October 28-November 8

We have had so much fun in the past two weeks! Halloween party, 50's day celebration and a concert with James Hirsch! Here is a re-cap of what we have been doing.

    


Math: 
I introduced the math tool number lines to the students. Number lines are helpful when we are counting. It shows us the order of the numbers and helps us visually see numbers that are one more, one less, etc. We spent a lot of time getting familiar with the number lines and playing different games. We talked about what "one more" means and how to find one more than a given number using the number line. We have also been working on counting on, which means starting at a random number and saying/writing the numbers that come next--instead of starting at 1. They have really gotten the hang of it! Our number focus this week was 5. We spent all morning Friday talking about the different ways to decompose 5. They came up with all 6 ways by themselves!

Language Arts:
Last week was a review week. We went over all the letters we have learned as well as their sounds. We also reviewed all of the word families and sight words that have been introduced. While we continue to work on our letters and sounds, we are also learning how to put those sounds together to make words! We have really been working hard on blending CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and saying the new word. (Ex: c-a-t = cat!) We have learned that when we see a word in a text we don't know, we can say the first sound in the word. If we still don't know what the word is after that, we sound out the other letters in the word and see if it makes sense!

Writer's Workshop:
We finished up our non-fiction writing unit and came away with an amazing product! You will get to see your child's non-fiction book about owls at conferences. They did an awesome job! This week we started a new unit on "how to" writings. A "how to "writing tells the reader how to do something. We have done two writings together: How to Hake a Soda Float, and How to Catch a Turkey. They are now working on a "how to" writing of their choice. It is fun to see what they come up with.

             

Discovery:
We finished our owl unit by having Charles from the nature center come in and talk to us about the owls we may see around Northwest Iowa. It was very interesting and we were able to tell him a lot of facts we had already learned too! We did a short two day unit on turkeys and Monday we will start our study of Native Americans! This is a fun unit for the kids to study and learn about a different culture and time period.

Important Dates to Remember:
Tuesday, November 12: Conferences
Thursday, November 14: Conferences
Friday, November 15: No School!