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We began our author study about Todd Parr! Todd’s books are silly yet teach kids many life skills such as ways to be kind, ways to show empathy, ways to be confident, and much more! We engaged in various Todd Parr writing activities during centers. More Todd Parr to follow next week...
Our centers this week included playing beginning sound games, playing the ABC games on Starfall (check this out at home!), reading I am Thankful by Todd Parr and writing about what we are thankful for, practicing writing and matching our uppercase and lowercase letters, reading It's Okay to be Different by Todd Parr and writing about what we like about ourselves, and reading independently in our reading area.
In Writing, our focuses this week included looking at and discussing good writing, drawing and writing about our families, and labeling our pictures with beginning sounds. We worked with a partner to generate ideas and share our stories.
In Interactive Writing, we worked on writing the heart (sight) words "the" and "like", and "and". "The" and "like" are words that we need to know by heart (they are not words that we can look at and sound out). You can read more about heart words here.
During Reading, we learned and practiced how to choral read with our class. We learned that words are groups of letters separated by spaces. We counted words in a line and matched our pointing to one spoken word while we read "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" together during Shared Reading.
Our Phonics lessons this week focused on the /m/ sound, /s/ sound, and short /a/ sound. We wrote the letters than stand for those sounds and identified words and pictures that begin with the sounds. We continued to work on blending, segmenting, and rhyming as well.
We wrapped up our first Math unit on numbers 0-5 and ordering numbers. Next week, we will start our second chapter in Math Workshop and will continue our work on numbers to ten.
Last week, we had our first Yoga lesson with Mrs. Travers, our district Educational Support Counselor, and our first Counseling lesson with Ms. Peterson! We worked on 5 Finger Breathing (we also call this Rollercoaster Breathing). We also learned about and met Charlie, Reed's Therapy Dog!
We had our first Social Studies lesson and started to learn more about ourselves and each other. We talked about how we are all alike in so many ways and different at the same time. More to come in the coming weeks!
In this week’s Second Steps lesson, we learned that it’s important to practice and keep trying in order to get better at something we want to learn. Encourage your child to choose something they want to get better at (such as, tying their shoes, adding or subtracting, writing their name, dribbling a ball, or snapping their fingers). Set aside a few minutes each day for them to practice the skill and highlight the progress they’re making.
Have a great weekend!
