Oct. 30th Craft event-thank you volunteers!!
Oct. 31st Pumpkin Carving with Dads. Remember-no costumes please.
Nov.5th Early Release-Noon.
We will also be celebrating the 50th day of school this day with some fun activities all having to do with the number 50! Kiddos are invited to dress in 1950's theme...poodle skirts, slicked hair, rolled up jeans etc. We will be learning some 1950's pattern dances like the Hand Jive!

I have begun small group guided reading lessons. A leveled reader should be in your child's daily folder. Sometimes this book will come with an extention worksheet to complete at home. These leveled books will be books that we have worked on during small group guided reading and are meant to be practiced at home for fluency. On occasion, it will be a "cold read" or a book that we have not worked on yet. I aim to get a new book home at least once a week...more often for some groups.
Please keep the book in your child's zippered pouch of their daily folder and sign the reading log with each new book. I do appreciate comments---this is good info for me and helps me with my planning and book selection for your child/group.
The books are checked out from our leveled book room and as a result....If a book is lost, I will need to send you an invoice for the cost of replacement (typically around $16)and I am unable to send home a new book without the return of the previous book.
Please let me know if you have any questions! Thank you for all your hard work!

This unit will culminate in a favorite event: Pumpking Carving with Dads (Uncles, Grandpa's etc, also! Mom's in a pinch)

Friday, October 31st 7:45-8:30.

If you can get up to school before 7:45 -super! You could start as soon as you get here. I provide all the directions for the carvers, carvers provide their own pumpkin and carving tools.

We will be learning all about pumpkins the last week of October. Reading and writing some interesting fiction and non-fiction as well as pumpkin life cycles, uses and history of the jack-0-lantern.

We continue to be listening to spoken language and identifying beginning sounds, clapping syllables and stretching out words. We are focusing on decoding combinations of sounds/letters. We are learning upper and lower case letter formations in tandem.
We continue learning how to read/write color words and will be adding a variety of sight words to read and write each week.

We are working on ordinal numbers, number and event sequencing and graphing.

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

[Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum. See his web site at www.robertfulghum.com/ ]