11/8-11/12

It’s difficult to believe we are nearing the end of the first semester already! Soon we will be in our brand new building, and I just can’t wait! You and your children are going to love our new classroom and the school’s beauty. I was there last week, and new decor is being added daily! Moving is going to be a huge undertaking, but I know I have willing and wanting parents to help me! For that I am thankful!

In class this week we read The Big Circle, a story about dinosaurs. When the T Rex wanted to eat the baby triceratops, the triceratops all made a big circle and drove the T Rex away. I explained to the class that in life, they are the baby triceratops, and the adults in their lives are the big triceratops, trying to protect them with all that we have! They just love learning about dinosaurs! I need to learn to relate every life lesson to a story about dinosaurs!

In phonics we continued to study long vowels with sneaky e. We also learned about contractions. I explained that a contraction happens when two words collide and make a smaller word, only some of the letters fall out in the collision, so we use an apostrophe to replace the missing letters. We played a game called “Car Crash Contractions” that is a lot of fun! In the picture below we sang about a baby dinosaur and then underlined words with long o and circled contractions.

In math we are still practicing our addition and subtractions strategies. Here is what we looked like during a math test this week. Students put their head down after they finish to a certain number on the test. We stay together so that I can explain the direction thoroughly. Beginning the week after Thanksgiving I will take the timed facts quiz (just addition for now) as a grade, so please practice at home.

In math we are also counting money. So far we have learned about pennies and nickels. We will continue to count these two coins until after Thanksgiving, at which time I will introduce the dime, and later the quarter.

We finished our body unit this week. We learned tons about our body! Ask your children about their eyes, brain, blood, heart, and skin. See what they remember. On Friday we made a model of our body, using everyday items to represent some of our internal parts. They are quite cute!