Some Pictures

Here are a few pictures from our walking field trip and our Halloween celebration last week!  We had a great time!!!  I am working on a new slideshow with many more pictures.  Look for it above this post!

Reminders this week:
Wear ORANGE on Wednesday!



All the costumes



A few pictures of us with our 2nd grade buddies



The Police Station



The Park



Mario's

The Bank

Mario's

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.

More Apples

During the end of our apple unit last week we made applesauce together as a class.  Each child peeled and cut up an apple to add to the crock pot.  The kids were VERY excited to be cutting with "real" knives...don't worry - they were just butter knives! Everyone worked very hard to get all the skin cut off and the seeds cut out.  We cooked the apples all day until they were soft and yummy.  You could smell them cooking from down the hall!!  Everyone got to taste the applesauce at the end of the day and it was delicious. 

This week, we have been starting to learn new sight words.  Our first words are I, see, a, and the.  We will be practicing these words for two weeks before going on to new words.  We have done many word activities with sight words.  We read words around the room, highlight words in little books and poems that are in our book bin drawers, make words with magnet letters, glue letters to make words, and practice writing words on the marker boards and on paper.  Repetition and practice will help all these new words stick in our brains!  Your help practicing sight words at home will help your child as well.  I will be sending a poetry packet home later in the week.  Your child has a copy here at school, so he/she will be able to read many of these poems on his/her own.  Have your child practice reading several times each week.  Make sure to have your child point under each word as he/she reads!

This month, our theme is community helpers.  We have many fun activities and a couple of field trips planned for this unit.  I am excited about the fun things we will be doing!  Look for a special homework project to come home late this week or early next week.  I hope you have fun with this activity!!

Reminders:
**We will be walking to the fire station on Friday. 
**We will be going on a walking field trip in a couple of weeks.  Watch for more information on this trip!
**Library is on Friday of each week. Please return your library books on time!


Here are some pictures of our applesauce project and other activities from the week:

This is a season book that we made.  Have your child tell you about the seasons of the apple tree.

 

This is a fall tree picture that we made last week.

This is our nursery rhyme anchor chart.  Have your child practice the nursery rhymes we learned at school!

October 4

Apples, Apples, Apples

We have been doing lots of activities with the apples that everyone brought in.  We have done measuring, weighing, sorting, comparing, ordering, and painting.  Today we also talked about how an apple seed grows to an apple tree.  Tomorrow we will count the seeds in an apple and make applesauce.  Here are a few pictures from our apple painting this week!!

Monday, October 1

This last week we have been reading different nursery rhymes and reviewing shapes.  We talked about the attributes of a square, triangle, circle, rectangle, and oval and found shapes around our room.  We made several art projects to retell the stories from the nursery rhymes, which your child has brought home throughout the week.  Have your child practice reciting the nursery rhymes for you!!

 

We added a new student to our class last week.  Austin is a great little boy and a welcome addition!  Please keep in mind that we now have 19 students when sending snack for the class!

 

We have been doing lots of work during our reader's workshop each morning.  We have been reading environmental print around the room by sliding our fingers under the word and saying the word slowly.  We have also been focusing a lot on independent reading.  Our class is doing a great job of reading books in different ways - reading the words, remembering the story, looking at the pictures, and finding other words we know.  Our class is able to read independently for several minutes now and are always disappointed when our time is up!  Encourage your child to read independently at home as extra practice!  We continute to work our way through the alphabet, too.  Help your child practice the letters that come home on their handwriting sheets.

 

Last Friday was our first early release day.  This year, our school is turning early release days into Buddy and CARES days.  We met our second grade buddies on Friday and did an interview with them.  They brought books to read to us and then we went to an assembly together.  One of our classmates won a special prize for doing an outstanding job of following our school rules (Be safe, respectful, and responsible).  It was a lot of fun!

 

In math, we have been doing lots of problem solving and have been talking about patterns.  This week we start chapter one in our math series.  Look for the home packet in your child's red folder.  There are a few activities for you to do at home together!  

 

Thank you for all the apples that have come in!  We took a good look at our basket full today and sorted the apples by color and size.  There were lots of different colors and all the apples were different.  We counted 47 apples altogether.  Later in the week we will be weighing, measuring, drawing, and labeling our apples as well as painting and cooking with them.  Everyone is very excited for our apple activities! 

 

REMINDERS:

 

A walking field trip to the fire station is coming up soon.  Look for information coming home about this fun trip!

 

We will also be going on a walking tour of some businesses in Edgerton as a part of our community helpers unit.  More info to come!

SOME PICTURES FROM THE WEEK:

Ryan is reading the room.

Tommy's Jack Jumping Over the Candlestick

Hailey's Picture of Jack

We opened the science center this week!

Ryan cutting out his shape monster book

Tommy working on his Humpty Dumpty

More hard workers

 

Even more workers!

Sharing our Shape Monsters with our partners

Adam's Shape Monster

APPLES!!!

We put our apples in a line from dark red all the way to green.

Our biggest and smallest apple from our collection

Our shape anchor chart

Homecoming 2012

I have posted a new slideshow of some pictures from our Homecoming Pep Rally and Parade.  The kids had a wonderful time at the High School in the morning. They got to see many cool things including fall sports teams, a tug of war contest between teachers and FB players, a field goal kicking contest, special Tider cheers, and more.  The parade was fun too, even though it started raining on us :)  I also saw lots of familiar faces as the teachers joined the after-school parade.  What a fun celebration!

Wednesday,September 19

Since last week we have continued to work on learning color words, letters, and numbers.  On blue day, we made a blue bird.  Purple day was for a purple flower.  We made a black and brown dog yesterday and a pink and white fish today.  Our color books will come home later this week or early next week.  Have your child read you his/her book!  Each page has predictable text (such as "I see a yellow sun.")  We have been practicing pointing to the words and reading them.  The class is getting good at reading the words!!!

We continue to practice a letter each day.  We say the letter and letter sound, find things that start with that letter, and practice writing the letter correctly.  You child has been bringing a handwriting sheet home each night.  Please help reinforce what we learn at school by working on letters at home with your child!  Some of the letters can be tricky to write, so extra practice is very helpful!  We have gone through the alphabet A-H and will continue until we reach Z!  We also practiced writing some color words on the marker boards.

We haven't started our math text yet, but we have been talking a lot about numbers, counting, and patterns.  We also practice calendar concepts each day.  We have written numbers 1-3 and will continue to practice a new number each day.  We have also been working in a fun math packet where we can draw our own patterns.  Later in the book we will draw pictures to solve different math stories.  This book will come home once it is finished.

Next week, we will be studying nursery rhymes and reviewing shapes.  Take some time to explore shapes around your home.  Help your child find or make different shapes like square, circle, triangle, rectangle, oval, start, and heart and even some harder shapes like hexagon, octagon, pentagon, rhombus, and trapezoid.  Shapes are all around us!

Reminder:
Our Homecoming parade is this Friday at 9:30.  Please send your child in comfortable, weather-appropriate clothes.  Edgerton's colors are red, white, and black. 

Here are some fun nursery rhyme links:

Hickory Dickory Dock
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
Humpty Dumpty
Wee Willie Winkie
Jack and Jill
Jack Be Nimble

Colors and Shapes:
green
Blue
Purple
black
brown
pink
white
Shape Song

Letter Songs:
d
e
f
g
h

A few pictures from the week:

Showing their birthdays for our birthday poster

Sorting by beginning letter sound

Some of our color projects