Wow!  Another week in kindergarten.  Here are some things we did.

Earned a PJ Day Monday!!! We filled our “rockstar jar” this week, with our last rock from Mrs. Armstrong (Lexi’s mom, our mystery reader). She gave us our final hallway compliment for remembering the 4’s of the hallways, still, silent, straight and smiling! 🙂 We have been working since the beginning of the school year on our hallway behaviors, earning a rock in our jar each time we receive a compliment from another teacher. We are doing so well in the hallways now! As a reward for our hard work, please send your child to school in their PJ’s on Monday!!! Please make sure they are warm enough, as we will still be going outside! We will empty our jar now and start over filling our “rockstar jar”, this time for overall great class behaviors. I will keep you posted on what our next reward will be! 🙂 The class is so proud of their efforts, I’m sure they already have their PJ’s picked out 🙂

COLORS AND SHAPES:  Throughout the week we continued to increase our learning about colors. Our theme of the week was based around Pete the Cat books. We read Pete the Cat, I Love my White Shoes, Groovy Buttons, and Rockin in my School Shoes. Pete was a BIG hit in our class, the songs in the book were catchy and fun and I’m sure the children came home singing! 🙂 We created a class book entitled, Ms. Yankee’s class, I Love my White Shoes, where we practiced being the authors spelling our color words and illustrators drawing what Pete stepped in! We also had a Pete the Cat fun day Friday, where we reviewed out knowledge of recognizing shapes and colors words to create our own Pete the Car wearing colored shoes. These turned out great, hope you got to check that out on Friday in their folders! We also created a story sequence stick, played roll a number to color a Pete, and used our creative imaginations to design our very own Pete the cat shoes. These shoes will be entered in a contest for a chance to win the author visiting our school and customized shoes! We have some awesome shoes to send in! 🙂

WRITER’S WORKSHOP:  We were busy writers at work this week as we learned that writers can be authors and illustrators.  We also learned that writers use ABC charts to help them when writing letters.  Writers also label their drawings to help tell their readers more information about their pictures.  The children are doing an awesome job applying these lessons to their own stories and drawings.  I am very proud of their efforts.

HANDWRITING:  We began learning the correct formation of our upper case letters.  We started with our Frog Jump Letters F, E, D, P.  We learned that we need to “frog jump” back to the top as we write these letters.  We will continue with more frog jump upper case letters next week.  Your child took home their number handwriting practice booklets last week.  Please keep them handy and use them as a reference this year as your child works on writing their numbers.

READER’S WORKSHOP:  The children worked with their elbow partners to practice using their quiet voices when  they take turns to “turn and talk” or “lean and tell”  during sharing time.  They  learned to identify the parts of a book..front, back, words, pictures, title page, author and illustrator.  The children were excited to make the connection that they are authors and illustrators of books too.  (think of class books and writer’s workshop) 

MATH:  This week’s lessons focused on identifying, ordering and counting numbers 1 through 10, practice writing number 5 and drawing 5 objects, learning how to make dot-to-do pictures.  We will review the  math concepts learned so far…identify, order, count numbers 1-10, write numbers 1-5 and identify circles, squares and rectangles on Monday.  On Tuesday, Oct. 16 we will be taking our unit #1 math test.  Please take some time over the weekend to practice these concepts with your child so that they are prepared on Tuesday.  A great way to review, is by completing their last homework pages, due by Thursday. Thank  you for your help.

*Our mystery guest reader was Mrs. Armstrong, Lexi’s mom! She read Elmer, a great book to compliment our learning of colors. The kids were very surprised and excited to have another mystery reader! And even more excited when she complimented us in line, getting us to our final rock in our jar! 🙂 Thanks so much for coming! I will be contacting all mystery reader volunteers  in the next couple of months to set up a date and time if you volunteered from the survey to be a mystery reader. We will do one once a week, usually on a Thursday or Friday afternoon.

REMINDERS AND INFORMATION:

*Explorer of the Jungle next week will be Levi (Mon.). Then we will be drawing sticks on Tuesday to decide who will be the next Explorer starting Wednesday, with a new take home project.   Watch for a paper inside your child’s folder letting you know their next turn and what special activity is planned.

*Popcorn words this week were “to” “do” “you” and color word purple.

*Library is Tuesday.  Don’t forget to return your book!

*Math homework is due on Thursday.

*Fall Party is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 31. The party will take place in the morning.  More details coming soon.  If you volunteered to plan/help at the Fall Party, you should have been contacted this past week, by email.  Thank you for volunteering!

*Field trip to Career Tech Center to use our 5 senses is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 24.  Information was sent home this week.  If you wish to join us on this field trip, please mark the appropriate box on the note. I will be contacting all parent chaperons after Thursday to confirm with you and give any additional instructions.  All permission notes should be returned to school by this Thursday, Oct. 17.

* Please make sure your child is coming to school dressed appropraitely for the weather. It tends to get warm in our classroom during the day and then we need to bundle our layers on for outside recess. I recommend dressing them in layers. Please also label all gloves, hats, coats, etc. as things tend to get mixed at times with our lockers.

*Reminder that water bottles are now only allowed at snack and lunch time, they must be stored in their locker at other times of the day.

*We now have new seats! I mixed the student up this week with new friends and new animal table groups! They were very excited to try somewhere new. I plan to switch seats about once a month to help the children learn to get along with everyone!

* Our first shipment from our book order came this week! Looks like students who ordered got some great books to read every night! I will be setting up a new book order for late Oct/early Nov. Look for information coming home again in the next few weeks!

* We also started a service project, Paws for Reading through Scholastic where Scholastic will donate a book to a child in need for every 20 minutes each student in our classroom reads at home! Information on this great program cam home this week! The students got excited about this incentive program this week as they signed up on our classroom poster to either read with the dogs or cats! If you choose to participate please log the minutes they read at home each night on the Paws website or send their paper book log back for me to log their minutes once its completed. I set our our classroom roster online, please let me know if you have any problems or questions logging! Thanks for your support to help your child become a better reader and those in need!

*On November 5, 7 and 8 we will hold parent/teacher conferences at Georgetown.  Please help us schedule a time for you to learn about your child’s progress at school by completing this Parent/Teacher Conference Survey.

~~Enjoy your weekend. Ms. Yankee