Community!

Next week, we will be taking two walking Field Trips!  On Monday, November 5th, we will be walking to the Shelburne Supermarket and People's United Bank and on Wednesday, November 7th, we will be walking to the Shelburne Craft School and The Flying Pig Bookstore.  We are visiting these places to learn more about our Shelburne Community.  If you are fingerprinted and have filled out the volunteer forms at our district office, you are more than welcome to join us for either trip!  We continued to learn more about communities by discussing communities helpers.  We read a book called Career Day and talked about all the important people in our community who help us or our families and neighbors.  The children all created a Community Helper Flip Book.  This book is in their book boxes to practice reading it!  It had two or our new sight words..."am" and "a".  We also continued learning about maps. We first made maps our bedrooms and then made maps of our classroom! What did your child include in his or her map?

At Reader's Workshop, we continue to read "Old Favorite" books.  Old Favorites are books we have heard over and over again and know how the story goes without even reading the words.  Examples of "Old Favorites" for us are Brown Bear, Brown Bear, Three Billy Goats Gruff, Bear Snores On,
Caps for Sale, and The Carrot Seed.  We have been reading and re-reading these books:  looking at the pictures, remembering how the story goes, and telling what happens on the pages.  We've also learned how to say more on each page and using transition words, such as "then", "next", and "also" as we move from page to page.  If you have any of these books at home, ask your child to read it to you!

Also, this week the children got their own "Brown Owl, Brown Owl" book for their book boxes!  It is based on Brown Bear, Brown Bear, but with a Halloween twist!  This book had many of our sight words which made it easy to read!  We practiced pointing and touching each word as we read.  This is a great skill for your child to use when reading at home with you too!  In Fundations, we have been introduced to the letters g, o, d, and a.  We practiced handwriting and brainstormed words that have those letters as initial sounds. We are almost halfway through the alphabet!

In Writer's Workshop, we continue to tell stories in our Talking, Drawing, Writing notebooks.  Prior to getting to work, we talked about adding details to our stories, focusing particularly on the people in the stories and adding clothing, hairstyles, and physical traits, such as skin color that match the character in the story.  Be sure to ask your child about his or her stories this week!

Lastly in math, we learned about using tally marks as a way to count.  We practiced counting and making tally marks using popsicle sticks first and then played a game of Tally Mark Bingo to practice counting and recognizing tally marks. We also did some work with shapes and patterns and made a  paper Butterfly Quilt.  Each child was responsible for making two paper quilt blocks.  We attached them all together in a pattern and then made observations and noticings about the shapes and patterns in our quilt. Be sure to ask your child what he or she noticed!