News from the Pad

It's hard to believe November is here!  We have a busy week (and month) ahead.  The next several weeks we are learning about people (life) from the past and comparing them to people and life in the present.  Today, the children had a great time looking through family photos, old and new, and sorting them into categories. Thank you all for sending in pictures.  Some of them are posted in the hallway for our "American Heritage" display. :)   Other activities we have planned this week are:

Reading  Yesterday, we read Sarah Morton's Day (the life of a pilgrim girl) and have been comparing/contrasting her life with our own.  I am also doing AR testing on the book, Ugly Pie, which will go into next week as well.  There's a recipe for Ugly Pie that I'll try to send home this week.  :)  Comprehension strategies we're using in the classroom (you can do at home) are: identifying characters and setting, retelling the beginning, middle, and end of the story, comparing/contrasting, predicting, and identifying fiction and nonfiction books.  Phonics skills this week are: identifying the beginning /n/ sound in words, like Nyle Noodle.  You may want to have your child list words that begin with n, as well as end with n. This skill will be easy to do with our word family -an.  Come up with as many -an words as possible, and take apart and blend the words.  Ex:  /f/  an, fan;  /m/  an, man;  /k/  an, can; etc. 

Language Arts  We will continue to write (and speak) in complete sentences, use punctuation to end sentences, and capital letters at the beginning.  What we say can be written down and our focus is writing our thoughts down and sounding out our words on paper.  Sight words we have been using in our writing include: I, can, see, like, my.

Math  The focus is on numbers 1-20, verbally, in writing, and counting with manipulatives.  Our math centers include: domino counting, number writing (using number "roads" and hotwheels), counting with Halloween-themed erasers, number concentration, candycorn count, and making a collage of numbers. 

Science  We will explore the law of gravity this week, with an experiment to see which objects in the classroom fall more slowly/rapidly than others.  Any objects that the children can pick up, then drop, are fair game.  :)