I hope everyone enjoyed the weekend!

Today was a great day in room 111. We got a lot accomplished! Students were really working hard.
In large group reading we read the book Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Students had to write about their favorite part. We will work on looking at characters this week- and deciding which characters are our favorite, and talk about how characters behave in the story.

In math I saw so many students using great thinking! We are working on grabbing connecting cubes, counting how many we grabbed and drawing that number of objects.
We are also working on Roll and Record- for this we roll a dice and color in a square for whatever number we roll. It's fun to see students talking with their partner about what they are noticing about their numbers (5 has the most, I haven't rolled a 1 yet!)

In science we are starting a unit on fall. We read the book Fall Leaves Fall and talked about signs of fall. If your child talks about leaves, we do need leaves for a couple of projects on Thursday and Friday. So, yes they can bring leaves to school!

In writing we continued to work on labeling our pictures using beginning and ending sounds of words and some have started to try to write sentences.

I hope your child is as tired as his/her teacher is today!!! We all worked really hard today!

We had an exciting day in Kindergarten today! We got to have our pictures taken, had a celebration for doing our job the entire month of September AND had birthday treats.

Between all the fun in our day we worked on rolling a dice and recording the number we rolled. We practiced using the terms more and less to see which number we rolled more than another.

Students had a lot of energy today--- and we were lucky to get to go outside today for our recess.... we dodged the rain.

Parents- this blog is a little different than normal- This is a tribute to you! 

As I was running home from school today I got to reflect on the events of the day and the year. With little sleep the last few nights I was a little short in the patience area and the students could tell.  They were worried about me- all day a student kept asking "Mrs. Earle are you ok?" My response was "yes" but my thought was no- I just want to sleep. Well, I want to thank you paand let you all know that you should be proud of your children and the good, caring citizens they are. The students went above and beyond to "help" Mrs. Earle today. Whether it was asking if they could fill up my water bottle, pick up the computers after workshop, or turn the lights off so we could see a picture on the board- the students stepped to show they care. I want you to all know how much your children mean to me. I love my job because of YOUR CHILDREN!! 

Did your child tell you we ate caterpillars today? Today we had a very special guest- our nutrition helper came today and talked to us about how we can be healthy and what each kind of fruit does for us and for our body. When we were finished with our story, we ate caterpillars! Students LOVED putting grapes on a skewer and eating a caterpillar.

In reading we talked about goats. We learned that a baby goat is called a kid--- but wait! We are also kids.... are we goats? Students do not want to get mixed up with a mother goat and send the "kids" home with mom.  And our students do not want to go home with a mother or father goat.

This was an EXTREMELY busy day! Students really worked hard.

In reading we worked on knowing that we read from left to right and always start at the top. Sometimes when we read our books have more than one line on them. Students did a great job showing me where we start when we read.

In small groups students are really making improvements. I'm enjoying all the growth I'm seeing in our groups. Please keep working and having students read at home- it's making a BIG difference.

In math today we started creating our counting books. Students get to be the illustrators of their own book. Today we worked on 0, 1 and 2. It was fun asking students to pick up 0 cubes- Seeing students start to grab cubes and then pull their arm back was fun to watch! They would laugh and say "Mrs. Earle that means I have nothing." :)

We also worked on the words inside and outside today. In the picture below, Drake is a bear inside the lions. They had a lot of fun with this activity.

We also introduced and worked on the letter Gg and the word green today-

We definitely had a lot going on~!!

I cannot believe this is the last day of September! It seems like the school year just started- and here we are already a month in! I look at the growth students have made in this short time and look forward to seeing them grow the rest of the school year.

Today in reading we talked more about predictions. We looked at the cover Baby Talk By: Joy Cowley and predicted the mother lion would put the baby in a cage and the lions would get food. We found out that the story is actually about different animals and what their babies are called- it also tells us the sounds the animals make. "A baby cat is a kitten. It goes meow, meow, meow." Our guess about the story wasn't what really happened, but we talked about how the picture and our thinking were matches because that's what we know about lions.

Some groups are working on using the iPad to make a book of things that start with Cc and another group is making a book about things they like to play. I am hoping I'll be able to share those on our blog when finished!

In writing today we were the experts about animals. We chose an animal to write about and had to tell one thing we know about that animal. In the picture Keely wrote "I like cats because they are the best." She made a goal that she would work on putting space between her words- she can do that by using her finger to mark the space. We worked on adding space to our sentences, capital letters and ending punctuation. We decided there is a lot to know about writing!

So many amazing things are happening in room 111. Please stop by the student spotlight page to check out the GREAT work students are doing. I will post comments, pictures, and notes about students 2-

We found out today that the bears in Blueberries for Sal ended up eating the blueberries. We were very glad to find out they didn't eat Sal or her mom! When we stopped reading today Sal heard a noise on the other side of the rock- we predict the noise is
Mom
the Bears
Mom screaming
The bears attacking mom

In math we found out that 5 of our students are the oldest and 15 students are not the oldest. It was great to see so many students recognize that 15 is more than 5.

We took our beginning of the year writing prompt today which was a little bit hard because students wanted help, but I couldn't help them.

Please keep reading with your children! If you wonder what you could work on with your child at home- right now is a great time to keep working on letters and numbers.

Students continue to do a great job with our reading rotations. I can see students enjoying stories as they are listening to them on the computer, students are getting better with letter identification using apps on the iPad- everything they are practicing is really carrying over to small group reading. 

We are reading Blueberries for Sal and using the book to make predictions. We learned that Sal is eating all the blueberries. Today when we quit reading, we looked at a picture with a mama and baby bear- some things we predicted are: 
The bears will eat Sal. 
The bears will eat the blueberries. 
The bears will be mad that Sal is eating their blueberries. 

We will find out tomorrow if our predictions are right. 

In math we are continue to record objects using the counting jar, explore with connecting cubes, geoblocks and pattern blocks. 

In writing today we learned about using describing words. Some described their flower as red, big, pretty, yellow and alive What great words!! 

I just want to give you a heads up that I will be in a meeting all day on Friday. I will be at Lowell, but will have a sub. If you have any questions please let me know. 
Thank you.

In reading we continued to talk about why we read everyday; "So we can get better!"
In reading groups today we continued working on letter identification, reading our books and using sounds and pictures to help us figure out words we don't know.
In math we continued with button match up- kids are finding great ways to match their buttons!!

In writing we used some of the things we've been talking about in reading to add in our writing. We had to figure out sentences by using just clues of the beginning sound. Some students are drawing
Just a reminder we DO have school tomorrow!