It was great to see you! 🦁

Ask Your Child About...

1. The four seasons and what it may look like on a tree.

2. What they learned about caring for pets: responsibility and extra love.

3. How writing is like a rubber band and the Little Engine That Could.

4. To identify the word 'the' in various writings (this was our focus word this week)!
5. Their adopted tree!

A huge thank you for making it out for Back to School Night last night! The kids were all excited to show you around the room and the school! This is always a great opportunity for the kids to take ownership in their environment and be proud of what they do each day. Thank you again! 😊

This week we also celebrated Constitution Day with a read aloud titled We the Kids by David Catrow. This book highlights the preamble to the constitution in a more friendly manner with wonderful illustrations to match! After the read aloud we all signed a Classroom Constitution which now proudly hangs in our room. 🗽

You may have also been told of a special guest in our room this Tuesday as well as last Tuesday. A University of Iowa student, Mr. Farino, is currently studying Engineering but is considering changing majors to Education. He has been visiting various classrooms to get a feel for what teaching is all about and what different grade levels have to offer. Mr. Farino spent one full day with us and one half day. During this time he mostly observed, helped redirect students, and had small conversational interactions with the students. Mr. Farino said he enjoyed being in our classroom and is excited to see more! 🍎

Mr. Farino reading a story before school begins.

Friday marked the end of our first math topic of counting from 0-5 in written, verbal, and visual formats. We also went over some vocabulary words to help explain what we are talking about while discussing math: number, none, count, part, whole, and order. These are words that will continue to show up throughout their time in and out of school. A great time to ask your child about their math understanding is while cooking/baking or at the grocery store! Please keep working with your child to help them recognize these numbers in the world around them and write them with confidence. 🙂

I apologize if your child came home at any point during the week asking for a new pet! 😅 Our reading study this week focused on pets. We read lots of stories about different animals and all of the work that goes into caring for them. We talked about how we can show care and respect for not only our family and friends, but animals as well! These stories also worked hand-in-hand with our focus word: the. We discussed how the sound to make 'the' comes from our tongue pushing between the front of our teeth. We practiced different words that also make the 'th' sound. Feel free to ask your child what words make these sounds and to identify the word 'the' in text for you! 📖

Scholastic Books have been ordered and they will arrive within a week! I will send out the next order forms after that. There is an order form for each month and each time it will be due on the second to last Friday so that the books will arrive on the last Friday of the month. Each of your orders also allow for our class to earn points which allows me to pick out books for our classroom library free of charge! Thank you for helping our library grow! 🤗

Some of our friends creating their Seasons Book

This week in science we learned about the four seasons and what a tree might experience during these changing times. You should see a seasons book coming home with your child that shows how a tree changes for each one! We also went on an adventure to adopt our very own tree! The students drew our tree as scientifically accurate as they could in their journals and wrote 'summer' next to it. We will draw our tree during each of the four seasons so that we can see how it changes over time! We also collected some items from around our tree to help us study it. I encourage you to adopt a tree with your family at a local park or in your neighborhood. Let your child pick the tree and come back to it frequently to see what you can see! Are there things living in or around it? Is it young or old? How many people does it take to wrap around it? What shape is the tree and it's leaves? What does it smell like? Do some sketches and even etchings of the bark and leaves. Enjoy this simple activity outside with your family all year long! 🌳

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend and are able to get out and enjoy this changing whether! It was great to see you all last night and the kid's absolutely loved being your teacher! Be sure to get plenty of rest - for the little ones and yourselves - you've earned it! 😊