I hope you and your family had a fun and relaxing Thanksgiving holiday. This week we jumped right back into our routines and we’re sailing along! Before the Thanksgiving break we were lucky to have Varun’s mom join us for a morning of celebrating the Diwali holiday. The students were so excited to have her there and they particularly enjoyed getting henna tattoos and listening to the books she shared with us about Diwali.
Also before Thanksgiving we had our first “Person of the Week”! Mac proudly shared his poster with the class and had his grandmother join us as a guest reader. 
This week Izzy was our “Person of the Week”! Below is a snapshot of Izzy sharing her poster with us. Izzy’s sister, a first grader at Horace Mann School, came and read a book as our guest reader! So far, we have enjoyed learning more about Mac and Izzy. The students have been coming up with great questions during our “interview” time.
Reader’s Workshop:
This week students were introduced to the letter C (c-cat-/c/). We have been working throughout the week on various activities that reinforce this letter and sound relationship. This week in reader’s workshop we also began creating new books, “My Word Wall Book”. Each page in these books is dedicated to individual word wall words that have been introduced. On each page students are responsible for reading the word, using letter stamps to make the word, and practice writing the word. Your child will tell you that on each page we “read it, stamp it, write it”. As more words are introduced, additional pages will be added to their books. The hope with these books is that with practice students will be able to quickly recognize our word wall words. So far our books have three pages: me, the, to.
Next week students will be introduced to our first 2 vowels…
Poetry Corner:
Alley Mack
I met a cat named Alley Mack.
His tail was fat and very black.
He had a white stripe down his back.
That’s not a cat!
Aaaaaack!
Math:
This week we continued practicing building numbers with ten frames and we also began learning about the “tricky teens”. Throughout the coming weeks we will be practicing counting through the “tricky teens” (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19) as well as practicing number writing.
Science:
Our unit on “Living and Nonliving” is underway. Students have had the chance to plant bulbs and have been keeping a close eye observing any changes. This week we observed and made observational drawings in our science notebooks on the outside and inside of a bulb. We also made our second observational drawings of our bulbs. The students were so surprised and excited to see that our bulbs have grown roots!
Open Circle:
Open circle has been a wonderful time built into our schedule once a week when we get together on the rug and talk about social situations happening in the classroom, how to handle tricky situations with peers, and what to do if you’re stuck and don’t know how to solve a problem independently. Over the last two weeks we have learned about the “Double D’s”- dangerous and destructive behaviors. We talked about what the difference between a dangerous and destructive behavior and what to do if they see someone doing something that is dangerous or destructive.
