Week 15

Thanks so much to all of you who helped with the feast preparations. It seemed to be a great success!!! I am so glad that so many of you were able to come. Your children love it when you are at school. I love to see the excitement on their faces.

This week our story is a play called "Did You See Chip?". This is the first time we have hit the play genre. It will be an interesting read. The phonics sound is /ar/ as in the word bark. The new vocabulary words are:

city

house

sometimes

take

there

Questions of the Week:

Monday - Use last week's lined pages to tell me about your vacation.

Tuesday - Tomorrow starts a new month. What month is it? How many days in it? Anything special about this month?

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

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

Friday - Tell me 5 things you can do with a toy animal.

In math we are working on math facts. Memorizing the facts through 10 is really important. We will be taking timed tests daily to work on this.

Spelling is progressing. The kids are learning to use the program so that is making things much better. This is another learning curve added to the academics. I like the fact that I am not using volunteer time or aide time to give spelling tests.

We are working hard on building reading reading fluency. You can help by reading and rereading stories at home. Also checking to see if your child is learning the vocabulary words will help. We are doing lots of games and computer work to accomplish mastery. The important part of this is that the state has passed a law that says that if your child is not reading on grade level by third grade, they will be retained. The crunch is on!!!

Have a great week.

Week 15

Thanks much to all of you for sending the items we needed for the Feast.  It was a huge success.  I intended to put this in the section with the Feast but I did something wrong and it doesn't want to let me do that.  Sometimes this technology stuff is just too much!!!  Especially when it doesn't cooperate.  The kids had a great time and looked darling.  They enjoyed cooking, especially shaking butter.  To see pictures check out the blog.  A special thanks to the moms and dads that came to help.

This week we are reading a biography called "Tomas Rivera".  Once again there are quite a few vocabulary words.  They are:

about

books

by

family

grew

read

work

writing

In math we are working on place value and greater than, less than, and equal to.  Math fact are always being practiced.  

This is week 7 of spelling so your child should be ready to pass list 7 this week.  If your child is not on List 7, he/she will be spending some recess time practicing the list they are on.  We try to give tests 3-4 times per week.

On Thursday we will be watching the practice of the second grade music program.  That should get us in the Christmas spirit.

As you probably know, we lost one of our school mates this week.  Some of the children know more about it than others.  I have chosen to leave this information to you to disseminate.  I will answer direct questions if asked but I feel it is your right to handle this in the manner you choose.  From what we have observed, most of the children really do not understand the finality of death.  Maybe it is one of the blessings of a child's mind.

Thanks for your continued support.

Tharon Sass