Oct. 13

 Hello everyone!

We have had a busy week so far! Each morning we have been working on reading our first "just-right" book. It is a book called "The Colours of Fall." We have been practicing the words "I see a..." on each page and then using the picture to help us with the last 2 words of the sentence, a colour and an object. Today we read the whole book together as a class, and then we read the book to a partner. We're very excited to have our very own book that we can read all by ourselves!

During our morning meetings we have been working on some "visualization." We are doing this by reading part of a poem together every day and then drawing the picture that we see in our brains. The poem we are working on is 5 Little Pumpkins. We have 3 parts of the poem done so far and we are going to finish the last part tomorrow before we add it to our Poem folder as another thing that we can read all by ourselves during quiet reading time. 

We also worked on the letter K in our printing books and have been practicing our letter sounds each day. Today, we practiced making words with the letter sounds that we have and talked about what it means when words rhyme (they have the same ending sounds). We wrote the word "at" on our whiteboards by sounding it out, and then added different letters to the beginning to make rhyming words. 

Yesterday we worked on a science project about Fall. After making a big poster with all of the things we learned about what plants, animals, and people are doing in the Fall, we each created a drawing that represented Fall. We looked at our class target to discuss how we could do our best work on our pictures. If we included ideas things we had learned about each of those 3 groups, we would be in the centre of the target! We each met with Ms. Byrne to tell her all about what we had drawn in our pictures. 

Today, we reviewed what we have learned so far about being unique. We discussed that some of the things that makes us each unique on the inside are the things that we know and can do! Did you know that over half our class can speak 2 languages? Some of us are learning to play instruments or have other special talents like drawing, painting, playing a sport, etc. We shared all about the things we can do. Then, we began writing a journal entry with the sentence "I can ___________." We wrote about things that we can do that make us unique and special. Talk to us at home about what makes us and our family unique!

We also worked on the number 8 in our printing books. We realized there are so many ways to show 8! We found 3 different ways we could show 8 just using dice! We have started to talk about adding and subtracting with 1. So far, we have practiced using blocks to show adding and subtracting 1. Tomorrow, we are going to look at how we can use a number line or 100s chart to do these problems. 

We were very excited today to get to use iPads at school for the first time! We learned how to log in to Raz-Kids and practice reading books. It was a bit tricky, but we really enjoyed listening to the story, and then trying to read it ourselves. Ms. Byrne gave each of us a paper with our Raz-Kids information on it to bring home so that we can practice reading at home too! Raz-Kids is a free app for any tablet or phone. You can also use it through the website: www.kidsa-z.com on a laptop or computer.

You may have heard that this week we have started playing with the parachute during our gym time. We have had so much fun! So far we have practiced making different sized waves with the parachute, playing switch-a-roo, and playing "popcorn."

Have a great day!

-Ms. Byrne