Hello Families!!!

Today was a great day! We began our day with Daily 5. We had visitors from other schools come watch us do Daily 5 and practice the independent choices of Read to Self, Work on Writing, and Word Work. The visitors were amazed with your awesome children!

The children also had their hearing tested today. If the auditory professionals found something out of the ordinary in regards to your child’s hearing, you will be contacted. This is a great service, offered for free, to our students.

Today we practiced the comprehension strategy of naming the setting with the book, “Duck on a Bike” by David Shannon. This is one of my favorite read alouds!!!! This is a story about a courageous duck who chose to try something new….riding a bike. He rode around the barnyard waving at all of the farm animals. Eventually…all of the animals decided to ride bikes! Please ask your child to tell you setting of the story. (the setting of this story is the farm)

We also practiced using the sound of short a to blend sounds to read a word for our new poem. We blended the sounds b-a-t to read the word bat. The poem is called My Bat. The children read the poem together. Some were even able to read the entire poem by themselves! We even got to make bats to hang up in our classroom! While making these bats the children practiced their coloring, cutting, and following directions skills! 🙂

We learned a new game today during math workshop! We learned a game called Top It. This is a game played with number cards 0-9. It is played with a partner. The children took turns turning over a card and saying the number. The child with the bigger number won that round. You can create this game at home with a deck of playing cards, (minus the joker, queen, king, and ace), or with scrap paper that you simply number 0-9 to make your own cards. This is a fun way to practice number recognition as well as comparing numbers 1-10.

We also answered the Problem of the Day. It asked us to sort ourselves by how we come to school. We did this and discovered that the most popular way in our classroom to come to school is by bus. We have 10 children that ride the bus, 7 that walk to school, and 9 who drive in a car! 🙂

Today in science, we practiced making a prediction (hypothesis). The investigation had to do with whether or not an apple would sink or float. The children made their predictions and told me why they  made that prediction. We tested our hypothesis by dropping the apple in the water. Please ask your child to tell you what happened! (The apple floated!)

In writer’s workshop the children practiced working in pairs to listen to each other’s personal narrative writing and provide their friend with one way they could make their writing better. The little authors did a really great job listening to each other. The ideas were great. The personal narratives were about a time they went shopping. One students made the suggestion that their buddy add a drawing of the lady that was at the store (the worker) in the drawing.

Homework was sent home in the folders to review for the writing test tomorrow. The test will be on writing the first name, H, h, A, a. Please continue to practice writing numbers and counting to 100 by ones!

Tomorrow is a half day! Pick up will be at the classroom at 11:45.

It is not too late to bring in canned goods!!! Our class goal is 100 cans!!! Please help us reach goal. If each child in our class brings at least 5 cans…we will exceed our goal!!! The goal for Miller School as a whole is 5000 cans!!!! We can do it!!! The reward is helping those in need!!!

Please remember, Monday is Picture Day. The picture day form was sent home in the folders last week. Please be sure to fill out the form and include the exact amount of money owed for your order in the envelope. All children will have their picture taken. If you want to order pictures for home, please be sure the form is filled out and returned to me by Monday morning. Thank you!

Thanks for all you do!!!

Mrs. Mehrhof

Here some more adorable pictures of what we did today!