Weekly Update

We are in full swing in October, although I can't believe that your students have been in school for 25 days already! I am loving every minute with your children and I think they are loving it too!

Choice Time

One exploration time that your student has every day is Choice Time, a half hour period where students get to pick an activity and get a chance to socialize, practice their problem solving skills and simply be creative! This week we tried something new that the kids loved. On Wednesday we allowed students to go to either my class, Ms. Krohn's class or Mrs. Carlson's class for choice time where they were able to do different activities as well as getting to play with other students from the other classes. The kids were ecstatic! I heard exclamations of "I made a new friend" or "I got to see kids from my STREAM group!" It was wonderful being able to see them interacting with different kids and enjoying themselves all the while. Here are a few pictures from Wednesday. Also, this week we are changing our sensory table to water and below is a sneak preview of the water beads that we have in there. I have a feeling the water table is going to be a hit ;)

Students at the art table.

Students playing legos.

Students making a block castle!

Our water beads!

Reading/Math Update

In Kindergarten this week I heard exclamations of "I can't believe I'm actually reading a book!" Students were so excited that the skills they have been learning these past weeks have paid off allowing them to read a book on their own! They have been working so hard and I am so incredibly proud of them! Any time we read a book in class I try to send a version of the book home in Friday Folders for them to share their reading with you at home, so keep an eye out for those!

First Graders are working on learning more sight words and understanding "quotation marks" as different speakers. Students really enjoyed getting to use different voices when practicing reading as well as drawing out new words they didn't know with a picture to help them remember that word for next time they come across it!

In Math Kindergarten students are working on numbers 0-10, finding different ways to make those numbers, writing those numbers and really building number sense so we can start looking at how we break apart numbers and put them back together!

In First Grade students are learning all about addition and will start working on weekly math facts that I will be sending home more information about in Friday Folders. This week we will also start talking about doubles math facts (1+1, 2+2) and how we can use facts we already know to solve new problems.

Pumpkin Painting

Also this week we started up with our pumpkin life cycle. Ask your students to act it out for you, they loved getting to walk through the different parts of the pumpkin life cycle with hand motions! To piggy back on this learning we talked about jack o lanterns and how many families choose to use those as decorations for fall/Halloween. So we decided that instead of carving pumpkins we would paint pumpkins to decorate our classroom!

First students drew out their plans for what design/face they wanted on their pumpkin. In reality some students were over ambitious and found that painting a face is a lot harder than drawing a face... but they still turned out cute! Here are some of the students original drawings of what they wanted on their pumpkins.

Then we painted our pumpkins. Students loved getting to decorate theirs however they wanted. They also can't wait to take them home which I said they could do before Halloween :) Here are some pictures of the finished products!

The fun is just beginning as we continue our hard work in class. Keep checking back for more updates on all the amazing experiences your child is having in our K/1 class!

Smiles,

Miss Adams