Open House, Conferences, Student Spotlight & More

First of all, thank you for your patience with our blog post...we ran out of time on Thursday since we were so busy preparing for the open house. Thank you to everyone who came to visit our classroom on Thursday night. We had an amazing turn out!! For those of you that could not make it, we had a number of sign-up sheets that we need your responses for.

The first item is fall conferences. Click here to see what dates/times are still available or to see what time you signed up for.

Next is our Student Spotlight week schedule. Click here for a description of the Student Spotlight Week Activities. And HERE to sign up for a week to feature your child.

Finally, if you would like to bring a fresh fruit or veggie snack during the month of November, please see our snack calendar here.

Please e-mail Mrs. Fox with your preferred sign-up dates/times, etc. Or send a note to school with your child.

Just a reminder that the school district policy is that children may not be dropped off more than 5 minutes prior to the start of class. Please be mindful of waiting until 7:55am or 11:55am to bring your child into school, even if the bus students arrive earlier. Staffing & prep time is an issue when too many children arrive prior to the actual start of class. Please also remember to sign your child in and out each day.

The firemen and firetruck will be here on Thursday! We are learning all sorts of fire safety throughout the week and look forward to telling the firemen all that we learned.

The purple newsletter in last week's folder had the permission slip for the pumpkin farm on it. Please return this along with payment ASAP. If you need another permission slip, please click on the Newsletter link on the left of this screen and print another.

Have a great week!

Month in Review

Wow!  We have completed one month of school already!  We have learned sooo much about each other and our class.

•     Names of friends
•     Routine of the day
•     How to say goodbye to families for class time and hello to our classmates
•     Songs
•     Clean up after ourselves

This week we talked about friendships. We made a quilt for our classroom that shows  ways to be a good friend. We used the watercolor paints for the first time to paint the world for our project on Tuesday. On Wednesday we learned the sign language for please and thank you. Be sure to have your child show you if they haven't already. We have a few photos posted on the Photo Gallery page too, you can get to it by clicking the link in the left navigation bar.

We are looking forward to having a lot more fun in the month of October. We will be learning about fall, pumpkins & apples. The fire crew will be bringing a fire truck to school for us to look at and even sit in on Thursday October, 13th as we wrap up our fire safety unit. We will take our first class trip on a bus to Hermanson's Pumpkin Patch on Thursday, October 20th. And, of course, we will enjoy our costume party on October 31st. More details on all these fun-filled events will be in future newsletters & blog posts so stay tuned!

We have added a theme for our October Show & Tell...collections. When it is your child’s turn for Show & Tell, please help him/her bring in items from a collection he/she has. Such as cars, dolls, shells, rocks, Beanie Babies, Bakugans, Squinkies, coins, stamps, Star Wars figures, etc. Or if he/she has a precious/fragile collection (figurines, etc) please send a photograph of the collection instead.

Don't forget about our Open House 

next Thursday from 5:00-6:30! 

All family members are welcome to come visit.

Also, please subscribe to our blog using the box on the right and our blog updates will be delivered to your e-mail inbox as soon as the news is posted.

Oceans of Fun

Wow! Has this week ever gone fast?! We enjoyed the holiday weekend and it sounds like many of our friends did too. This week we are talking about oceans. We even have a beach set up in our classroom! 

 On Tuesday we made our graduation self-portraits that will be on display during our graduation ceremony. 

Wednesday we read a book called The Rainbow Fish and made our own fish by painting bubble wrap & pressing our papers onto it. Then we added a shiny scale just like in the book.

On Thursday we made our final page for our person book. They just need to be bound and will be given out at graduation.

We will continue to focus on Oceans and Beaches next week, along with our end-of-the-year wrap-up & graduation preparations. 

Remember that our graduation ceremony is on Wednesday evening at 6:30pm at St. Joseph's Church. We will be in the lower-level where the stage area is located (same spot as our Christmas concert). Please do not arrive more that 10 min. in advance...it's just too long for our young friends and their younger siblings to sit and wait...trust us...your graduation experience will be much more enjoyable! We will have seating for everyone so no need to worry about that.

Ponds, Meadows & More

This week we learned about animals that live in ponds and meadows. On Monday we watercolor painted a pond. Watercoloring is a soothing activity for kids this age, so if you are looking for a quiet, creative outlet when your little one is getting rambunctious, you might want to pull out the watercolor paints.  

 

Tuesday was our final trip up to Community Elementary for Star Literacy testing. Once again, we had model students who walked quietly through the halls so as not to disturb the big kids. We are so proud!! 

We made an accordion book about frogs on Wednesday. Be sure to ask your child to explain the life cycle of a frog to you.

Thursday we used our fine motor skills to tear paper to make a turtle. There were a lot of steps to this project, including cutting, tearing and gluing.

Remember there is NO SCHOOL on Monday due to the Memorial Day Holiday. We will see you on Tuesday for the start of Ocean Week.

Also, we have a number of things due on Tuesday, including any payment for or unwanted spring/graduation pictures and contact list update forms. We also need the graduation "count" sheets that were included in your child's red folder this week.

A Camping We Will Go!

We really enjoyed our camping unit this week! We had a real tent in our classroom, along with camp chairs and a campfire tripod complete with s'mores!

Speaking of s'mores we made some to decorate our classroom.

We also made our own fishing poles complete with a nice catch. We have a "pond" in our dramatic play area where we can practice our casting & reeling.

What a catch!

We wrapped up our week with our visit to 5K and a tour of Community Elementary School. We saw a 5K classroom,  the office area, art room, music room. lunch room, gym and playground.

Visiting the Music Room

Zoo Photos Finally Posted

AM Class Photos


PM Class Photos

Fractured Fairy Tales

This week we talked about fairy tales and heard some different versions of the stories. It was fun to talk about what was the same as what we are used to and what was different in each of the new story versions.

On Monday, we read the Three Billy Goats Gruff and we made a goat paper bag puppet. We also read Miss Smith's Incredible Storybook, where the storybook characters came to life!

Tuesday we read Cinderella and then a funny, opposite version called Big Foot Cinderrrrrella. We got to choose which shoe we wanted to make...a glass slipper or a bark clog. We used colored pencils and added stickers or popsicles sticks to our shoes.

Wednesday was a great weather day and we hope you got to enjoy it on your day off!

Little Red Riding Hood was our focus on Thursday. We enjoyed the Little Critter version of Little Red Riding Hood, followed by a darker, Chinese version of the story called LonPoPo. We used markers to color a character from the Red Riding Hood Story and got the choice of making it into a headband or mask to reenact the story.

Friday we wrapped up our week of silly fairy tales with Big Bad Wolf is Good and Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Book. Mrs. Crandall's family loves the Big Bad Book and other books by Lauren Child...check them out at the library! We worked on another page for our person book and finished up our Mother's Day projects.

Have a wonderful weekend and Happy Mother's Day to all you Moms! We hope you are treated like royalty this weekend!!