Week of Sept. 8th

Don't you love this cool weather?!! I hope we continue to have an early Fall!

Did you get Flat Stanley home? If you can't think of anyone to send him to, let me know. I have about 8 people that would love to have Flat Stanley. Hopefully, we will get a great response from willing participants. It will be quite exciting for the children. Who am I kidding? It will be for me too!! It will be a great opportunity for us all to learn about other places.

This week in social studies, we will begin our study of Oklahoma. We will begin with the lay of the land. We will look at important cities and landforms. Hopefully, by carving out Oklahoma and its landforms with dough, the children will remember it better. Don't forget that maps are due on Wednesday. The children were very excited about this project. I can't wait to see the results! In math, we will be estimating sums and differences and doing large number addition and subtraction problems. For reading, we are beginning literature circles. I love doing literature circles because every child is in a book that fits his/her reading level/lexile. We will have 5 different reading groups. Each group has a different book along with related work. For English, we will spend one more day on ocean animal reports. These reports are due on Thursday. Remember, you can type your child's report as long as he/she does the actual work of the report. Most of the children have almost finished their report in class. A few are completely done. This is a very hard project for many of the kids, because there are so many concepts to remember: turning facts into sentences, capitalization, punctuation, paragraph form, indention, keeping topics separated, etc. They have really worked hard on their reports though. I am very proud of them!! Also in English, we will be looking at common and proper nouns. Look for a copy of this week's spelling list on Monday. Also, we will begin enriched spelling. Enriched spelling is completely optional. It is not a grade. It is simply a reward system and a way for gifted spellers to have a challenge. Not all the children that choose to do enriched spelling are gifted spellers. Some just work really hard and a lot of times do better than my gifted ones. Anyone can do it! We will have 15 words every week with a test on Friday. Each word is worth 1 point and I reward every 10 points.

Thanks for the book orders! We met our goal!! Yeah!!! This means more resources/books for our classroom!

We will be going to Turkey Creek School on October 3rd. It is an old fashioned school set in 1910. The children will spend the day reenacting a typical day 100 years ago. It is a lot of fun. Most of the children get into the spirit by dressing up pioneer style and carrying a tin can for their lunch. I will be sending home a letter about it in a couple of weeks, but I wanted to give you a heads up, incase your child wanted to dress up. This way, you will have time to be thinking about clothing. Dressing up is purely optional, but I do encourage it. It is fun to get into the spirit of it! Ideas: Girls - mid calf dresses with aprons and bonnets, boys - jeans, white t-shirts and suspenders or overalls.

We are running low on candy. If anyone would like to donate a bag of candy, it would be greatly appreciated! I give it out as a reward. Please continue to check the blog for updates. Hope you enjoyed the slideshow of your precious children. There will be more to come in the future. If your child isn't in this slideshow, it is probably because he/she was absent when I took those pictures. Look for slideshows ahead.