First Five Fantastic Days

Hello Families!

This week in our room, we welcomed 18 new friends... our caterpillars!  We have made discoveries together through our careful observations (They eat milkweed!  They grow bigger by the day!  They make scat!)  We are looking forward to learning more about them, and their insect friends, on our Bug Hunt next week with Lower School Science Expert, Mrs. Ziegelbauer.



As we explored new ideas this week, we ignited our excitement and supported our discoveries with good books together.  Here are a few of our favorites:
"Pete the Cat" by Eric Litwin
"From Anne to Zach" by Mary Jane Martin
"What is Science?" by Rebecca Kai Dotlich
"What is a Scientest?" by Barbara Lehn
"Miss Bindergarten Stays Home From Kindergarten" by Joseph Slate
"Officer Buckle and Gloria" by Peggy Rathman



This week's learning, and reviewing, in SK P217 included...

Language:
- Reviewing our letters, creating ABC order, and fine-tuning our letter sounds
- Learning sign language! (The alphabet and simple words to help us communicate in
the classroom)
- Daily Five: (The Daily Five is a literacy block that is designed to fully
engage students in reading in writing.)  
- Learning and practicing different ways to read a book: read the words, read the pictures and retell the
story.  
- Practicing "read to self" (one way the Daily Five strengthens reading skills) and working hard to increase our
stamina, or the time we spend on task reading.  (The next step will be
helping children find "just right" books and we will use those to guide
their individualized reading instruction and strategies.)
- ***Book Boxes: On Friday, children brought home their decorated book boxes.
These boxes are for you to keep at home to store the decodable books that
children bring home from school. On the inside cover of the book box you
will find the SK Star Words. These are the sight words that we will
introduce throughout the year in SK.



Math:
- Creating patterns, and being detectives for patterns all around us.
- Thinking about numbers in groups (three caterpillars in each of six cups is eighteen caterpillars all together!)
- Strengthening one-to-one correspondence, counting forward and backward, graphing data and charting information, all in our morning calendar books.



Science:  
- Exploring the world of insects, and our new caterpillars 
- Illustrating our own individual life cycle theories, and describing the transitions within them



Extra!  Extra!  Important Announcements!
- We have library every F day. Each week your child will bring home two
library books.  Please return the books within the week and your child
will then pick out new books each F day.
- Looking for:  Gently used bath towels.  These are great to cut up and use
for our erasers for our work work with dry erase boards!
- Birthday/Superstar/Healthy Picnic calendars: please find your SKer's important dates in their Friday folder this week.