December 3, 2010

Dear Families,

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. It was so nice for my family because of the twins and of course, because my sister is home and getting better. I hosted this year! I was thankful for the entire week off to go grocery shopping and prepare for the all day event!

Here are some highlights for the week:

• Language Arts: During the next 3 weeks, we will not be doing our regular language arts activities such as letter of the week or literacy centers. Instead, we are working on our reading and writing through a social studies project. We are learning about the months of the year and special days that occur each month. We are writing a sentence that describes something about each month, and we are making crafts to match our writing. We are remembering to use capitals, spaces, and periods in our sentences.

• Writing: In addition to our social studies project, we read some stories about Santa this week. We tried to write a letter to Santa and tell him three reasons why we have been good this year. Then we wrote what our wish was. Some students had a difficult time with sounding out the words and using inventive spelling to write down their ideas. Some students told me what they wanted to write and I wrote it down for them. During weekly library journal homework, please encourage your child to write down their own sentences versus telling them the letters and spelling. They need to practice writing independently. Again, spelling is not important. I am looking for breaking down the sounds they hear and their effort. These Santa letters are always very adorable, and you can read them on our website under “Classwork!”

• Math: This week we continued reviewing our numbers and worked on 6 and 7. We are starting to practice writing math sentences using the plus and equals sign, such as 3 + 2 = 5. In addition to writing the math sentence, we are learning to orally tell a story about the math sentence, such as: There are three ducks in the water. Two ducks join them. How many ducks are there now? There are five ducks in all. We are learning the magic words, “in all,” which mean addition. Students need to demonstrate understanding of math concepts using not just numbers, but words and pictures too.

• Social Studies: Congratulations to Saad, who was chosen as our twelfth Star of the Week! You can read about him in the “Classwork” section of our website, and click under “Star of the Week.” In addition to our months and special days project, we are learning about holidays around the world. This week we learned about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. We read some stories to teach us about these special holidays. Today, we made a menorah to celebrate Hanukkah, which is the object that holds all the candles. Also, we learned about another holiday called Kwanzaa and made a unity cup that is used to show unity within family members.

• Computer Lab: We illustrated a poem this week called, “First Day of Winter.” We learned that December 21st is the first day of winter, and we drew a picture that shows what a snow scene would look like from inside our homes. They drew snow, icicles, and snowflakes! Some students were able to finish this week, but we will be continuing this project next week.

• Art: We saw Mrs. Abada on Thursday for our December art class. We learned about different directions such as horizontal, vertical, and diagonal. Then we learned to make different types of lines such as zig zag, dashed, hairy, castle, spiral, wavy, etc. Afterwards we used watercolor to paint different sections on our pictures!

I found out on Monday this week that Anika is no longer in our classroom. Her last day was before Thanksgiving break! We didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to her. Also, Nanaka’s last day with us will be in two weeks on December 17th. Her family is moving back to Japan and we will definitely miss her!

If your family plans on leaving Eaton during the year, please try to let me know at least 2 weeks in advance. We have many projects that I have to collect and return to you, so knowing ahead of time is very helpful. Thank you!