Upcoming Events/mark your calendars:
- Monday, October 2: Dental assembly for Prek-2
- Tuesday, October 3: Chipotle Dining for dollars (La Grange Road in Countryside) from 4-8; 33% goes to St. Cletus!
- Thursday, October 5: Picture day
- Friday, October 6: Assembly: Ellie the elephant is going to visit our school to help students understand why it is important to be kind to animals and our friends.
What’s due?
- Hot lunch orders: don’t forget to submit any hot lunch orders!
- RSVP for the mom/son bowling event; info went home in white envelope
- Field trip permission slips along with $10; we have enough chaperones for this trip and are unable to take any more. Thank you!
- Boom cards: be sure to check them out by logging in to SEESAW. Reach out with any questions.
- Halloween party help: Isaac’s mom sent an email about the Halloween party. There are a few more slots available! https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090E48ADAC2FA20-44766907-stcletus
This Week:
The playground is officially open! On Friday, the kids got to test out the new playground set. We are going to have so much fun using the new playground. On nice weather days, we plan to split the kids and have half play on the playground, half do free choice inside, then switch. It’s going to be so great to have that play set right outside our classroom. We are SO excited. This is a good time to remind everyone that gym shoes must be worn at school in early childhood classrooms as stated in the handbook. Now that we have the playground (with woodchips), it’s even more important! Thank you!
We repeated a couple of centers this week–the dice roll and the count the room. The kids are learning how to INDEPENDENTLY complete these kinds of centers. That’s a skill in itself! In order to be successful at these centers, they have to listen to my directions when I’m modeling the center (again, this is for independent centers, so there’s not a teacher right there giving directions or correcting–they have to listen to me when I’m modeling the center whole group on the rug), they have to use the materials correctly and stay focused on the task. It was great to see how much they improved when they repeated the center.
Next Week:
Next week in religion we will be talking about BAPTISM, when we became a part of the church family. After next week, I will be asking each child to bring in a baptism memento to wrap up this unit. This means an invitation, shoes, candle, pictures, etc. If your child wasn’t baptized, I ask that your child bring in any special religious memento. More information to come, but just in case you need to dig to find these items, 🙂 I wanted to let you know now.
Next week I will be sending home a letter about sight words and tips for reading with your child at home.
Language Arts:
- SuperKids: We will wrap up A for “Alfalfa” and move on to D for “Doc.”
- I have introduced the following word wall words: do, we, the, no, yes, a, I, will.…next week, I will introduce to, my. Again, I will send home a note next week about word wall words.
- Next week, the write the room will transition from “the (label)” to “I see the (label)”. Students will walk around the room and write the sentences. This really helps them see how letters make up words and words make up sentences. This will be a center for the next month or so.
- Name writing: I’ll be sending home some name writing practice sheets next week. Please help your child write with one capital letter. Discuss where each letter starts Super kids calls the top line the “strawberry line”, the middle line, “vanilla” and the bottom line, “chocolate”. Discuss which line each letter in your child’s name starts at.
- Phonemic awareness exercises will be done daily.
- Journaling continues. We are working on drawing a “detailed picture” ABOVE the line with CRAYON and writing a word below with pencil.
- We will continue “shared writing”. This is where we create stories together and the children help fill in missing letters or words. The format is My name is ____. I am ___ years old. I like ______. I do not like _____. Each child will have a chance to share the pen with the teacher and create a story. We will focus on letters vs. words vs. sentences, left to right reading, high frequency words and ‘writing the sounds we hear’ for unknown words. We will do this 25x, once for each student in the class before we move on to a different shared writing format.
- The kids are doing a great job with letter and number writing. We spend A LOT of time at the beginning of the year on letter and number formation. It’s much easier to get into writing words and sentences as well as working on math problems when they’re confident with their letter and number formation. We don’t want the kids to be distracted or frustrated by formation because then it really becomes distracting and takes away from future focus on the writing and math skills.
What can you do at home?
- Read, read, read–every night! When reading, have your child point out our current word wall words.
- Name writing practice worksheets: I will send each child home with a few pages of name writing practice next week. Don’t complete all at once!
- We are working on recognizing our birthdays–the month and day. Review at home!
Math:
We will begin Chapter 3 next week. Chapter 3 focuses on representing, counting, and writing numbers 6 to 9.
- Tally marks: tallying numbers up 10 remembering to “make a bundle with 5” and “circle groups of ten”.
- Number formation: we will continue to practice number formation. We have learned the poems for 1-7 and practiced the formation last week in centers. Next week, we will go through 8 and 9.
- Counting to 30: We are practicing counting to 20 and are being extra careful with “13, 14, 15”
- Ten frames: representing numbers 1-10 on a ten frame. We have introduced the “double ten frame” and are starting to show numbers 1-15. We are learning that numbers 11-19 are, ” 1 group of ten with ___ ones left over”. We are trying to become more automatic with recognizing numbers on a double ten frame.
- Comparing numbers 1-15 and naming them as less than, greater than or equal to.
- Counting by 10s. We will begin to practice counting by 10s.
- We will work with number pairs to make numbers 6-9; we will do this with counters.
What can you do at home?
- Practice counting 1-30
- Practice writing 1-7 at home, looking for proper formation using our number poems. Use crayons, markers, chalk, gel pens. The writing tool doesn’t matter, just practice the formation!
- Give your child a number and ask your child to show you that number with tally marks. Start with numbers 10 and under. If your child is confident with those numbers, move on to numbers greater than 10.
- Double ten frame: Print THIS out and use any kind of small manipulative at home (m and ms, beads, etc.) to show numbers 20 and under. You can write a number, your child shows it on the double ten frame OR you can show a number on the double ten frame and your child writes it. Name the double ten frame below as “one group of ten or one filled ten frame with 4 ones left over…that’s 14!” Count all the counters to get to 14, then model how you know a filled ten frame is 10, and COUNT ON from there to get to 14. “10…11, 12, 13, 14!” 14 is a 1 and a 4 because it’s 1 group of ten with 4 ones left over!
Religion:
We will continue to attend 8am Mass. You are always welcome to join us. Doors will always open at 7:45, 5 minutes early, on Tuesdays. Please try to make this your “early day” for morning arrival. The kids will empty backpacks, sign in, use the bathroom and then we will get matched up with buddies before heading to church….all by 8am :). The earlier your child arrives, the better! 🙂