Full Moon 🌑

Ask Your Child About...

1. Telling true stories

2. Using word bubbles in their writing

3. To compare groups of items

4. What happens when objects collide

5. To find the word 'a' in various texts
6. Thankful Pumpkins

What a whirlwind of a week! Time seems to fly by with these fantastic kindergartners! 😊 Thank you for returning the field trip permission slips in such a timely manner and a special shout out to those who are able to help us on that day! Along with your child's Friday Folder you will find a stuffed pumpkin. We created these with our 4th grade buddies with the idea that they can serve as a decoration until you decide to rip them open! On the inside you will find slips of paper that contain things our kiddos are thankful for. You can read these together all at once or spread them out through the coming month. 😊

🎃 Friendly reminder that next Wednesday is the Halloween Celebration. Keep an eye out for a Blackboard Connect text message around 1:00 pm if the parade will be cancelled due to rain (let's hope not!). All costumes are welcome as long as they are appropriate and do not include any toy weapons. You are more than welcome to watch the parade out on the playground by entering the south gate no sooner than 1:45. The classroom celebration will begin at about 2:30 pm. Thank you for all of your understanding and patience in this process!

📚 Reading focus this week was on details! We practiced retelling stories using all the details we could remember. We also focused on the word 'a'. Many of the students felt this was a silly word to practice because it was too easy, but we soon realized it is very important! We found the word all over the place and heard it throughout each day. You can extend this by asking your child where they could place the word 'a' as you shop around the store or pick up items in your house.

✏ Writing also focused on retelling stories... true stories! We have moved on from our teaching books and are now writing true stories. We are still using all of our old techniques: sound it out, stretch it like a rubber band, partner up, and add pages, but now we are focusing on stories that really happened to us. Help your child think of some great stories they can tell, help them remember all the details, and then ask them what should go on each page of their book or scroll!

🔢 This week in math we focused on comparing groups of objects. We got out some of our happy choice items and a pair of dice. We would roll the dice to see what number, then set out that amount of objects. Once our partner did the same, we would compare using the phrases "__ is less than __", "__ is greater than __", and "__ is equal to __". We could even count both groups of objects to see how many we had total! Feel free to try this game at home. 

⚽ In science we continued to work with pushes, pulls, and gravity while adding ramps! We used a ramp, ball and pieces of wood to see how objects collide. This was a fun activity that allowed for a lot of variation between students. They tested how the ramp affected the experiment, how the blocks could be placed different ways, and how releasing the ball differently changes the outcome as well!

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns please don't hesitate to reach out!

Have a fantastic Friday and a wonderful weekend! 🦁

Full Week Back

Ask Your Child About...

1. Why writer's have partners
2. To group items (toys, leaves, buttons, etc.) in different ways
3. Where wood comes from
4. What makes a ball go fast or slow, cause and effect, and gravity!
5. Rear bus evacuation (sit on bottom and slide out)

❄ Friends enjoying the frost on the ground! ❄

🚌 Field Trip! In your Lincoln Friday Folder, you will see a field trip form for the Iowa City Children's Museum. The orange sheet has a place to sign and send back to school (the bottom can be cut off and kept for your reminder). The green sheet also needs to come back filled out with your child's lunch choice. The orange and green sheet are due back by Wednesday the 24th! Thank you! *Also, we currently have one parent volunteer for this trip and are in need of two more. If you are able to join us by 8:45-12:00 please sign up and/or let me know! Thank you!! 😊

🎃 Halloween Parade/Party update:

This year students will parade out the north doors along the blacktop path on the playground and re-enter the building through the south doors in the early childhood wing. Parents are welcome to observe the parade on the playground and may enter the playground at the south gate beginning at 1:45 pm. After we parade, students will have a class party before dismissal time. Lincoln PTO arranges for parent volunteers and homeroom parents to help with the class party, games, and healthy treat options. All are welcome to wear costumes for the parade(no play weapons),  but it is not required. 

Reminder that in the event of rain, the parade will be cancelled. Please watch for a Blackboard Connect text message by 1:00 pm if it is decided to cancel the parade.

🍎 If you are able, I would like to ask for your help to bring more graham cracker boxes to school next week or at your earliest convenience. We've gained one box 🙂 Thank you in advance for helping provide snack for our class!

📚 In reading this week we focused on characters. This included identifying the characters of our story as well as working to understand them. We talked about how we can see emotion on character's faces and with their bodies. We even practiced showing some of these emotions ourselves! Once we decided on an emotion or feeling, we worked to understand why that character might be feeling the way they do. This is great practice to help understand stories, as well as our real-life friends!
📗 October's Scholastic order has been submitted and should arrive before Halloween! I was able to get a few new titles for our classroom library through order points, so thank you for the new additions in class as well! 😊

🖊 Our new focus in writing is adding details. We each have a writing partner that will help us clarify our writing! We spend a couple of days writing on our own at our tables, then we spend a day working with our partner. This allows the students to see how other students may be completing their work, as well as give and take help with peers! We focus on asking questions that we still have after our partner has read their story. This helps the writer add details to their drawings, labels, and writing!

✅ The big focus in math has been making different groups of numbers. This consists of the students grouping a set of ten objects in different ways. This helps the students see there are many ways to make the same number! 

🚂 We are starting our new science unit: Materials and Motion! This unit will include looking at natural resources and how they are used and manipulated by people, as well as balls and ramps! We had a sneak peak at one natural resource: wood! We learned a lot about different wood types and how they are made. This was a great connection to our tree studies! We will come back to natural resources in a few weeks, as we are going to focus on balls and ramps for now. This study will introduce how pushes and pulls make objects moves (even when we can't see the push or pull!). We will introduce gravity and forces!

What a short week!

Ask Your Child About...

1. Our new friend in class!

2. Leaf shape and color and wind socks

3. Another way writers create stories: scrolls!
4. How writers make books: they plan!
5. Filling the Paw Jar! 

6. To identify the word see (it was our focus word this week)

Wowzers! This week went by super fast! I hope you are all ready for the weekend again! 🙂

This week we had an exciting event: a new classmate! Be sure to ask your student our new friend and help them come up with some ideas to make him feel welcome in our school home. 💕

🎉 We have filled our Paw Jar once again! This time we will celebrate with a pajama day! Next Thursday, the 18th will be the day. Everyone in our class is invited to wear their pajamas all day, just be sure they are warm and appropriate for an entire day of school (no stuffed animals please - that will be a separate celebration). 😊 Way to go Lions!

🦁 Next Friday, the 19th we will have a school spirit day where kids are encouraged to wear a t-shirt of their favorite team. The following Friday, the 26th will be crazy hat/hair day! The kids will get reminders the Thursday before from a student council representative. Please let me know if you have any questions!

🙂 If you are able, I would like to ask for your help to bring more graham cracker boxes to school next week or at your earliest convenience. Our graham cracker stock is down to two boxes, which will last us through next week. Thank you in advance for helping provide snack for our class!

🎃 I've been getting some emails about helping with the Halloween parade and party - thank you! I believe there was an email sent out for signing up to bring things as well as help. We greatly appreciate anything you can do to help us celebrate at school! We are extra excited this year as we have all of the Mann students and teachers joining us in the parade!

👻 Here are some details about the event: 

1. It will take place on Wednesday, October 31st

2. The schools will parade together starting at 2:00 pm 

3. We will have snack and drink afterwards in the classroom

4. Your child may wear a costume for the parade and party - please place these items in a separate bag for them to change into during the school day. Thank you!

5. We will plan to wear our costumes home

*If you would like to watch the parade, you are more than welcome to find a spot along the route to watch. Keep fingers crossed for dry weather (if it is raining there will be no parade)! If you have any questions about our celebration please don't hesitate to ask!

📗 A friendly reminder that our October Scholastic orders are due next Friday morning the 19th. I will always wait until after I take attendance to submit the orders to ensure I get any that may be in backpacks, but they will be submitted before the end of the day. 

👁‍🗨 This week in reading we focused on the word see. This is a word that we have seen in almost all of our small books but haven't quite focused on. The kids had a fun time with this one as we use it so much in our day! Feel free to practice reading, writing, and spelling see at home!

🔢 Math this week focused on recognizing, writing, and showing the numbers 8, 9, and 10. Many of our classmates know how to count well beyond these numbers but it is important to help them understand what each number means. Help your child better understand each number by comparing these numbers; which has more or less. Practice writing each of the numbers to ensure they are facing the correct way. If you see numbers while you are out and about ask your child to identify them for you! Ask them what would be greater than or less than that number!

📜 We continued our work with creating books that have several pages about the same topic. This week we also learned a new way to continue a writing a story: scrolls! We talked about how scrolls are a fun way to show what happens first, next, and last. In order to make a scroll we learned to take a small piece of tape and place it on one edge of our paper and then place another small piece at the other edge of our paper. This allows us to connect our papers, roll them into a small piece, and save them for sharing in a unique way! Way to go Lion Factory Writers! 🦁

Our science studies have brought us to leaves and weather. Part of our daily routine each morning is to have a weatherperson look out the window and tell us what they see. We then record this on our weather data sheet and compare each type of weather to see what we have had the most and least of. This week we took that knowledge and put it to use during science! We talked about weather and how we can use symbols to show what the weather is looking like. We recorded one day's weather in our Science Journals! 🔆☔⛄
We also did some leaf studies! We talked about the different shapes and colors of leaves and what they might tell us about the tree. We then placed different leaves on a chart of shapes to help us better see how they compare. Your child may ask to go on a hunt for paddle shaped leaves - Ms. Grady couldn't seem to find any! 🍁🌿🍂
This week in science we also created wind socks! You should have seen your child's windsock come home yesterday. We used these to help us understand how wind moves and how to tell which direction it is going. ⛅

Flying our windsocks!

The whole class with our wind socks!

I hope you have a fantastic week and rest up for a full week of school ahead! 🙂

Long Weekend 🙂

Ask Your Child About...

1. Our new tree!

2. To sequence a story for you: what happened first, next, and last?
3. To identify the words I, like, to, we, the, and (these are all the words we have focused on so far)!

We had many exciting things during this short week of school! We had our Children's Museum Box Party celebration for filling the school Paw Ticket Tank, the Latin Jazz Concert, planted our very own tree, and we learned all about fire safety! Friendly reminder that we do not have school this Friday or this coming Monday.

Enjoy a few pictures of our friends playing in the boxes!

           

                                            

                                                             

                                                                         Latin Jazz Concert from U of I

Fire Safety Assembly

This week in reading we did not add any new words, but rather reviewed the words we've been working with for the past couple of weeks. Please help your child notice these words in the world around them. 😊 One fun way to help your child recognize these words is to write each on its own index card (or small piece of paper), then make another set and play memory match with them! Have them say the word when they flip it over in order to keep going, and if they make a match have them spell the word! We also worked on sequencing stories! We focus on the main events to retell what happened first, next, and last. You can do this with your child at home by reading them a story and helping them to identify the main parts. 

We finished up our work with grouping the numbers 0-5 and began to identify the numbers 6 and 7 as well as how to write them. Have your child count these numbers, group objects into categories and write each number! This can be done at home, at the store, or anywhere! 🏡🏫🌲🏦

This week in science we were able to check out our new tree and take some scientific notes about it! We learned what a tree needs in order to grow big, strong, and healthy (air, sunlight, water, soil, and space) and how a new tree might look, feel, smell, and sound differently than older trees. We also got to plant our new tree! It has a great spot next to the playground we always play on! 🌳 We will have lots of opportunities to check on our tree throughout the year and be proud of what we are leaving behind for our Hoover friends next year when they move in. 😊

  

Tree planting process

                                                 

                                                    Taking scientific notes!

Our class with our new tree and Tree Helper Nick!

Enjoy this long weekend with your family! 🙂