Happy Monday! This is it until 2013. I wish everyone a wonderful and restful vacation. What a huge success the gift drive was this year. I would like to thank Patty Ann for all her hard work handling our classroom donations. Please check out ebytes to see all of the photos taken at the gift drive. We had a wonderful discussion in our class meeting about it, Why Give? It was important for the students to talk about why we do this.
We will be publishing this week in Writers Workshop. I thought it would be best to have their stories available for others to read on Thursday morning. I am hoping many of you can come to our pajama breakfast and Writer's Workshop Celebration. I sent home the letter today.

In Readers Workshop, we are finishing up our Spotlight author study with Amelia Bedelia. The students have enjoyed all of the different adventures she has taken. The students enjoyed working on the IPads this week for our word work. The app we used was Vocabulary Spelling City. We have now covered a, i, o as longvowels with a silent e. Please continue helping your child with the spelling rules. Come is not a long o word even though it ends with an e. I have shown them the exceptions to the silent e long vowel rule. This is the word and how it is pronounced, even though it follows a different spelling rule (one). There are so many exceptions, it is hard to keep all of the spelling rules straight. There are no new Word Families this week just review the a, i, o long vowel silent e rule. There are no new word card words either.Your child is responsible for reading and spelling all of the words on their ring.
I have some Homework Calendar issues. The students are returning their homework with sloppy or incorrect letter strokes. Please check their neatness and if need be, have them redo their work. I am sending home their Handwriting Without Tears workbook. Please refer to that for correct formation.
In science we worked on the stars and constellations this week. I am collecting paper towel or toilet paper tubes to make night sky and constellation view finders. We looked at the meteor shower on the computer because I doubt anyone including me would be watching it from midnight until 3a.m.

Have a great rest of 2012. See you in 2013! Look even Slim is in the Santa Spirit!

Happy Tuesday, now! Sorry, I forgot to post yesterday.Boy, how time is flying by. I can't believe it is almost winter break.

There are a few things I want you to review and work on at home. I also want to introduce you to our new pet hedgehog, Slim. Slim is a whole lot of fun for the students to look at and hold. I have them wearing garden gloves, because his spikes are a little startling.
We are focusing on Realistic Fiction in reading and writing workshop until winter break. We are reading stories that have a made up character in a real setting with real problems and solutions. This genre is tricky because based on anyone's interpretation, most stories could fit into this category. In writing, we are isolating one aspect of the story as fiction. For example this week we only wrote with fictitious characters in our stories but with real problems and solutions.

I am sending home the Unit 4 Checking Progress in Math. I am also sending home the unit 5 Family Letter. The students had a hard time completing the Frames and Arrows portion. Please practice counting backwards by 2's, 5's and 10's. Please also continue working on learning their math facts quickly, so they are not having to count on their fingers. They practiced making number combinations with double dice. Dice are great tools to get numbers from, for basic facts. Then they can always count the dots if they need to. As you can see, this skill is used when completing various activities. The Pringles cans are working beautifully in making a place for our Math Scrolls. The students are busy adding to their scrolls and making them as long as they can. They will not get to bring their scrolls home until the end of the school year. This week we will be studying the sun and stars. Our pajama party will be on Thursday December 20th at 8:15 a.m.. Please plan on joining us only if you wear your pajamas as well.