The Buzz in Room 103: Sept. 23-27th 2024- Letters i, u

(officially😂)

Hello and Happy Fall,

We had a great, long week of school last week and the students were pretty spent by Friday afternoon! They worked and played hard:). Many of the students are still figuring out that school is quite different from home and that listening, especially while in a large group, is very important! Any practice at home with focusing and following simple directions would benefit many! 👏

We will have our first whole school AND kindergarten community meetings this coming week. For those of you who ordered books from Scholastic, they came in on Friday and I will put them in your child's backpack Monday.

**Thank you to the Doane Family for donating all 8 of the light filtering covers! The students love the "clouds" and I love the softer light it provides- no more harsh florescent! We all appreciate it so much! 💖

**Thank you to the Selvido Family for the donation of an alphabet arc! We are using this fun tool to practice trick words during Daily 5. 💖

It will be an expectation going forward for the children to put their work in a 2 pocket folder after completion. Hopefully, their papers will make it home without being too crumpled! If your child does not have one, no worries! I got the students each a new one to replace the "less than sturdy" ones I passed out in Aug. and will give them a more substantial one on Monday. Please help your child and make sure it is in their backpack each day- THANK YOU!💕

Every Monday, we talk about what we did over the weekend and then the children "write" about it in their journals. At this stage they are drawing a representational picture. We are just starting to talk about labels and adding a letter to the picture if they know the first sound of something. It would be helpful if you could reflect upon your weekend with your child on Sunday evening or even Monday morning to help them formulate their answer. Believe me, it doesn't have to be anything super exciting! A simple "I played with my brother outside" or I went to a birthday party" is awesome! Young children are still learning about the meanings of "yesterday, today and tomorrow" and this can help with that lesson.

This week's reminders:

Wednesday is a 1/2 day for all students
Thursday is our first Kindergarten AND whole school community meeting!
Thursday- don't forget to send in library books!
Thursday-Shaker Lane Spirit Day! Wear blue and yellow (Littleton's colors) or anything "Shakey"

- this is not a "have to"!

This coming week, the children will...

Language Arts-

learn to write, name and differentiate between the vowel sound of i, u, (both short and long sounds)- vowels are very tricky!
continue to practice t, b, f, m, n
learn the new trick word: the
continue our Wit and Wisdom lessons about the 5 senses but with a different book- We will use Aliki's My 5 Senses

here are the letters on which we will focus this week:

*please note the word association for the letter i is: itch (not my choice, believe me!😆)

These are not the best videos but it gives you the idea of how we teach the sounds and write the letters:)

Math-

differentiate which group has less/more
practice writing numbers 0-5
match numbers to quantities
sequence numbers 0-10
draw or represent numbers 0-5

Social Emotional-

learn how to use "self talk" as a strategy for remembering directions (Second Step lesson #4)
learn the difference between expected and unexpected behaviors (Social Thinking lesson #5)
review and practice what the H (honesty) in H.E.A.R.T looks like in a classroom and on the playground
continue to review how to be a good friend and what it looks like at school
practice independence and problem solving during work time

Science-

continue to explore magnets and build marble runs
continue to learn about our 5 Senses and how we learn about our world using them
learn that trees can look very different from each other

Here are some pictures from last week's fun!

LOVE these pictures of students playing in pretend play❤

LOTS of letter m and n activities!

MARBLE RUN!

collaboration, cooperation and creativity!

SCIENCE CENTER: exploring with magnets

Making Name Plates:

Mouse Puppets: practicing those fine motor skills!

MATH CENTERS: numbers in the N, counting backwards while reciting 5 Little Monkeys, matching marbles quantities to numbers, counting monkeys and gluing numbers to represent the amount