Newsletter October 5-8, 2009

Ms. Kirkpatrick’s Newsletter
October 5-8, 2009
Classroom News
We will be taking a short field trip, weather permitting, to Veteran’s Park this Thursday to sketch the pond in our nature journals. There is a permission form in your child’s folder. Please fill out and return by Wednesday. We will leave around 2:30 and return before 3:30. I will try to plan a nature walk at a local park once a month. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.
Our Studies
We welcomed October last week. The students practice a song every morning to help them remember how to spell October. We also have color songs that we sing to help them spell the color words. Last week, the students practiced the red song. This week, we will practice the color word orange.
All of the students are working in their individual phonic workbooks. I work with each student one-on-one everyday to teach individual phonic lessons.
We now have two math periods a day. During the first period, the students work in their individual workbooks. The second period consists of “life skills” math. For example, this week, we practiced telling time to the hour and ordinal number.
We continued to read Aesop’s Fables. This week we read The Wolf and the Kid. After reading, the students drew a picture and retold the fable. Their illustration and narration is hanging out on the bulletin board. We also read The Goose and the Golden Egg. The students made their very own golden egg. After reading The Bundle of Sticks, we went outside and collected sticks to reenact the fable. On Thursday, we read The Farmer and the Larks.
In Bible, we studied the story of Cain and Abel. The students continue to practice sequencing the days of creation.
We had a guest speaker for history this week. My dad, Mr. K, was able to come in and share the story of Paul Revere. The students colored a color sheet and I hung it up on the history timeline bulletin board.
Our science lessons have focused on water, created in day two of creation. Last week, we did experiments about floating and sinking.
The students did a picture study on Manet’s Still Life with Melon and Peaches. They had to spend a full five minutes looking at the print. This was very challenging for some of them. After the five minutes, they had to turn their print over and tell me everything they remember. The students remembered a lot!