Thanksgiving Pictures

Week 15

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. It is always nice to gather with family and friends to enjoy the day.

This week's story is a biography called "Tomas Rivera." Tomas was a young boy who picked crops with his family. He developed a love for reading and writing. He grew up to be an author and a teacher. The phonics sounds we will be working on this week are qu and wh. The wh sound is particularly hard because the kids don't really say wh anymore. They replace it with the sound of just w.

The new vocabulary words are:

about

books

by,

family

grew

read

work

writing

In math we will continue with addition and subtraction fact practice. The new skills this week will be measurement. We will be using the foot and inch. I got the new IXL math set up so we will start using that today. This program has 140 skills to practice. It should be a great supplement to our math program. We are going to use the money activities this week. Thanks to those of you who donated toward its purchase.

Questions of the Week:

Monday - Use last week's lined page to tell me about your vacation. Tell me lots!!!

Tuesday - It is a new month. What month is it? How many days in it? Anything special in it?

Wednesday - What did we use to make butter last week? How did we do it?

Thursday - Happy Birthday, Bingo, 1929. What is your favorite game?

Friday - Use the word 'family' in a sentence.

Thanks so much to all of you that helped with the feast. It was a great success and fun for the kids. The next three weeks will be busy. We have the usual curriculum to cover but I hope to be able to work in several seasonal activities. I love the holidays and hope to make them fun for the class.

We will be taking the week before Christmas off from the reading series - not off from reading. We will be doing some activities using some of the great seasonal literature.

I hope you have a great week.

Feast Week

This will be a very short and very busy 2 days at school. Today we will make homemade butter. All we do is shake it in jars. It is fun and makes great butter to eat tomorrow.

Tomorrow will be a very busy time. Since we will be cooking posse stew in a roaster, we won't need to put it on until first thing tomorrow morning. We will also be making fruit salad, and pumpkin pudding. If you volunteered to help tomorrow can you come when your child does at 8:20. It will take a few minutes to get started but not many. I like to do the kids in a rotation so each one gets a chance to help with everything.

We will also need help with setting up tables, serving, and cleaning up.

We will probably start to eat at about 11:00. If you are coming to eat with your child you will want to be there by then.

There will be NO HOMEWORK this week. It wouldn't hurt if your child read once or twice over vacation but that is up to you. I have found that books get left at Grandma's etc, so they won't be coming home. Nothing in the agenda either. We will return to normal schedule next week.

Thanks to all of you who help me so much. You are making my life so much easier.

Have a great Thanksgiving! Be safe if you are traveling.

Extras

I gave out the first AR award. Shaymon got a zipper pull for passing 25 AR tests. We also had our first AR lunch in the room. Seven children got to attend. They had passed 4 AR tests in the last week.

The problem some are having is that they don't bother to read the book, or don't read it well. They take lots of tests but haven't read well enough to pass the test.

Also if you haven't sent your feast money, I would appreciate it if you could do so. I will be shopping over the weekend. If it is a hardship on your family, don't worry about it.

Just wanted to share the good AR news.

Week 14

This week our story is a fiction story in a play format. It is called " Did You See Chip?" The phonics sound of the week is /ar/ as in park. The vocabulary words are:

city

house

sometimes

take

there

The reading difficulty is starting to ramp up. More work is needing to happen on vocabulary words. We are trying to do lots more at school. Anything you can do at home will be extremely helpful. Lots are practicing individual lists on the computer. . .kinda the same thing available on the website. They don't always like it but it is just one of those things that has to be accomplished.

Math this week is going to deal with measurement: the thermometer, the foot, the inch, and nonstandard measures. Should be an interesting time.

AR has become a big item in class. Thursday will be AR day. If you pass 4 tests in a week you will be invited to lunch in the room. I am trying to build some enthusiasm for the AR concept.

Questions of the week:

Monday - It is American Education Week. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Tuesday - Use the word sometimes in a sentence.

Wednesday - List 5 words that have the /ar/ sound in them.

Thursday - It is Mickey Mouse Day. Where would you see him?

Friday - What did you do on your early release day?

I have decided that it would be better to do the money thing for the feast. More seemed to vote that way. I will get the ingredients over the weekend and we will be ready to cook on Monday. We will just put Posse Stew together then. I will send a note with more information. I will need help on Tuesday. We will need to make fruit salad and pumpkin pudding, plus set up the cafeteria and serve and clean. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated on Tuesday. Look for the other note explaining all of it in your child's agenda.

Most children are doing quite well with spelling. I am pleased with the progress.

Remember that Friday is an Early Release Day.

Have a great week.

Week 13

We are starting a new reading book this week. It is called "Here and There". The first story is "I Am a Butterfly." This isn't a great time to study butterflies. We will do some activities with them now but we will do more in the spring when I order butterfly larvae to watch grow and hatch. You will see the difficulty of reading level increase in this book. The sound this week is /ch/ made by the letters ch and tch. The new vocabulary is:

air

animals

around

fly

live

soon

turns

Questions of the Week

Monday - It is Children's Book Week. What are two of your favorite books?

Tuesday - Tomorrow is Veteran's Day. Do you know a veteran?

Wednesday - Holiday

Thursday - It is Child Safety Month. What can you do to stay safe?

Friday - It is Homemade Bread Day. What is your favorite kind of bread?

In math this week we will continue reviewing time and money, addition facts, and testing our latest information. One of the new topics will be attributes.

We will be doing a Thanksgiving Feast on Nov. 24. We have done this for many years and it is great. Would you rather send money and have me do all the shopping or send the ingredients??? Please write me a note to let me know in the agenda. It would probably be about $3 per student.

Have a great week and enjoy the day off on Wednesday.

Week 12

The story this week is a non fiction story called "Fun with Fish." The phonics sound is the digraph /sh/. This is a fun story. The kids usually like the different kinds of fish that the story talks about. The vocabulary words are:

away

food

funny

hide

how

many

some

their

Questions of the Week

Monday - Lincoln was elected president in 1860. Where would you see a picture of Lincoln?

Tuesday - How many door knobs are in your house?

Wednesday - How many windows are in your house?

Thursday - What color is your house?

Friday - Where is your house (Physical address)

In math this week, we will be spending most of our time on money. The dime is introduced and we will practice counting collections of coins containing dimes, nickels, and pennies. We will also do some graphing and addition problems.

Thanks to all of you that contributed to our Halloween party. The kids had a good time. Is there anyone who would like to be in charge of the planning and organization of the Christmas party???

Everyone seems to be moving along in spelling. Thanks for your help at home.

Have a great week.

Halloween party

I am having issues creating slide shows again. Maybe I need someone else to do this. The party was fun and the kids were darling. There may be more than one show. I took more than 50 pix. That is all it will allow me to do at one time.