Happy October!

"The more that you read,

The more things you will know.

The more that you learn,

The more places you'll go."

-Dr. Seuss

This week the West K Kids were introduced to their very own book bags. In these bags are books that are Just Right for them. Each week they will have new Just Right books in their book bags. Sometimes there will be the the same book for more than one week in order to give the child a boost of confidence with a book they have seen and read before. The boys and girls love their books and book bags!

Important Dates and Reminders:

10/9 - Picture Retake Day

10/10 - Buddies Field Day 9:20-10:10

- Scholastic Book Orders Due

10/16 and 10/17 - Parent/Teacher Conferences - No School For Students - Adult only conference

10/22 - Kindergarten Math Night 6:00-7:00

10/24 - Go Green With Graland (we will send home their cards the night before so they can stop to get them punched before coming to the classroom)

10/31 - Halloween Parade 8:30 - 9:00 (costumes - no weapons or blood)

- Halloween Party after parade until 10:00ish

- 12:00 Dismissal

11/3 and 11/4 - No School

Notes:

-Please make sure to look for Take Home Folders in backpacks on Thursday.

-Next week we will begin our third Word Wall Word. Help your child correctly spell these words: I, like and the.

-Scholastic order forms are coming home this afternoon. It is easier for me if you order directly online. If you order online you also then have the option of ordering from other grade catalogs. If you are having trouble with the online ordering please let me know!

Content and Curriculum:

During Reading Workshop next week we will continue to build upon strategies already learned. Our focus is how readers Get Their Minds Ready To Read. You can have your child do this when you are reading a book to them or they are reading a book to you. Here are the steps:

1. Read the title and look at the cover.

2. Make a prediction about what the book will be about.

3. Do a picture walk. Look through the pictures and tell the story just by looking at the pictures.

Next week we will add these steps:

4. Look for words on the page you may know.

5. Look for patterns in the words.

We are celebrating our first narrative writing stories with our buddies tomorrow afternoon. We will keep these stories to show you at conferences. We are going to keep these stories until the end of the year so when they students publish their last writing piece they can compare their first and last piece to see how much they have grown as an author. During Writing Workshop next week we will begin a new writing unit! This unit is a non-fiction writing unit. Writers will observe, label, sketch and write about different leaves, flowers, pumpkins and other items from nature.

Our math lessons will focus on Counting and Numbers 0-10. We will work on composing and decomposing numbers, counting with 1-1 correspondence, ordering numbers, one more and one less and the ever important subitizing. Subitizing is when children can look at a representation of a number and recognize the group total. For example looking at dice and knowing that they rolled a 5 without counting the dots. Another example would be showing children a number of fingers on your hands and having them say the total rather than counting the total.

We will continue to have our All About Me presentations. Each morning and afternoon we have had one child share their project with the class. Thank you for helping them create their project and practice presenting. Our next project will be the All About My Family. During this project you will create a similar poster board and come in to present it with your child. Plenty of time before that!

Maxi was analyzing his Roll and Record results