This is our third week on the farm and we are having a great time and sharing fun experiences.  We read more fun farm books and we made cow to add to our collection of farm animal pictures.  They will be posted around the room so the children can enjoy them during school.

We read two versions of the Little Red Hen and had a great day of experimenting with bread dough, making butter, and eating fresh baked bread with home made butter.  The children loved the experience and the snack.  Thank you to everyone for helping with the supplies and baking.

There were some new sensory experiences as well.  The children loved playing with ooblak (cornstarch & water) it is and incredibly interesting and mesmerizing substance.  It is almost like it’s a solid and a liquid at the same time.  We also had a day of playing with bread dough, which really gave a full sensory experience, we even got to see it rise a little.

There are many upcoming events that I need to remind you about.  Some of them I haven’t mentioned before because time seems to be flying by much quicker than I expect.

Notes & Reminders:

1.  Tiny Tot field trip Monday 2/8.  All children must be at school by 9:15.  The morning students can come at 8:15.  The bus will leave at 9:30.  We should be back by 11:45.  All day care providers have been notified of the change.  We will not be having class other than the field trip that day.

2.  We will be celebrating the Lunar (Asian) New Year on the 10th.  The classes will make dragons and we will have a parade.

3.  Thursday 2/11 is an ECE no contact day.

4.  In the evening on 2/9 and 2/10 I will be doing conferences for those who want them.  If there are issues that need to be addressed about your child, then I have or will contact you.  Otherwise these conferences are purely optional.

5.  Friday we will be having a Valentine’s party and a 100 days of school celebration.  Since Thursday is an early release day for the district, Friday is a regular full day (not an early release).

6.  There is no school on 2/15 & 2/16 for President’s day

7.  My next unit is Community Helpers.  We will create a Doctor’s Office and Post Office in the classroom.  I would also love to have volunteers come in and talk about their jobs.  So if you have any props we can use for our Drs and Post offices, or would like to do a career talk to the class, please let me know.  Props are great for the career talk, last year we had a doctor who brought an ambulance to school.  That was great.

Show & Tell:

This week our letter is R.  We are on group 2 (AM Trevor, Will, Evelyn, Phoebe, and Dayton.  PM  Scott, Emma, Katie, Marin, Sosha).  Whether your child has show & tell or not, they should bring something that starts with R for our collage.

Questions:

Where does butter come from?

Why didn’t the little red hen share her bread?

What is new in the classroom this week?

As we continue out farm unit, our class has continued talking about farm animals and have begun discussing the workings and the jobs performed on the farm.  Both classes drew pictures of a farm and told me the job they are doing on the farm.  The results of this activity will be on display in our hallway soon.  This exercise allowed the children to think about the world outside their experience and to learn some new vocabulary, such as plow and harvest.

For literacy this week we had a fun sub-theme of animal sounds.  We read about some animals that got their sounds confused.  First we read “Cock-a-Moo-Moo” by Juliet Dallas-Conte.  Then we read “The Cow Who Went Oink” by Bernard Most and “The Cow Who Clucked” by Denise Flemming.  The children loved all these stories and had an opportunity to make predictions and connections.

Both classes are learning about patterns and are continuing to work on number sense, simple mathematical operations, and counting.  I have seen huge growth in the area of math so far this year.  Like all the units, the farm unit will give the  class many opportunities to broaden our scientific experimentation and social studies knowledge.

Reminders & Notes:

Show & Tell January 29.  We are on the letter Q.  It is group 1’s turn for show & tell (AM: Maisie, Ella, Gage, Grant, Miles.  PM: Piper, Ben, Drew, Asher, Andrew, Lilah).  Also, please send small pictures or items for our collages.  Q is a hard one, some ideas are queen, quarter, quiet, q-tip, quaker oats, quilt, quiz.

I will be sending the permission slip for the field trip out next week.  I will need chaperones. (February 8 to Tiny Tots)

Questions:

What are speech bubbles?

What job would you like to do on  a farm?

Who took the Cow’s Moo?

We started our farm unit this week.  So far we are having great fun.  The children already have a great deal of prior knowledge about farms, so this unit will provide us with many opportunities to delve deeper into the subject and enhance that strong knowledge base.

Because it was a short week we are only just starting the unit with more exciting things to come.  We read a non-fiction book about farms and had a discussion about what we already know about farms and what we are wondering about farms.   We also read a story called “Oink?”  by Margie Palantini and everyone’s new favorite “Cock-a-Moo-Moo” by Juliet Dallas-Conte.

While the four-year-olds are exercising their brains and tackling new thinking skills, the three-year-olds are diligently working to move past the stage of drawing simple figures to actually creating stories.   The four-year-olds  have been doing a variety of activities that require the students to stretch their thinking,  use their imaginations, and ask relevant questions.  On a simpler level, the three-year-olds are also stretching their thinking through prediction, catagorization activities, and reinforcement of their natural curiosity.

In art this week the four-year-olds had an opportunity to create wonderful barn drawings that are now displayed outside our classroom.  (The students drew their barns on Tuesday when the three-year-olds did not have class).  Both classes made adorable horses, which are the first of a series of farm animals we will create this week.  Look for these on display in the coming weeks.  While these are simple art projects, it gives the children the opportunity to follow directions, hone fine motor skills, and express their own creativity and individuality.  We give the children an example of the finished product, but if they choose a different  path, they are asked to explain their thinking.

Q:  “Why did you put eyes on the horses bottom?”

A:  “The horse needs eyes there because he’s a robot horse and the other horses are chasing him.”

I think we are going to have a great time visiting the farm in our classroom.  Keep your eyes open for a trip to a real farm (the Urban Farm) in March or April.

Notes & Reminders

Show & Tell for 1/22 is the letter P.  We are on group 4.  AM: Brooke, Tessa, Lillian, Avery, Sadie and PM: Lucas, Aiden, Sam, Grant, Camdyn.  Whether it’s your child’s show & tell week please have them bring small pictures or items to put on our P collage.

Friday 1/22 is not an early release Friday.  We have AM class from 8:15-10:45 and PM class from 12:30-3:10.

Our Tiny Tots Field Trip is February 8.  The permission slip and requests for chaperones will be coming your way soon.

Because of President’s day there will be no school February 15 & 16.  (the 16 is a teacher work day).

Look for 2nd Trimester Progress reports by the end of February.  If you feel the need for a conference, please let me know.  I will contact you if I have any concerns about your child that I think need to be explored.

Questions:

Did you learn anything about farms?

What did the rooster say in the book you read? (have your child retell the story of Cock-a-Moo-Moo)

As we continued our Winter Unit in class, the students had an opportunity to do a “book study.”  We started the week by reading “The Mitten” as retold by Jan Brett.  Then we read “The Mitten” by Alvin Tresselt and “The Mitten” as retold by Jim Aylesworth.  All these stories are based on a Ukranian Folktale about a little boy who loses a mitten in while playing on a cold day and a group of forest creatures move into the mitten.  After reading all three books, we compared and contrasted the stories.  The children made some wonderful observations about the differences and similarities in the stories.  A chart of this activitiy is posted outside our classroom door.

We did some fun art projects that will be sent home, including a cute foam mitten, puffy paint, and epsom salt winter scenes.  You can also see the children’s snowflakes and snowmen displayed in the window of the classroom.

We had artificial snow in the water table, which the children loved experimenting with.  The morning children all sat down with me and worked on writing their names and the afternoon students thought of interesting inventions as we delved into deeper level thinking.  In fact we have started many new routines that I hope will advance the children to the next level of thinking.  The morning children are counting and learning the days of the week.  The afternoon children are working on investigations, asking questions, and other skills that will strengthen their thinking skills.

Notes & Reminders

No school Monday 1/18

Tuesday 1/19 is a DPS early release day.  The PM class will attend school that day from 8:15-10:45.  There will be no AM Class
Our first field trip is coming up in February.  More information will come your way soon.

Questions:

What was your favorite Mitten story?

Did the stories have any of the same animals?

What is the name of the boy in the snowy day?

Welcome to the New Year!  We have started off with a bit of a bite from the weather.  Appropriately, we doing a unit on snow, so we have been able to make some real life connections with life and school.

There is some wonderful winter/snow themed literature that we are getting to share including, “The Snowman’s Storybook,” an illustration driven story by Raymond Brigg about a snow man who comes to life.  We have also read Caralyn Buehner’s wonderful story called “Snowmen at Night.”  This is a favorite story of mine and it’s clever story line encourages the children to think outside the box.  We also read Ezra Jack Keats’ classic “The Snowy Day.”  We will revisit this story before the unit is complete.

In art this week the children made wonderfully colorful  coffee filter snowflakes.  We will be replacing our fall leaves with the snowflakes.  We did a guided drawing of snowmen and also tackled snowmen in our journals.  The children had a great time making snow storms with white paint on black paper.  In addition to drawing snowmen, the children had the opportunity to create snowmen with paper cutouts.  I think snowmen give the children a great opportunity to draw/create a recognizable picture that is easily mastered, but can also be embelished depending on the child’s abilities.

In the morning class we have started focusing more on writing skills, we did our first try at having all the students write their names.  The children that are already proficient at writing the first names are starting to work on last names.  The afternoon class is continuing to hone their skills using lower case letters.  We have also expanded our circle routine to include higher level counting and some problem solving.

Everyone enjoyed our new artificial snow.  Hopefully it will warm up and we’ll be able to go outside again and experience the real snow, but not the bitter cold.

The afternoon children were thrilled to get to celebrate Mr. Stan’s birthday.  Despite their guess that Mr. Stan is 22, he is in fact turned 73–hard to believe,  they grow up so fast.

Notes & Reminders

Tomorrow (Friday 1/8) is show and tell.  The letter is N and it is group 2’s turn to share.  AM: Trevor, Will, Evelyn, Phoebe, and Dayton.  PM: Scott, Emma, Katie, Marin, and Sosha.  We also need small pictures and objects for our N collage.

We will have our first Field Trip on Monday February 8th.  We are going to the Tiny Tots concert at Boettcher Concert Hall at 9:30.  Both classes will be going on this field trip, so we will not have afternoon class.

Please make note that we have no school for Martin Luther King Day (January 18th) and we have a DPS early release day on January 19th.  This early release day will be P.M. class only from 8:15-10:45.

February  11th is an ECE no contact day (it’s DPS early release for the rest of the school).

There will be no school February 15, 16 for president’s day.

Thanks again for spoiling me for the holidays.

This week we have continued our celebration of the holidays.  This week we’ve been talking about the wonderful traditions of Christmas.  Decorating trees, giving gifts, and spending special time with our families.

We have read a variety of Christmas themed books including “Olive the Other Reindeer,” “Santa the World’s Number One Toy Expert,” and “Bear’s Christmas Star.”  The four year-olds have been learning to create stories with beginnings, middles, and ends.  We did a journal entry in which the students tried to create a holiday story with a beginning, middle, and end.  We also did a story retell of “Olive the Other Reindeer,” where we focused on these parts of the stories.  The three year-olds are continuing to refine their fine motor skills and their abilities to create recognizable people.

In art the children loved decorating their own trees (you can see their handiwork outside our classroom).  We also made reindeer, wreaths, ornaments, and holiday cards.  Hopefully all this work made its way home to  you.  Some of the children opted out of participating in these projects.

The children are looking forward to sharing time with you in our classroom for our holiday party.  In addition to the gingerbread house project, the children have been practicing a few songs and you will get to witness the thrill of show & tell.  We will also have our special friday reader.   I hope that many of you will be able to join in the festivities.  I have planned for the parties to span the entire class period (AM–8:15-10:15 and PM–11:00-1:00).

Reminders:

Tomorrow’s show & tell and letter collage is M.  It is group 1’s turn for show & tell (AM–Maisie, Ella, Gage, Grant, and Miles and PM–Piper, Ben, Drew, Asher, Andrew, and Lilah).

Winter break starts this weekend and we return to school Tuesday January 5th.

I hope that you all have a wonderful vacation and that your holidays are full of peace, joy, and warm memories.

Thank you!

I can’t believe that we have only one more week before winter break.  This year is flying by.  We’ve done so much, but have a lot still to accomplish.

We have spent the week learning about Hanukkah.  The children are loving playing dreidel, singing the dreidel song, and reading books about dreidels.  It’s all dreidels all the time around here.  We also made darling Menorahs, which we will hang outside the classroom.  The holidays create a natural opportunity to learn about other cultures and to understand, respect, value the world around them.

Dreidel gave us an opportunity to practice counting, to learn Hebrew letters.  The spinning of the dreidel is great for strengthening fine motor skills and we even painted with dreidels, which gave the children a strong motivation to get the dreidel spinning.

Thank goodness we are finally able to get outside again.  Please make sure that you send appropriate clothes for the cold/wet weather.  Hats, mittens, snow boots.  Thank you.

Reminders:

Tomorrow (Friday 12/11) is not an early release day class is on the regular M-Th schedule.  AM: 8:15-10:45.  PM: 12:30-3:10.

Show & Tell (12/11) is the letter L.  It’s group 4’s turn (AM: Brooke, Tessa, Lillian, Avery, Sadie.  PM: Lucas, Aiden, Sam, Grant, Camdyn)  Don’t forget to bring collage pictures and items that begin with L.

Let me know if you did not receive Jooner’s sign ups for the Holiday party or Friday readers.

Holiday party is 12/18.  I would love to have as many parents here as possible.  The gingerbread house project is pretty challenging and it’s good for the children to have as much help as possible.  Thank you!

Thank you Jedlickas for the great car track.  The kids love it!

Questions to ask:

Tell me one letter on the dreidel?  (gimmel, nun, shin, hay)

How many nights are there in Hanukkah? (8)

What is a Hanukkah tradition?  (playing dreidel, lighting the Menorah, eating Latkes–potato pancakes)

How does the dreidel song go?

What a wonderful week.  We are busy with one of my all time favorite units of the year.  The Gingerbread Man unit.  I feel that this unit ties together so many of our learning goals for the year.  In literacy the students have a chance to clearly see text to text connections as we read a variety of gingerbread stories.  It also sparks imaginations as we consider different ways the story could end and different characters that could be part of the story.  We decorated paper gingerbread men and gingerbread cookies and in that way made text to life conections.

The gingerbread man also brings allows opportunities for math and science, such as measuring, following instructions, mixing ingredients to make a new substance — we made gingerbread play dough.  Following recipes, which builds on the recipe/measuring lesson we had when we made our delicious Pumkin Empanadas before Thanksgiving.  The following of the recipe to make gingerbread playdough (as well as the making of empanadas) also gives the students an opportunity to make a text to life connection.

Another wonderful aspect of the gingerbread stories is they provide opportunities for the children to experience a variety of literary skills that are essential for emerging readers, including sequencing, repetition, rhyming, and predicting.

I hope your children have enjoyed this week as much as I am and that they are talking about gingerbread.  Thank you to all who help both with the empanadas and the gingerbread decorating.

Our next unit will focus on the winter holidays.  Next week we will talk about the secular aspects of  Hannukah and the following week we will talk about Christmas.  If you have any family traditions, or holidays that you observe that you would like to share with the class let me know.  After winter break we will spend at least a day on Chinese/Asian New Year.

Reminders:
Show & Tell on 12/4 is group 4 (AM: Noah, Peter, Graham, Aynslee, Hayden) (PM: Reagan, Josh, Jack, Greycen, Isabela).  The letter is K

Class pictures and retakes are December 8th.  I need your order forms and money by the 8th.  Extra envelopes went out this week.  Let me know if you didn’t get one, I have extras.

The last day of school before winter break is Friday December 18th.  We will have a holiday party that day.  More details will be forthcoming.

Wednesday December 9th is  an ECE no contact day.

Hi everyone,

Our family unit is continuing as we move into Thanksgiving.  The children made fun placemats for Thanksgiving dinner that they will bring home in time for Thanksgiving break.  They also made very cut handprint turkeys.  We will hang these up outside the classroom for all to see.  The three-year-old turkeys are especially entertaining.  Definately some budding Picassos in the class (or maybe more like Jackson Pollack).  The children also loved getting to bead once again — what a popular activity.

I loved seeing so many of the children participating in the spirit week.  The jammies were adorable.  80s day was a little more challenging for all of us, but the career day outfits (or accessories) were very cute.  If you got your bobcat shirt, Friday is bobcat spirit day.

We did a variety of fun literacy activities.  We read a poem about helping our families.  The 4 year-olds made a helping book that is still in the process of being published.  We had our first introduction to poetry and read a poem from a English/Spanish book called “Tortillitas Para Mama” The poem was extra fun when I substituted the names in the book for the children’s names and they got to choose the kind of tortillas they would get.  We had some amusing and creative ideas; the most popular kind of tortilla for the three-year olds was chocolate with sprinkles, while the four-year-olds got a little more inventive with car tortillas and skeleltan tortillas.  We also had a discussion of celebrations and ways in which we celebrate.

Thank you to everyone for signing up to help with our empanada project next week.  It is a nice way to do something special for Thanksgiving without getting too extravegant.

The children had their eye testing on Wednesday and on Thursday we got books from RIF (Reading is Fundamental) a program sponsored by Scholastic books.

Friday’s show & tell is the letter J.  Keep sending the great pictures and small items for out collages.  You can check out our work so far in the classroom.  Group 2 gets show & tell this week:  AM–Trevor, Will, Evelyn, Phoebe & Dayton; PM–Scott, Emma, Katie, Marin, Sosha.  My Friday readers for this week are Kristie Harris and Kate Phlugh.

Don’t forget to check the website periodically.  I do sometimes change and update the information there.

Questions:

What kind of totillas did you get when Ms. Gudder read the Tortilla poem?

What does the title page of a book say?

What are some ways you help the family?  (Why don’t I ever get to see you do these helpful things?)–oops, did I write that, I must have been thinking of my child.

What are some ways people celebrate?

I hope everyone had an enjoyable middle of the week Veteran’s Day holiday.  At school we are continuing our family unit.  This week has been about how families help each other.  We read “Thank You” about how children can help their families and we read “What Mommies/Daddies Do”  about what our parents do to help us.  The students had lots of connections to these books and their own lives.

We’ve done some fun art projects.  Marble painting was a big hit and something that I’m sure we will do again.  If anyone has small glass marbles that they would like to donate to the class, my collection has actually become a bit depleted over the years.  The family collages were very fun.  The children worked hard finding people that looked like the people in their family, so you can get an idea of how your children view you.  You will also get a “Helping Hands” picture, which will tell you how your child intend to help the family.  I’m not sure how realistic these promises are, but it can’t hurt to ask.

The letter of the week is I.  For Show & Tell, we are back to Group 1 (AM: Maisie, Ella, Gage, Grant, Miles), (PM: Piper, Ben, Drew, Asher, Andrew, Lilah). The vowels are always challenging.  Keep up the great work on the collage pictures (try to keep pictures about 2-3 inches), and I love adding 3D elements to the collage if you can think of any.  Some words I’ve thought of are; ice cream, igloo, iguana, ink, ice cube, insect, iron, infant, island, inch.

A couple special notes.

Christine VanDiest (the mother of Isabela in my PM class) is teaching a Spanish class at Babypower on Friday mornings from 9:15-10:15.  This is a great opportunity for the PM kids since the class is right before our Friday class time.

The date for individual picture retakes and class photos has been changed to December 8th.  I need the order envelope with payment on by the day of pictures.  If you want to have your child do a retake on the individual picture, I need the original packet back.  If your child missed the picture day, I need an order envelope with payment by December 8th.  If you need an order envelope for either individual or class photos, they have extras in the office.

Don’t forget the fun charitable opportunities going on at the school.  There is the penny harvest.  Our class has been able to make a huge contribution to this great cause in the past, so bring in your pennies (or other change)  Once the pennies are collected, the middle school students choose local charities to receive our donations.  There is also the canstruction project.  The middle school students are collecting cans and will build a structure out of the cans and eventually the cans will go to the needy.  The cans must have their labels and they cannot accept soda cans.  There is a drop off box in our classroom.

Questions

How do you help the family?

How does the family help you?

What do you say when someone helps you? (Thank You)

Who is in Ms. Gudder’s Family? (Ms. Gudder, Tia, and Rochelle)