5 Senses, Weather, Counting and More!

This week we read informational books about our five senses.

You can have fun exploring the senses at home by having your child try to guess household objects just by using one of the senses! For example, put a few items into a bag or box, and see if your child can guess the object by feeling it! 

Literacy centers are in full swing and I'm working hard to complete my individual reading assessments of each child. Reading groups will begin as soon as testing is complete. 

This week in writing we focused on drawing detailed pictures of our family, our favorite special, and what we like to do at recess. We labeled our pictures with letters to show what was in our picture. We tried to use at least five colors in our work. Today we wrote sentences with the words of the week: I am.  If you'd like to work on writing at home, please practice the words of the week.  Also, your child is expected to write his or her name on all papers, so practicing this will help.  Encourage them to use an uppercase letter for the first letter and lowercase letters for the rest of their name.  

In math we are learning strategies for counting. We have a counting jar that we fill with something each day. Then we use different ways to count. Consider creating your own counting jar at home!!  We continue to explore more math tools in math zones. 

We continued to learn weather vocabulary this week and read two non fiction books about weather. We record the weather forecast and temperature daily in our morning meeting. Show your child how you check the weather forecast at home!  The newspaper, internet, and TV channels are all great ways to see the weather forecast, and it's great for the children to see the differences with the weather symbols and maps.  In Social Studies we discussed the importance of rules and why we have them. We are also learning examples of each of the 6 pillars of character:  respect, responsibility, caring, trustworthiness, citizenship and fairness.  Please incorporate these words into your routines at home whenever possible!   

We went to the computer lab for the first time this week.  It was a lot of fun!  We explored a program called Mighty Math.  The students were able to play games with number order, geometry, coin counting, and lots more.  We will probably try to get to the lab every other week, if not more!