Friday, December 2, 2016

Back in the swing of things!

It's been a long time since we have had a full week of school...no days off, no sick teacher.  It was great!  Take a look at our learning!

Fundations: We have now learned the name, letter sound and correct letter formation for ALL lowercase letters.  When your child is writing, please hold them accountable for forming all letters correctly.  When they are reading and writing, please encourage them to use their letter sound knowledge to help them read/write words. 
We are now focusing on using these letter sounds to help us spell words.  We are learning to "tap out" 3 letter words to help us spell/read.  Ask your child to "tap out" a 3 letter word such as hat or lap and they can show you what this means!  

Shared Reading/Spelling: To help us learn our new spelling words this week we read the books Maria and her teacher and What makes me happy?, as well as the poem Jack and Jill. All of these were added to their book box on Friday as familiar reading books.  (These are the small, paper books that I send home from time to time when we clean out book boxes)
Next week's new spelling words: we, on

Daily 5/Reading groups: Reading groups are in full swing.  Every child is in a group based on their ability level.  The group sizes range from 3-5 children.  I have 5 reading groups, so I meet with 3 a day.  Essentially your child's group is meeting at least every other day, if not more.  We work on reading a book that is at their ability level.  We learn new strategies to try when they come to an unknown word.  They get to keep their books in their book boxes to re-read during "Read to Self" time.  Beginning in January they will bring home their newest reading group books a couple times a week to share with you.  I want to wait until then so they can get into the routine of reading groups first.  Ask your child what book they read during reading group this week.  

When I am meeting with reading groups, the rest of the children are working at their Daily 5 centers.  Check out a few of the centers below. 

Rainbow letters: at this center we practice correct letter 
formation of the letters we learned at Fundations.  
We choose 5 crayons and practice tracing the letters the correct way. 

Search & Tally: we search through books for our spelling words and put a tally when we find one.

Sight Word Center: we practice writing our spelling words with fun tools like highlighters and markers!

Math: up until winter break we are working on numbers 0-20, especially the numbers in the teens.  They are always the trickiest.  Check out the fun video below that we sing daily to help us learn our teen numbers!


Writing: we are really using our knowledge of letter sounds to help us sound out and spell words when writing.  We are also working on telling more than once sentence when we write.  


Science: we learned about germs this week.  We learned how to wash our hands correctly to get rid of all germs.  Water first, soap second, sing the ABC song while rubbing the soap on your hands, rinse the soap off when you are finished singing the ABC song, dry your hands.  Nurse Kristen also brought a really cool "germ light" that helped us see all the germs on our hands.  After they saw their germs, they were told to go wash their hands and then they could go back under the "germ light" to see how they did with their hand washing!  So cool!
We are really working hard on keeping our fingers out of mouth and nose to help with this.  




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