Friday News Flash!

What a busy week we had! Finishing up our study on apples, going on our first Field Trip of the year and gearing up for conferences, the students and I have been running full speed ahead!

Pumpkin Unit

We started our pumpkin unit yesterday and I was astonished by how much your students already knew about pumpkins! We will be looking at how pumpkins grow and the different parts of the pumpkin as we move into next week. However, to kick off our pumpkin unit we read "The Bumpy Pumpkin" and made our own special pumpkins. Students cut and painted their pumpkins and got to create them as they saw fit. Here are some photos of a few. They all turned out wonderfully and I can't wait to hang them up on the wall!

Sight Words

As students have been learning letters and sounds, students have also been learning sight words to help with reading. The sight words your student has learned so far are I, We, The, Can and See. Students have been writing sentences using these words and using their fine motor skills in practicing making these words with play-doh. The play-doh is a great way for students to actually build the words and practice. (For fun ask your student if they remember the "THE" song, it has been a major hit in class). Your students have been great at practicing these words and applying their learning to the books that we read during reading group. They really are doing amazing work. Here are a few examples of the play-doh words that students did in class.

Addition

I know it may be surprising but we are quickly moving into simple addition in the next week or two. In class students have been grouping objects and looking at the different parts of a number that make up a whole. For example if we draw 3 flowers, 2 red 1 blue, then we can say the number sentence "2 red flowers and 1 blue flower makes 3 flowers altogether." As we move into next week we will be decomposing numbers within 5 to find all the ways we can make 5. To do this we will be using stories such as the flowers and by using umber bond worksheets which you will see coming home next week. It is amazing how quickly we move from counting to adding but I know that your students are ready and hungry for more math!