Hello! I hope all of you have fallen into the new school routine and things are flowing smoothly for you. I am happy to see all of my old friends and thrilled to meet some new ones. We had a remarkably good first week. I am looking forward to seeing friendships and connections happen in the classroom.
What follows is a schedule of events for the rest of the month. Please remember to check the blog post each month as it will give you an idea of what is happening in the classroom day to day. I plan for the month and then remain flexible to what the children need. Some things may change. The post will give you a place to launch conversation with your child. Welcome!
Monday, Sept. 16: Today we will start talking about families. The children will come home with some homework. Each family will receive a sheet with questions about their family details. Please work together as a family to answer these questions. Work carefully as the finished product will be placed in a class book about our families. We will paint the frames you made for your child at the parent training. You can start to send in pictures of your family. A 4X6 picture of your entire family will be placed in the frame and put on our wall in the hallway for the rest of the school year. It is important to send the picture in as soon as possible so the children can see themselves on the wall. The children will draw a picture of their family for our family book and they will learn a song about emotions and make some emotions puppets. It will be a fun day.
Wednesday, Sept. 18: 3s~We will paint the frames you made for your child at the parent training. Please send a 4X6 picture of your whole family into the class so we can use it for our family wall. We will learn a song about emotions and make puppets that align with the song. We'll make a picture of our families with popsicle sticks and people figures. 4s~Today we will practice the emotions song we learned on Monday and play with the puppets that go along with the song. We will decorate the frames for our families wall and we'll make books with faces that show different emotions.
Friday, Sept. 20: 3s~Today we will decorate the frames for our wall of families and practice the emotions song we've learned. We will make and play with puppets that coincide with the emotions song. The puppets will come home with the children today. 4s~Today will be the culmination of our families/emotions unit. We will put together the book that we have been working on. We'll complete the final page for the book and read it at the end of the day. The children will come home with the puppets that coincide with the emotions song we have been singing all week.
Monday, Sept. 23: Today will be the beginning of our unit of study about color. I love this time of year. It is magical for the children to discover what mixing colors together can do. Such fun! We will start the unit by talking about ourselves. We'll read a story about our differences and similarities and we'll start making a quilt of different colors, but similar prints. Today the children will draw their face on a piece of plain, white fabric with fabric crayons. We will do some color mixing and glue fabric swatches on a quilt shape.
Wednesday, Sept. 25: 3s~We will start our unit on colors today. We'll read a story about two colored dots and learn about the adventures they go on. The children will do some color mixing on pieces of plain, white fabric that will become a part of the classroom quilt. We'll color mix with liquid water colors and we'll perform an experiment with color mixing and ice cubes. Cool! 4s~Today we will put hair on the face we drew on Monday. We will continue to work on our fabric swatch quilt and we'll conduct an experiment with colors, water, oil, and alka-seltzer. It should be effervescent!
Friday, Sept. 27: 3s~Today we will read a story about some mischievous mice that have fun with colors. We'll conduct another experiment with ice cubes and we will learn what water, oil, and colors have to do with each other. The children will color mix on giant coffee filters. 4s~ The children will choose how they would like the classroom quilt to look by choosing the position and print of their quilt block. They will continue to do some color mixing with liquid water colors and mix colors on giant coffee filters. We'll read a story about an elephant that loves color and learns to enjoy his unique personality. We'll perform an experiment with oil and water and colors that may or may not mix.
Monday, Sept. 30: We start our unit on sunflowers today. The children will start a project that will continue through the week. Today they will glue their sunflower center to its backing and paint petals on the beginnings of their sunflower. We'll learn a fun story about a little boy, his grandfather, and some magic seeds.
The Safety Fair is happening between the morning and afternoon classes on Wednesday, September 25. I will have more details to follow. It is a great time to let your child see a police car, fire engine, and get a bike helmet. Think about scheduling it into your day.
3S CLASS ALERT! 3S CLASS ALERT! 3S CLASS ALERT! 3S CLASS ALERT! 3S CLASS ALERT! 3S CLASS ALERT!!
The 3s class has some make-up days I want to tell you about. Some days throughout the school year are missed by this class because of inservices, or conferences, or a variety of other reasons. The first of those days is October 7. Please correct your calendars to note that there will be NO CLASS ON FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11. We will make that day up on that Monday. There WILL BE CLASS FROM 9-11:40 ON MONDAY, OCTOBER 7. There are two other make-up days for this class: Monday, March 17, and Monday, April 14. We'll talk more about these days as they draw near.
Remember to keep your calendars updated with your parent helper days and if you need to change, swap, or switch please do so as soon as possible. Don't change the calendar on your own: let your class rep do that for you. I am looking forward to meeting all of you. I am so thankful for your children-thank you for sharing them with me. It is such an honor! Thank you for all your help. We couldn't do it without you.
Parent jobs are being worked on. You should know what your job is within the next week or so. If you have questions or you haven't submitted your requests yet just ask me. Thanks again!
Cooperatively,
Anne.
