We have been learning a lot about the pumpkins and the lifecycle of a pumpkin in science. We have already learned many similarities between pumpkins and apples and will be comparing them in the coming week on a Venn Diagram. Of course the kids are super excited about our trip to the Pumpkin Patch. Don't forget to make sure your child is dressed for the weather that day as we will be coming back to school after the trip and finishing up our day. We don't want any kids in wet clothes for the day because it rained etc.
As with every class I have students of all levels. I have been working really hard to challenge kids that need a extra challenge. Two of my ways of accomplishing this is through our Calendar Math Books and Daily Math Journals. Our Calendar Math Books we complete after calendar each morning. We complete how many days we have been in school, write out the date (eg. 10-10-09), roll 2 dice and graph the total, and pick a domino where we draw the domino on our paper and find the number on a hundreds chart. I would be happy to pull these out at conferences next month and show you. We also do our Daily Math Journal at the end of the day. We are working on addition and subtraction right now as well as one to one correspondence and understanding a number line. I understand that not all children will understand the concepts this early in the year, but all children are able to follow along with me as we complete these as a whole group. We completed our first journal and it went home Friday. The nice thing about both of these books is that for the children that need the extra challenge, they are able to stretch their brains more and can move from recognizing concepts to understanding and applying math skills. For the children that are still recognizing math skills, this will only strengthen their number sense skills, which is a huge focus in kindergarten math and math throughout the grades.
Parkside Elementary has a Lost and Found located on the railing in the office. If your child is missing any articles of clothing, this is the place to look. As the weather is getting colder, children wear their coats out to all recesses and if they are hot at recess, we encourage them to tie their coats around their waist so the coats do not get left outside and end up in Lost and Found.
I have come up with some fun ideas for our Halloween Party this month and will be sending out information soon.
