This has been a full week for all of us.  I enjoyed seeing everyone at the Fall Festival Tuesday night.  With Cici’s night on Monday, the Fall Festival on Tuesday and STAR night on Thursday, we have all been very busy.

We are planning our field trip to the Montgomery Zoo.  This trip is scheduled for October 25 or 26.    If you are interested in being a chaperone for this trip, please let me know ASAP.  I will forward more details soon.

I also wanted to let you know that we will have visitors observe us on Thursday during Shared Reading.  I have spoken with the children about this and they know that someone is coming.  Please help to remind your child that we want to do our best when visitors are in our classroom.  As some of you know, we often have visitors at AEEC, but since this is the first one for our class, a friendly reminder would be great! 

SHARED JOURNAL

We are almost finished with our first round of sharing.  There are only 2 more friends left to share.  Once everyone has had a turn, we will begin sharing 2 stories each day and voting to see which story we will write about.  This is always a very exciting time because the children really grow as they learn to negotiate and discuss the elements that make the stories worthy of being chosen. 

I will also be sending home the September journals in a week or so. 

 THEME

We continued talking about homes and the types of homes found in Auburn.  We made a web of the types of homes you find here and began to list characteristics of each.   Next week, we will graph the type of house we live in and talk about how our friends might find our house if they wanted to.

 SHARED READING

This week, we read lots of books about color.  We talked about the color words, and about primary colors.  We also worked on initial sounds and letter/sound correspondence.  In addition, the children noticed that their favorite punctuation mark (exclamation point) was in several of our books and chants.  We had a ball rereading these stories & chants with strong feeling every time we saw an exclamation point!

 Center Time

Science center was our newest center to be opened.  To go along with our Shared Reading books, the children got to explore making secondary colors by mixing different combinations of primary colors.  As I was observing and working with one group of children, I heard a child in the science center exclaim, “Look what I did.  I’m a scientist now!” 

IMPORTANT DATES AND NOTES 

Please don’t forget to send in a coloring book if you have not already done so.  This is so helpful during journal time.

Don’t forget to send in items for our class basket.  Our basket’s theme is “Out in the Garden”.  I know that we will have a great basket for the silent auction. 

When your child is out, please remember to send in an excuse. 

 The new Scholastic orders were due today.  However, I am not placing the order until Monday.  So, if you forgot it’s not too late.

 Friday, September 29 – Celebration

Monday, October 2 – PTA Meeting 6:00 p.m.

Tuesday, October 3 – Learning & Lunch 11:30-12:30

Thursday, October 5 – Family Fun Night 4:30-7:00

Dylan and Caroline are mixing colors at Science Center.