A Peek at the Last week of OCTOBER!

I hope you are all enjoying the last full weekend in OCTOBER! Where has the time gone?

 This morning while I was watching my two sons play flag football one of our Huard Huddle friends was watching her brother play!

I love running into my Huard Huddle friends outside of school! Great seening you Graf family!


Thank you for coming to conferences. It was great meeting with all of you and sharing with you the wonderful learning I see happening here in class! It is so important for your child to see your family and I working together as a team, supporting their education!

Reminders:


If you wish to donate a pumpkin you can. We already have many PUMPTASTIC pumpkins so don't feel you have to. Thank you to all the families who brought some in!

THANK YOU TO ALL THE MOMS WHO HELPED RIP OUT MATH PAGES! THAT IS NOT A SKILL THAT WE AS LITTLE KINDERS CAN DO WITHOUT ROLLS AND ROLLS OF TAPE! SO I REALLY APPRECIATE THE HELP! 

APPLES! We will make applesauce this week. Please bring in an apple so each child can peel their own and add it to our sauce!


Readers Workshop:

This week we will enjoy many non fiction books about PUMPKINS! We will learn about the pumpkin life cycle and sequence it! We will learn how to label the parts of a pumpkin and make some predictions of what pumpkins have and what they are. This is such a fun week filled with SCIENCE!


Reading Centers; This week we will be focusing on buddy reading and introducing our poetry journal. These are two of our reading centers so our goal is to become independent with these activities!

Writers Workshop: We are wrapping up our name writing books as well as trying to get in our writing lessons. We have many from last week that we need to cover still so I won't be introducing new writing lessons. We will be working on making our books and continuing to view ourselves as readers and writers!


Math: This week our focus will be on numbers 1-10 and comparing them. We will be using the balance scale, number scale, making number towers, rekenreks and other manipulatives to ensure we are taking our understanding of numbers that much deeper! 

Books we will read during math are:
10 Black Dots
Pick A Circle Gather Squares
10 Hooting Owls


Sight Word Reader: We Look
Sight Words: look at
Letters this week: c, cat, /c/ and a, apple /a/

 Every morning we now start our day off with PLAY STATIONS! The children love this time to transition into their school day. They practice sharing, kind words, problem solving and most importantly...PLAY!! Here are some photos...

Have a wonderful week!

A Peek at week of 10/19/15

 Good evening Huard Huddle Families!

Reminders:

• PARENTS: YOU WILL HAVE HOMEWORK TOMORROW NIGHT! PLEASE CHECK THE FOLDER and RETURN on TUESDAY!

• Book Order due: Friday October 23, 2015

Conferences are coming up this week on Wednesday and Thursday! THURSDAY IS EARLY RELEASE DAY!  I look forward to meeting with all of you! Please arrive on time and it will be my mission to keep each appointment to the 15 minute alloted time so we don't run behind.

 A great big thank you to the Manchester Fire Department for coming out and educating the Kindergarten and First grade students about FIRE SAFETY. They taught us about the truck, their equipment and more importantly how to get out quickly, have a meeting place, and check our smoke detectors. THANK YOU TO ALL THE PARENTS WHO WORKED WITH THEIR CHILD TO COMPLETE THE HOMEWORK OF COUNTING YOUR WORKING SMOKE DETECTORS. It is such an important topic to discuss!

Readers Workshop:

I'm looking forward to continuing our illustration study as well as continuing to introduce more rituals and routines of our reading block.

This week we will enjoy some fall favorites! We will begin our exploration of leaves and apples! We will begin by making a KWL chart about apples. K (what we KNOW) W (what we want to learn) L (what we have LEARNED).  I would like everyone to bring in an APPLE this week. We will be making APPLESAUCE on THURSDAY!

We will also be learning how to draw and label the parts of an apple.

Books we will read:

Apples

How Do Apples Grow

Apples by Gail Gibbons

Johnny Appleseed

                                                          Season's Of Arnold's Apple Tree


Writers Workshop:

We continue to work on establishing rituals and routines of our writing block. This week our lessons will be:
Lesson 11: Using resources
Lesson 12: The Writing Environment: introduce the need for a quiet work environment for writing time. Give students the opportunity to move around to different quiet work areas.
Lesson 13: Planning and visualizing our writing
Lesson 14: How Pictures Convey Stories

Word Study:

Letters: M and N   (m, man, /m/, n, nut, /n/)
Sight words: we go to
Sight Word Reader: We Go

When rereading the Paper Decodable Readers at home, please make sure your child is pointing to the word they are reading.  Matching their finger to the word they are saying is called voice /print match.  For many children this is a new skill and requires lots of focus. Please encourage your child to show you how their finger moves to the next word  (left to right) as they read aloud to you.  If they are unable to do it independently, use the hand over hand strategy that I use.  Place your hand over their hand and model moving their pointer finger to the next word as you read.  Eventually their finger will no longer POINT to each word, but will begin to SWEEP from left to right as they scan the words they are reading more fluently. 

Math

We are wrapping up our study of numbers 1-10. The students have created a book that you will see at our conferences. We will be digging deeper into our understanding of numbers this week.
We will read the following books and be working with manipulatives to have more hands on experiences with numbers.

10 Apples Up On Top
10 Black Dots
Pete The Cat and the 5 Little Pumpkins
Mouse Count
Happy Birthday

All week the Huard Huddle enjoyed sailing the "seas" on the three ships that Christopher Columbus sailed on. Here we are discovering....

I hope you all have a wonderful week! I am looking forward to seeing all of you. 

We will be sailing the seas! I hope you all enjoyed the long weekend. My family and I were in York Maine for a soccer tournament all weekend! I am looking forward to "discovering" and "sailing" the seas with the Huard Huddle tomorrow. Pictures to come! Please be sure to ask your child which ship they sailed on!

Reminders:

October Book Orders Due October 22. You can order online with the code HYX8G or make checks payable to Scholastic Book Club. There are some wonderful selections this month!

Please sign and return all progress reports.

COATS! Sweatshrits! It is getting chilly out. Please be sure to wear layers and bring coats!

BOX TOPS! If you have any please send them in!



Readers Workshop:

We are enjoying a mini author study of Mary Lou Ray. We are such great experts at noticing some very important elements in illustrations. It is magical to hear these young minds express their noticings with one another.

Buddy reading is going well. We have enjoyed looking at alphabet books, Mary Lou Ray's children's books and our sight word readers. I was able to perform some baseline reading assessments this past week. I was pleasantly surprised with the boys and girls and 

Writer's Workshop: We are catching up with past lessons. This week we will focus on making charts and other resources to help us be independent while writing.


Letters T B and F
Sight Word Reader: I Can See
Sight Words: I, can, see

Math: we will be focusing on a number a day: 8, 9, 10, 0. We are subitizing, estimating, graphing and diving deep into understanding numbers.

Here are some photos of our COPS and KIDS assembly.  A good time was had by all!