Newsletter Updates for the Week of November 2nd

DATES TO REMEMBER:

-Monday, November 5th—Picture Retakes

-Tuesday, November 10th—Title 1 Family Night

-Book Fair—November 10th-18th—11:30-3:00 & November 19th—1:00-6:00

-Friday, November 13th—Report Cards Home

-Monday, November 16th—Delayed Start

-Thursday, November 19th—No School—Parent Teacher Conferences 1:00-8:00

-Monday, November 23rd—Kindergarten Thanksgiving Activities—am

-Tuesday, November 24th—Making Friendship Soup—am

-Wednesday, November 25th—The Feast—pm

-Thursday, November 26th—Thanksgiving Break

STUDENT OF THE WEEK: 

Our student of the week is Isabelle Austin.  Isabelle loves to dance and she enjoys eating ice cream and pizza.  Her favorite movie is Inside Out and she is excited to have a wiggly tooth. One of Izzy’s goals is to learn to read and another one is to go to Disney World.  Congratulations to Isabelle on being Student of the Week!

FAMILY NIGHT: 

Our annual Title 1 Family Night will be Tuesday, Nov 10th.  You will be receiving a blue invitation with all of the details. We are asking families to RSVP, so that we can plan for food.  In addition to dinner being served, each teacher will have specific learning activities set up in their classrooms, as well as handouts and materials for you to take with you to practice important skills at home.  Hope to see you there!

READING: 

This week our class will be focusing on the shapes they see in nature and in our neighborhood. Children will also be reading about the shapes they see around them.

Here are some activities that you can do with your child to help reinforce the skills we will be practicing.

· Vocabulary—materials & nature—Invite your child to hunt for shapes found in nature or on materials. Then invite your child to draw pictures of each item.

· High-Frequency Word—like—Write the word like on paper and have your child trace it. Then say sentences and have your child write like each time you say the word.

· Category Words—shapes—Say simple riddles that include different shape words. Have your child guess each object.

· Phonics: Letter Tt—Invite your child to play a game of “I Spy.” Say sentences and have your child find objects whose names begin or end with the letter t, such as I spy a table. I spy a pot.

· Beanie Baby Strategy—Picturing Penguin—He helps us visualize or picture the story in our minds while we are reading—a hard skill for kindergartners who are surrounded by lots of visual stimulation in our world:)

WRITING: 

This week we will begin our November Journal by writing about a scarecrow, focusing on adding details and writing a descriptive sentence.  We will also go on a Listening Walk to observe and collect some things from nature and bring them back to the classroom to sketch, label, and describe.

MATH: 

This week we will practice solving number stories using a variety of strategies—using manipulatives, counting on our fingers, and drawing a picture.  We will also work on graphing, as we graph our voting results as well as create a pattern block graph.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES: 

This week we will learn about one of our important responsibilities as a citizen—voting.  We will exercise our ‘democratic right to vote,’ as we vote for a special treat that we will have later in the week.  We will also be reading several informational and narrative texts about harvest and vegetables.

BOOK-IT:

I’ve attached the November Book-It Calendar so that you can keep track of your child’s reading for the month of November.  Please be sure to send in your completed October Calendars to that I can issue Pizza Certificates.