Playing a math game “Growing Train.”  Ask your student how to play it so you can play at home.  Today we will play “Top It.”  In a bit I will teach them “Shrinking Train.”  We have fun in here and, along the way, we are learning too!

Take a look at us eating our decorated cookies.  Yummy!

I hope each of you had a wonderful time during our Thanksgiving holiday.  I am truly thankful for my Howard families and staff and each of my Kindergarteners.  I am so blessed each and every day.

We have a new student…Maysoon Alsaidi!  Welcome to our class and to Howard School!

Winter weather will be arriving soon.  Please check the weather and dress your child accordingly.  Fashion boots may be worn to school but need to be left in the hallway to dry.  Shoes are needed for the classroom…we sit a lot on the carpet and wet carpet isn’t comfortable so shoes are necessary for the classroom.

December 2-6 Howard School Student Council is sponsoring a Food Drive through Gleaners Food.  (Note coming home today) Please consider sending in some can goods to support this cause.  We will keep track of our daily can count.  (good math-gotta grab those teachable moments!)

November Book-It Calendars are due.  December calendars coming home tomorrow.

Looking ahead…

Wed., 12-11  LATE START

Thurs., 12-19 Holiday Party

Fri., 12-20 Last day of school before Winter Holiday

We will have an all-school Sing-A-Long.  During the Sing-A-Long                                some Howard students have volunteered to donate some hair for                             Children With Hair Loss.

Mon., 1-6-14 Return to school

My December Students of the Month are Emerson Lahay and Isabella Saleh!  Good job girls…Respectful, Responsible, and showing Integrity!

READING-Our Theme is Food and our weekly unit is Where Food Comes From.              Letter: “N  n”              Word:  “to”

All groups are reading and working on different strategies for reading.  Some are working on Accuracy when they read.  Others are working on Fluency and many are working on Comprehension.  We are busy!

WRITING-We are returning to Informational Writing.  We will be gathering facts from our reading and writing them in complete sentences.  Students should be writing with capital letters at the beginning of sentences and punctuation at the end.  Good sentence structure!

MATH-We will be working on addition with a game called “Growing Train.”  After I work with them in whole group, it will be included in the Math Center.  We also will be playing “Top-IT.”  (You may remember it as “War.”)  We will end the week with Pattern Block Templates and patterns.  Lots of fun in here!

SOCIAL STUDIES-We will be discussing “Wants and Needs.”  (Very appropriate for this time of year.)

It will be another fun-filled learning week in Room 1.

Mrs. Smith

WOW…the turkeys look great and the kids are so proud to show off their turkey!  I hope you enjoyed helping with the project.

Mrs. Smith

Thanks to all of you for taking time to meet with me for our conference time.  We don’t get enough time to visit!  Keep up your efforts at home with daily reading, some writing and math activities.  The students are so engaged during the days and should have lots to share with you when they get home.  Remember that they won’t always bring home something in their hands.  Sometimes they will bring home new learning in their head and sometimes in their heart.

Have a good weekend!

Mrs. Smith

Thanks for your time last night at conferences. Looking forward to tonight’s rounds.

Mrs. Smith

Last week I enjoyed meeting with some of you at Parent/Teacher Conferences and I look forward to meeting with my remaining parents tonight and tomorrow night.  As a reminder, here are the schedules conferences time slots.

Wed., Nov. 20                                       Thurs., Nov. 21

4:40 Natalia Bronson                    4:40 Amira Karim

5:00 Mustafa Bazzi                        5:00 Tate Dobert

5:20 Isabella Saleh                        5:20 Ahmad Khuja

5:40 Emma Mackie                        5:40 Natalie Hansen

6:00 Adam Elhajomar                  6:00 Selina Hourani

6:20 Jennah Saad

6:40 Jason Anderson

I look forward to seeing you!

Mrs. Smith

Getting back to our week…

READING-We are continuing on with Transportation.  This week we are reading, talking and writing about Traveling Near and Far.  How would we travel?  (boat, plane, jet ski, tow truck???) and where would we go?

WRITING- We are making Travel Posters.

Our letter is “I i” and our word is “Go  go.”  Most already can read and write so much more.  They are doing well.

MATH-We continue with addition and subtraction story problems.  You can do lots of these as you drive around on errands, putting away things in their room, etc.  Make it real…make it fun!

Keep up the reading at home!

Last week was so busy I didn’t even have time to get a post out to you…sorry!

We ended last week with a GREAT science experience!!!

Previously in the week we had established things that float and things that sink. We spent a lot of time establishing our steps for conducting science experiments and we review the steps every time we conduct a science experiment.  Here are our steps:

1. We ask questions.  (Very important—get that brain working!)

2. We make a prediction.  What do we think will happen?  Why?  How?  Do we already know something that will help us with our predictions? (Prior knowledge and connections)

3.  We do our experiment.

4.  We look, see, observe what happened.

5.  We decide what we learned from our experiment.

The students are very focused with these steps.  Last week as we were reviewing our steps before an experiment, one of the students said, “These are like when you read a book to us.  You always make us think of a question when you read the title and then we have to make a prediction about what might happen.  Then after you read us the story you ask us what we learned.  Amazing connections!!

I will post more later.

WOW…thanks for the offers to trim up the dominoes for me.  I have 3 volunteers…I’ll catch others with a later project.

Thanks again!