Week 8 Pumpkin--PALS

• Book Order due October 31st.  Please click on the link for scholastic at the top of this page.  When you buy books for your child, it helps buy books and supplies for our classrooms. 
• We are trying to earn enough points from purchases to buy a white board for our classroom.  Every purchase you make online or from the paper forms earns us classroom points to put towards supplies such as the board and other things.  Please consider purchasing books from book order.  BOOKS MAKE GREAT GIFTS FOR BIRTHDAYS AND CHRISTMAS, TOO!

We learned more about pumpkins this week. We talked about the parts of a pumpkin and even cut a pumpkin open, made some observations using our 5 senses that we learned about a few weeks ago, and some of the children even pulled the Guts out of the pumpkin!  We talked about how an apple and a pumpkin have some parts the same but others are very different! Some of the children really liked pulling out the guts! 

We stress to the children that it is OK if they forget their library book because they can RENEW it and they get to read it for another week!  We don't want anyone to be sad if they don't get to choose a book.  

We decorated our letter D with dot stamps and our handprint for the D was a duck.  We also practice writing the letter of the week throughout the week and then on a handwriting page.  Please
continue practicing these writing skills at home as well as working with them on spelling and writing their names. 

Several of our centers focus on letter recognition and writing or matching capitol and lowercase letters to help your children in these areas. 

The letter of the week was Dd, and reviewed all of the letters we have learned so far this year.  If you want to do this at home go to our weekly blog and click on Letter of the Week and your child can tell you which letters we have already done!  We learned the sign language for a letter, the literacy link sound symbols, the letter sound, and looking at and writing it in both capital letters and lower case letters.  Click here to view the many ways we learn the letter of the week!

Each week we watch letter videos from "Have Fun Teaching" and the students are really picking up the names of letters, formations, and the sounds of letters.  Check out these videos with you child!  Click HERE.

The Tuesday project of letter of the week is to decorate a letter with something that starts with the letter. This week we decorated the letter D with Dots.  On Thursday, our letter of the week project was to read a page from our alphabet book, D is for Duck.

Important Notes:

• Dress for the weather.  Please send your child dressed for the weather as we go outside as long as it is not raining or below 0*(students are more than welcome to bring layers daily or to leave in their lockers)  It may also be time to change out the change of clothes to make sure they are weather appropriate.  If you send a new change of clothes, we will send the warm weather clothes in their backpacks.
• Folders. Please be checking your child's daily folder each night.  We put notes on the notebook pages in their folders as well as any notes we may have for you.  Artwork is also sent home this way. As we start letter of the week, we will also start sending home homework to help reinforce the letter concept and identification.  Please work on this with you child to help the students make the connection between home and school. 
• Also, Please check the student's Wednesday Folders.  Please try to take info out and return the folder and any forms/info/payments in those folders a day or two after receiving. 
• Literacy Bags come home every three weeks.  Students will have a week to complete the project inside and can then return the bag with completed sheets in it on TUESDAYS.
• Library Books come every week.  We go to library on Monday and student have the opportunity to check out a book and keep it for a week. It can be kept in their back packs or at home, but please remember to bring it on Mondays. 
• Send in those family photos!

Next Week:
Theme: Pumpkins/Halloween
Letter of the Week: Gg
Snack: Sievert Family