October 20th, 2011

IMPORTANT DATES
Friday, October 21st: Art Barn Play at Devotion
Tuesday, October 25th: Picture Day!
Tuesday, November 8th: No School, Professional Day for teachers
Friday, November 11th: No School, Veteran’s Day

COMMUNICATION I check email regularly (Katrina_McNamara@brookline.k12.ma.us) and will reply as quickly as possible. You may also leave a message on the classroom phone (617.879.4430) or with the Devotion School office (617.879.4400).  If you would like to be “invited” to the blog please let me know. If you prefer the paper copy, I will put it in your family mailbox each Thursday.

LIBRARY
Our visits to the library continue to be exciting and successful. It really works out to check out books before we have Third Grade Reading Buddies. This way, everyone has a new book that they are excited to read.

MATH
Continuing with the number line, we practiced making jumps on the number line to solve addition and subtraction problems. We noticed that we use addition when we jump to the right (the numbers get bigger) and we use subtraction when we jump to the left (the numbers get smaller). We also practiced undoing jumps on the number line, for example 5+3=8 and 8-3=5. We noticed that the beginning and ending numbers are flipped in these number sentences and the middle number (the number and direction of the jumps) are also opposites (+3 and -3). We will begin the concepts of greater than and less than using the number line and the symbols <,>, and =.

LIBRARY
In order to check out a new book on Fridays, students will need to bring their library books back to school on Fridays (or earlier). Please enjoy your child’s library book together at home, and help your child remember to bring the book back to school every Friday.

WORD WALL WORDS: am, can, and
This week our Word Wall Words again have a short a sound. We have have begun to notice and practice word families (for example, if you can read and spell at, you can also read and spell hat, cat, mat, sat, etc.).

LITERACY CENTERS
We added a few new centers and Literacy games this week. We learned work wall Tic Tac Toe and an I Spy game using letters and clues. We added the Word Family Center where children make as many words as possible in a given word family (this week’s word family is the at family). We also added the Stamping Center where students stamp the beginning letters for a number of words in one word family. With both of these word creating centers, we are focused on the idea of making and reading the word, and we’ve discussed that its ok to use nonsense or made-up words for these purposes.

COMMUNITY
We made a list of the all of the communities that we can or do belong to. We started small with our family community and expanded to identify our classroom, school, and town communities. We expanded much further to include America, Israel, the world, Earth, and the Universe communities. And we thought on a smaller scale to include soccer team, church, temple, synagogue, Extended Day, DASEP, club, apartment building, and neighborhood communities. And we realized that parents and family members might also be part of a work community.

We are considering the rules of our family community and our school communities. We will discuss the rules that are the same in both communities and the rules that are different for each. We will talk about how we figure out these rules and move among communities and rules.

We will continue to focus on these two big ideas:
    1. We have rules, roles and jobs in each of these communities.
    2. We have different rules, roles and jobs in the different communities that we belong.

SCIENCE
We began our Liquids Unit this week by identifying “Liquids and Non- Liquids.” We thought of things in our everyday life that fit these categories, like water, milk, juice, blocks, tables, and oceans to name a few.  We will use these lists to identify the properties of liquids.

HALLOWEEN
We will celebrate Halloween on Monday, October 31st with many fall, pumpkin, and Halloween activities. We will not be sharing candy or bringing in costumes. We’ll keep you posted of more details.

RECYCLE CENTER
We have successfully opened the Recycle Center during Choice Time. It has been a huge hit! This center is a collection of scrap papers, magazines, interesting materials (old cards, crepe paper, garland, puzzle pieces, etc.), and old boxes (cereal, snack, shoes boxes, etc.). Children use their imagination and scissors, glue and tape to transform these objects into toys, homes for stuffed animals, books and more. Please feel free to donate clean, empty boxes or other items to our Recycle Center.

SNACK
Please pack a nutritious, filling, low-sugar snack for your child each day. We eat lunch at 12:40pm everyday, so our snack is very important to keep us energized during our long morning. Please encourage your child to eat his or her entire snack at this time.

FIRST GRADE WISH LIST
    We welcome donations of the following items for our classroom:
•    Thick Markers
•    Old Legos that your family is no longer using~ we’d like to create a Lego Center for choice time.

ASK YOUR CHILD…
These questions can be conversation starters to discuss the week in school.
•    What was your favorite part of the Art Barn play we watched on Friday?
•    What is in your Literacy Choice Folder?
•    Can you name some words in the “at” word family?
•    What did you notice about the inside of a gourd? What did it remind of you of?