Dec. 15-20

Reading
We will be listening, reading and watching The Polar Express this week. We will be focusing on the skill of visualizing and progressing through the book by listening to it and making a movie in our heads. Looking at the pictures in the book and making movies in our head. Watching and discussing the movie over 3 days.

Phonics
We will be learning/reviewing vowels and their sounds this week. Please make sure your child knows the short vowel sounds for all the vowels. Have them practice sounding out CVC words like cat, pig, pot, bed and hug.

Math
We will review new positional vocabulary we learned last week such as beside, next to, between, in front of, behind, under, inside and outside. We will also start chapter 6 which is numbers to 20.

Writing
Students will be writing about an animal they know. This will be a great wrap up to our animal homes mini-unit. Students should be writing at least one complete sentence when they write a story. Sentences should include a capital letter at the beginning, spaces between words, an ending mark and it should make sense.

Have a great week!

Mr. E

Adjectives for Francesca

December 9-13

Reading
Our story of the week is A Bed for Winter. It is about a dormouse preparing to hibernate. We will also be reading other books about hibernation and migration. I will be introducing sequence of a story (first, next, last), adjectives and comparing two ideas from a story/ies. Our letters this week are Ww and Xx.

Writing
Students will be writing about their friends. We will also be learning about sentences and how we write them correctly. (Capital, ending mark, spaces, makes sense) Students will be introduced to adjectives and encouraged to use them in their writings to make their stories more interesting.

Math
Big and small things (adjectives)
"Does it Fit"- a fun game teaching sizes of objects and capacity of space to fit them (play at home)
Positions- lots of new vocabulary such as under, above, next to, etc.

Science
Hibernation and migration. We will be focusing on gray whale and monarch butterfly migrations as well as many hibernating animals. We will "attempt" to have a debate on Friday where students try to prove why either hibernation/migration is better. Should be interesting.

Sight word game
"Sight word search"
Give you child a book and have them find and write all the sight words they can. Then they can count and see which word was the most in the book. (I will be introducing graphing this week so they could even try to graph the results. Might be too much though.)

Have a great week.

Mr. E

Animal home comparison

Learning about Hanukka

December 2-6

Yesterday (sorry for the delay in writing this) marked the start of our second of four units this year. Our first unit was all about connecting with ourselves. This unit is about connecting with the community. In this unit we wil explore questions like: What is a culture?, What is hibernation?, What is shelter? and What are houses made of? During this unit, which will go until mid-February, we will be reading about animals and their homes as well as human homes around the world. We will conclude this unit by building homes out of boxes and different materials. Please save and/or send in any boxes/cardboard material (paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls, etc.). We will also be going on our second field trip to Kohl's children's museum (Northbrook) in February.

Reading
We are reading a non-fiction book called Animal Homes this week. We will be comparing different animals and their homes. We will also read Goldilocks and the three bears and compare a real bear home to a fictional bear home.

Phonics
We are reviewing/learning the letter Gg and Jj this week.

Writing
Students are writing about a favorite food this week. They will also be introduced to spacing when they write. Students are being encouraged to add more detail using words (write more sentences).

Math
We are learning the concept of more and less. Students are learning how to find "how many more" and "how many fewer". This is a difficult concept so please be practicing at home. (i.e. Show them five pennies and six dimes and ask which one is more. How many more? They should use one-to-one correspondence to see how many are left. That will tell them how many more. ) Another skill is to ask them how many more to get #. (i.e. Show them three pennies and ask them how many more to make 5. They should say, "I have three, I need 2 more to make 5." Or you can have them roll a dice and identify how many more to make six. "I have 2, I need 4 more to make 6."

Social studies
We are reviewing rules and working on keeping our room cleaner.

Sight word game
"Spell it"
Tell your child a sight word and have them spell it. This is a good review of words they already know. It will help with their writing if they can memorize how to spell them.

Wish List
We need paper towels. (this is a need not a want)
Cardboard boxes and items (see above)
Check out my wish list google document.