October 21

We have been learning lots about community helpers over the last two weeks!  We have read many books on different people in the community.  We are working on making a book about different community helpers that will come home in a couple of weeks.  We made a class book about community helpers and will be making another class book on what everyone would like to be when they grow up!  Ask your child about different community helpers and what they do! 

Last week we got to visit Edgerton's fire station to see what a firefighter does. Our class had so much fun learning about the different vehicles and tools that the firefighters use!  I have posted a slideshow of pictures from the trip above! 

In the classroom, we have been working on a map of Edgerton.  First, we added roads, bodies of water, a title, and a key.  This week, each student made their house to add to the map.  Next week, our class will be working in small teams to make a place in Edgerton for our map such as a park, the Piggly Wiggly, Ray's, etc.  It is exciting to add all these new things to the map!

We have been doing lots of sight word and reading practice.  The sight words we have now learned include I, see, a, and the.  We practice these words every day by finding them around the room, reading poems together as a class and individually from our book bins, reading simple, repetitive text, and dancing and singing sight word songs from Have Fun Teaching.  This week, we will be adding the word WE to our sight word list.  I sent a packet of poems that we have been or will be learning.  Have your child practice these at home.  They are so excited when they see word they recognize and can read poems on their own!  Remind your child that we always point to the words as we read them.  This helps develop good reading skills as your child begins to read more challenging texts. 

Reminders for this week:
TUESDAY: RCC (Rascal Community Club) Meeting at 6:30 p.m.  Community Elementary LMC 
WEDNESDAY:  Walking field trip to local businesses.
FRIDAY: Halloween dress-up, Buddy Day, Early Release, and Parade!!!

Links to sight word songs:

the
I
a

A few pictures:

One fun activity that we did was to pretend to be architects and builders.  The kids built towers with blocks and then drew the plan so that other kids could try to build the same tower.  Their plans were so good that we put them into a book and put them in the block center!!!

This was the tower built from the plan.

Another tower built from the plan

This was the first page in our community helpers journal.  We decided to write about an electrician.  We wrote a sentence together: "An electrician fixes wires."  The students illustrated their sentence.