News for September 10

News for September 10

Well, the first week of school is over. The children were very quick to learn the rules and routines of the classroom and have settled in nicely.

We have three fish as our class pets. The orange golf ball goldfish is named "Alpha", the white/orange/black shubunkin goldfish is named "Beta" and the algae-eater (or plecosaurus) is named "George".

The students learned our "Hello" song, "Good bye" song and a song to learn the days of the week. In math, we had fun reviewing counting forward and backward to five through songs and fingerplay poems ("One Little Jellybean" and "Five Little Monkeys").

Each day, we write a daily message together and read and reread the sentences. This month we search for letters that match the first letter of the star student's name. The star student then takes home the daily message to read with his/her family.

The children got used to the idea of going to centres in our classroom. That is, they have a free choice time to participate in various activities. This week they played in the house centre, reading corner, big blocks, drama/dress-up, snack table, puzzles, play-doh and art table. At the art table the students experimented with crayons, markers, pencil crayons and chalk.

Every day one student is chosen to be the "star student" for the day. This child is the line leader and my helper for the day. Every child gets a chance to be the star student on a rotating basis. Right now, we are working on putting the star students names on our class word wall.

A book is read aloud to the students everyday. If you would like to see which books we read every week, along with my comments, please visit our companion blog at:

http://planet5books.blogspot.com/

Try to visit the site with your child and have him/her talk to you about the stories we read together every week.