Happy Holidays!!!

Wow...we have reach the 72nd day of school!  Hard to believe how quickly this school year is going!  I continue to be so impressed by all that your children have learned this year!  They have shown so much academic and social growth since the first day of school.  I look forward to sharing about their growth through the Progress Reports that go home on January 24th.

This week wrapped up our holiday tradition shares.   We learned about Leo's Christmas village, Joey's stocking and cookies, Lyvia's Christmas Eve box, Zoe's mom's birthday celebration, Camille's trip to Santa's Village, and Jr.'s Christmas tree and ornaments!  Now that the children have heard everyone's tradition and created illustrated pages, they are each bringing home a Holiday Tradition book to share with you at home.  I hope you are able to take the time to read through all the fun traditions from our class and admire your child's illustrations!

During Writer's Workshop, we are continuing to write and tell personal narratives (stories about ourselves and our families).  However, we are now working on telling our stories over several pages, with a beginning, middle, and end.  The children had the choice to continue working in their writing notebooks or to move to using booklets (three pages stapled together).  It was amazing to see their first stories.   Ask your child to tell you about the story he or she wrote in the booklet.  It should have three parts (or more)!

We learned our last two reading superpowers this week: sound power and persistence power.  We use sound power by looking at the first letter (and the ones after)  in an unknown word and saying the sound of the first letter(s).  This can help us to sound out and figure out the word. Persistence power means as readers, when we meet a word we do not know, we use all our powers to try to figure out the word.  We do not just give up!  We practiced this power while reading books in our book boxes. Everyone was really working on his or her persistence power!



In math, we continued to work on putting numbers in order and working on the number line. The children learned four new Work Places: Scrambled Numbers, Forest Game, Beat You to 20, and Foxes in the Den.  In Foxes in the Den, the children practiced addition and used the new strategy of counting on from the higher number. In the Forest Game, we worked on adding and subtracting by ones, twos, and threes (counting on and counting back) and in Beat You to 20 we were continuing to work on number recognition to twenty and finding efficient ways to count.


Lastly, we enjoyed reading a few more versions of the Gingerbread Man and then we got to taste Gingerbread cookies. I made and brought in a Gingerbread person for each child and we decorated them...and enjoyed them as a treat in the afternoon!  We also spent some time creating a family gift for the holidays.  Please check your child's Friday Folder for his or her gift for you.  They were all so proud of their work!

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday and a happy and healthy 2020!  School resumes on Thursday, January 2nd.

That's all for now...see you in 2020!