October 17, 2008

Upcoming Dates

Monday, October 20th: Walk-a-Thon Envelopes Due
On Tuesday, your child brought home the Walk-a-thon pledge envelopes. Remember this fundraiser helps to pay for things such as: music, art, playground structure, PE equipment, etc. The envelope is used to collect money for this fundraiser.

Friday, October 24th: Walk-a-Thon and Picture Day
We will be taking individual pictures in the morning. Picture envelopes will be sent home the day before, so please remember to return the envelope this morning! In the afternoon after lunch, we will begin the annual Walk-a-thon to raise money for our school. They can wear their Eaton shirt or the Eaton colors (blue, yellow, or white), and make sure to bring a hat and wear sunscreen! They will be given free Eaton water bottles during the Walk-a-thon. Dismissal is still at 3:05pm.

Monday, October 27th: NO SCHOOL – Staff Learning Day
Teachers will be having a staff development workshop on that day to write our school vision plan and to brainstorm ways to improve our school culture.

Friday, October 31st: Halloween
Students will need to bring their costume to school in their backpack or in a bag labeled with their name. After lunch, students have time to change into their costumes, and the school parade will be outside on the blacktop starting around 1:30pm. You may come to take pictures during this time. Afterwards, we will have some snacks and play games outside. You will be notified if you need to bring something for the party.

Sunday, November 2nd: Daylight Savings
Don’t forget to change your clocks back one hour!

Monday, November 3rd: October Book-It Reading Logs Due!
Remember to read every evening and complete the reading log we sent home earlier this month! Students who complete their reading logs will receive a certificate for a Pizza Hut personal pizza (and even if you do not like pizza, please remember to read every day!)


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Dear Families,

Fairyland was an adventure on Wednesday! Thank you again to our wonderful parent chaperones who had small groups of kids throughout the day: Mrs. Krispin, Mrs. Miura, Mrs. Natarajan, Mrs. Ogata, and Mrs. Sakanaka. We left right away in the morning, and unfortunately, had to sit in some traffic on the way up to Oakland. Once we got there, we watched a puppet show called Trickster Tales and then had lunch at the picnic tables. Afterwards, the children had time to visit the animals, play in the different themed areas, or ride the trolley! We were lucky that it was a warm, beautiful day, and we made it back to Eaton just on time! Overall, it was a bit further than we would like to travel, but the park itself was a lot of fun for the children and they had a great time!

• Language Arts:
Poem of the Week: My Nose
Song of the Week: Making Words
Kindness is: taking care of the classroom
Word Wall Words: and, jump, too, here, not, we
Story of the Week: Messy Meals, Nan and Fan, We Can!
Word Families: -an rhymes
Sounds: n, f, p, short a
Strategy and Skill Focus: Summarize, Compare and Contrast
Grammar: Beginning Sentences with Capital Letters

• PE: Mrs. Barelli took our class this week and we played with scoops and balls. We practiced our throwing and catching skills.

• Math: We have finished Chapter 3 this week on addition and subtraction facts. We started our fourth chapter on data and graphs. This will be a little more challenging for students because it requires reading word problems and following directions! We talked about two types of graphs: bar graphs and picture graphs.

• Science: It was great to hear the different types of liquid riddles this week in sharing! Great job and very creative liquids! This week, we also talked about our five senses: see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. We read a Halloween story and wrote our own stories using the five senses.

• Social Studies: We are starting to learn about October animals and themes such as pumpkins, spiders, bats, and Halloween. We are reading stories and starting projects using Halloween vocabulary words!

• Art: This week, we saw our art teacher, Mrs. Abada. We are lucky to have her
because of the PTO money all of you donated in the beginning of the year! She did a lesson about paper mosaics this week!

• Music: We are learning some fun Halloween songs in first grade music about black cats, witches, pumpkins, and skeletons! Have your child teach you a Halloween song!

• Library: We did not visit the Eaton library again this week because of the Book Fair. However, we did go to the Cupertino library, so please remember to return the books on your own!

Next week, I will be at a Leadership Conference with Mrs. Rowe and three other teachers on Tuesday and Wednesday. We are fortunate to have Mrs. Seema substitute most of the time since she is already familiar with all your children. Please remind your children to be on their best behavior still! Thank you!