December 14th
This week our focus has been on Jesus' Coming. The discussion was on
how in the Old Testament of the Bible there are many stories that tell of the
coming of a Savior, Messiah and that he would be born in Bethlehem. We
talked about how the New Testament beginning with Mary saying "Yes" to God
and becoming the mother of Jesus.
In social studies we are talking about needs and wants and how blessed
we all are. We discussed about the things that we need to live and than
about the things that are what we want but do not need.
In reading we are working on the long vowel sounds, ai, ie, oa. We keep
saying the rule - "When 2 vowels go walking the 1st one does the talking and
it is usually long." The only problem with that rule is that there are many
exceptions. We are also learning about ay - "The y acting like a vowel", like
in day or play and a-e like in the word cake - "An e at the end of a word
can make the first vowel make the long sound. I am not expecting the
children to master all of these rules and exceptions. This is an
introduction, a beginning to recognizing the long vowel sounds.
December 7th
This week we started the next set of letter sounds. The long vowel ai
which includes( ay, a-e ) and the letter Jj. In religion we are talking
about friendships and how to be a good friend. We have done some modeling
and talked about different situations. We have been learning about reindeer,
the ones that are earthbound.
The kids have been having tons of fun in Santa’s workshop. Our little
elves have been making ornaments, doing some stitch work and baking lots of
goodies.
December 4th
This week we have wrapped up another set of letters, Monday we will finish
reviewing and the sound book and words list will come home. We had a lot of
fun with our Gingerbread unit. We compared several versions of the story,
did some retelling and some acting. We also did some tasting and graphing of
the gingerbread men.
Our Thanksgiving Finger Feast was a great success. With all of the food we
had we could have celebrated for 3 days as they did at the First
Thanksgiving.
It was great to meet with everyone at conference time. It is always so nice
to meet face to face and be able to let you know how your child is doing and
what we are doing in our class.
In reading we have worked on the letters Gg, Oo, Uu and Ll. Having
introduced all of the vowels now will give us so many more words to
blend/sound out. More word lists will be coming home, please help your child
work on these.
Ms. Goesch is now doing the math program and doing a fantastic job. She
really gets the kids involved and thinking.
For Social Studies we have learned about what it was like to be a Pilgrim and
all of the hardships that they had to endure. I think the kids are grateful
that they don’t have to do all of the chores that the Pilgrim children had to
do. We also learned about the Wampanoag Indians and how they lived and the
important role that they played in the Pilgrims lives. We even learn the
Wampanoag’s word for hello, “K Way”.
I want to welcome Maura Goesch our student teacher from Mount Mary
College. She will be with us for the next nine weeks and we are excited to
have her in our class. Ms. Goesch has only been with us a week and
already has a wonderful rapport with the children.
We have finished our second set of letter sounds and the children have
brought home their sound book and the second list of words for blending.
We have gone over the list in small groups and everyone did a great
job. A third list will be coming home soon. Please take the time to have
your child sound out the words and even try writing them for you. We'll start
our next set of six letters later this week.
In math we continue to work on number sets 5-10. We are looking at money
recognizing the nickel as a set of 5 and adding pennies to create different
combinations to ten.
