Theme:

We will now be focusing on fall time- changes in the weather, how weather affects living things, and life cycles.  We will be planting pumpkin seeds and learning about the growth of the apple tree and pumpkin plants.  We will be reading both fiction and non-fiction books to help us learn about fall time and life cycle.  We will be going on our next field trip to Evan's Orchard on Thursday, October 22- parents welcome! :)

Language Arts:  I teach letter recognition and letter sounds through many whole group and small group activities.  The kids will learn to associate letters with "Alphabet Friends" that we make and sing a song about here in class!  If your child already knows most or all of the letter sounds, they will be challenged with reading books and sight words at their level.  I group the students according to their levels once all assessments have been complete for "Reading Circles" which are small groups that focus on needed skills for reading and writing.

We will be writing friendly letters to each other along with writing about ourselves as we continue learning how to write complete sentences.  I am so proud of how well the kids are already learning how to "track print" (point to the words) as they read their books and how they are finding "snappy words" in many of the books and poems we use at school!! :)

SNAPPY WORDS(Sight Words):  We will begin learning:   a, at, and, apple, am, each, egg, I, in, is, it, on, one, over, up, under, us, be, by, ball, can, come, color

Math:  We use the "Everyday Math" program here at Rosa Parks that teaches number skills through many games and center activities.  We have been hard at work learning about "teen" numbers (11-19) and how to add 10 and a smaller number to make a "teen" number. (Examples:  10 + 1 = 11, 10 +2 = 12, 10 + 3= 13, 10 + 4= 14, etc) 

HERE ARE OUR 6 PATTERN BLOCK SHAPES that we will be using throughout the year.  We will be learning about other shapes as well, but these are called "Pattern Blocks" and are used in many activities for EVERYDAY Math.  We continue to use the pattern blocks to sort the shapes by their "attributes"-- how many sides, colors, corners, size, etc.