October 10, 2019

Hello Families,

We are finishing up our letter studies this week and reviewing V (Monday), Q (today), Y (Wednesday) and Z (Thursday). Once the letters have been finished we will be moving into letter blends, two letters that go together to make the same sound, for example, cl, br, etc. This is an essential skill for early literacy and decoding as recognizing familiar blends builds success in reading!

Our home reading packages will be coming home this week or next week, depending on when I have read with your child! Your child will be bringing 3 books home. Please keep all three books at home for about one week, and return the texts after your child has had the opportunity to read each text several times. Here's a link to the benefits of reading the same text: https://www.readbrightly.com/why-reading-the-same-book-repeatedly-is-good-for-kids/

This week we introduced the concept of even and odd numbers. Today, we completed a task of using our name (first, first and last, or first, middle, and last) and determined if the amount of letters were even or odd. The next step will be to identify the vowels and consonants and determine even and odds with those letters. We have also been working on hundreds board puzzles using clues to find mystery numbers and identify even and odd patterns on the hundreds boards.

We also added a third criteria to our drawing rubrics. This section is called accuracy. We have a discussion that accurate drawings are realistic. We then took a class trip to our school garden and selected one piece of plant or leaf where they could practice drawing with accuracy. We talked about how looking through the eyes of an artist means noticing all the small. lines and details within the plant to ensure our drawings are as realistic as possible. This week, we will be using Austins Butterfly  (https://vimeo.com/38247060) and the power of peer feedback to revise and improve our art based on our three criteria: color, detail, and accuracy. Here are some of the selected plants/leaves:

Here are some photos of students enjoying various "morning work" activities from this week that are focused on self-regulation!

Scholastic
This month Scholastic orders will be due on October 10, 2019! Please place your online order by this date to receive your books on time.

Library
Our library time will be on Wednesday afternoons for the remainder of the month. Thank you for your patience and understanding with the changes.

Take care!
Lindsay Brown