponge painted our Indian shirts.  They look great!  We also completed the final page of our Thanksgiving books.  They are precious.  I know you will want to share them with your families over the holidays.  Our room looked like it had been hit by a tornado many times today, 

but it is finally back together. YEA!!

Tomorrow we will have a special Thanksgiving snack reminiscent of the first Thanksgiving.  We still have apple cider form our Apple Day Celebration that has not been opened.  We will also have peanuts, popcorn and possibly pumpkin bread too.  It won't be a huge feast, but it will be delicious!  

Ask your child about the new Thanksgiving songs we learned today and to sing our Indian chant for you.  

They love them all.  

Gobble, gobble!!

YUM!!

 The lunchroom staff prepared their annual Thanksgiving feast today and it was delicious!  The children really enjoyed it too. 

Today we tied our shirts with rubber bands to get ready to tie dye.  The children are excited to see what their shirts will look like on Monday.  We learned a fun Indian chant and talked about how their parents will send them to school as girls and boys on Tuesday morning and will be surprised to see Indian Braves and Princesses return in the afternoon.  As you can imagine there were lots of "what if" questions that followed!

If you have not sent in your Children's Theater permission slip yet please do so tomorrow.  THANKS!

New Math Centers

This morning we added a new addition to our morning routine.  Up until today when the children arrived they have put their backpacks up, written their name and placed it in a pocket chart.  Next, they place their typed name in another pocket chart pocket based on the beginning sound of the picture in that pocket.  For example, one of the pockets may have a picture of an alligator in it.  All children whose name begins with an /a/ sound place their typed name in that pocket too.  This is to encourage their recognition of beginning sounds.  Soon we will begin the same process with last names.  

 Today we began having math centers following our welcome to school activities.  Every day each table will complete one math center activity that will be rotated during the course of the week to each table.  This week the children are tracing and cutting out a turkey and then adding up to 8 feathers to their turkey.  During writing time they will write "My turkey has __ feathers" to go along with it.  As a follow up to our feather decorating for our huge turkey outside of our room the children are graphing the different colored feathers.  They are creating patterns on their Indian headbands.  Finally, they are counting and writing numbers on a turkey sheet.  They really enjoyed this new addition this morning.  I think it is a great way to continue to reinforce our math curriculum during a busy time in our day when notes are being returned to me, attendance and lunch count are taken, and other housekeeping jobs are taken care of in our classroom. 

I'll keep you updated on all of the fun and learning that occurs!

Goodbye Rain!

We were so excited to go to the playground today.  The children definitely needed to run around!  Hopefully the rain will stay away until after Thanksgiving. 

Today we worked or our Thanksgiving books and completed a page about the houses pilgrims lived in long ago.  The children "built" houses with Popsicle sticks and added roofs, windows and doors to them.  According to the finished products pilgrims had great landscaping!  The children also wrote about their rain paintings from yesterday.  The children chose different colors to put on their paper and let the rain do the painting.  They all look really neat.

Please send your early dismissal form in asap for Friday.  Thanks!

Fall Festival

Thanks to all of you for your generous support of the Fall Festival.  Rumor is that it was the best one ever.  I believe it!  Check out all of the cute pictures from the day.  Have a great weekend!

Think Central

We have a very exciting link that will be added to our class page and of course given here for our reading program.  It is called Think Central and can be accessed at: by clicking here.  The site allows your child to see all of the stories we read at school along with books that they can read, or begin to read, on their own.  You will also be able to print practice sheets from the workbooks we use at school along with additional practice pages.  We will take a tour of the site once our projector is in, but if you want to go ahead and "play" with it on your own that will be great. 

When logging in it will ask you for the state, school system and school.  You must fill in these blanks or it will not log you in.  There is a box underneath the school name box that asks if you want it to remember that information.  I would check remeber here to make things easier in the future.

Your child's login is their first (or the name they go by) and last name with no spaces and the password trucks.  It does not matter that everyone has this information.  There is no individualized data entered that will affect your child's progress.

Please let me know what you think of it and have fun!

Weekly Reminders

Don’t forget the Fall Festival is this Friday, November 12^th.  If you have not already sent in money for tickets or an armband please do so by Wednesday.  If the children do not have money for the Fall Festival they will not participate.  They will watch a movie with Mrs. Carlisle during our festival time (8:15 – 10:15).

Thanks to all of you who have sent in candy and prizes.  We still need a lot of both so if you have not sent any in we would greatly appreciate it!

Also, we still need one more volunteer for our booth during the 12:45 – 2:45 shift.  If you are available please let me know. 

The children did a great job disguising their turkeys for Thanksgiving.  They loved sharing them this morning.  We are now writing about them and will display our writing alongside our turkeys.

Don’t forget to send in a plain white t-shirt by Wednesday.  We are going to make a special Thanksgiving shirt with them.

Please let me know if you have any questions about anything.

Great Day!

We had our best day of school yet today!  The children got stickers for great behavior in P.E. and several were able to go to the treasure box at the end of the day.  They also did a great job with their letter sounds today.  Please continue working with your child on letter sounds at home.  Using flash cards and asking for the letter and the sound is a great way to practice.

Thanks to those of you who have volunteered for the Fall Festival next Friday.  We still need at least three more volunteers to help that day so please let me know as soon as possible if you can help.  Thanks also to those of you who have sent prizes in for our booth.  Once again if you have any left over Halloween candy you would like to get rid of we would be happy to take it!  Finally, remember we do not have school next Thursday so try to get your armband/ ticket money in by Wednesday so it's all taken care of Friday morning.

Notes Home

This afternoon your child is bringing home three blue notes.  One is a permission slip for our December 2nd field trip to Children's Theater to see "The Elves and the Shoemaker".  These productions are always so well done.  I know the children will love it.  The permission slip should be returned by Friday, November 19th.  We asking for a donation of $7.00 to help cover the cost of the trip.

The second note is asking you to send an old white t-shirt that fits your child in by next Wednesday, November 10th.  We will be using these for a special Thanksgiving project.  If the shirt is stained it won't matter because I will be tie-dying these after the children have wrapped them in rubber bands.

Finally, there is a note about our fall festival that is next Friday, November 12th.  Our class is in charge of the "Go Fish" booth.  We need to accumulate around 700 prizes for the booth.  Candy, bubbles, Dollar Store finds all make great prizes.  We also need workers for our booth.  Please let me know if you can help out.

Today we finger painted giant turkey feathers for our turkey that will go up in the hall in a day or two.  Tomorrow the children will add a little glitz to their feathers.  They are very excited about that!

I think all of the Halloween sugar kicked in today!  I've had a very chatty bunch.  I reminded them that they need to listen and follow directions the first time today.  Maybe by tomorrow it will kick in!

We Voted!

We had several elections in our room today.  The children had to place their favorite color in the ballot box when they arrived this morning.  We counted and graphed the votes together and the winner was...GREEN!  Later in the morning we raised our hands to vote for our favorite farm animal.  Horses won by a landslide.  We have also been reading books this week about elections and political offices.  The children had a lot of fun voting and were very excited to learn the outcome of their elections.

Our "Turkey Disguise Homework Project" is due Monday, November 8th.  Please visit the following link to see examples by another class.  This should be a fun project for you and your family.  You may use any materials you choose, but please keep in mind they need to stay disguised for two weeks.  In other words the more glue the better!  Please let me know if you have any questions.

The Fall Festival is Friday, November12th.  Our class is responsible for the fishing booth.  If you are available to work a shift for our class please let me know.  We will need the booth covered all day long..  We also need prizes for the booth.  If any of you want to get rid of leftover Halloween candy please send it in.  It would make great prizes.  Dollar Store goodies are also welcome.  Thanks!


Turkey Disguises