Love. Laugh. Learn...Together!: Little Monsters Having Fun at the Monster Bash!

Dear Families,

What a busy week and an EXTRA exciting day we had today. Here is the quick run down of the week...

Social Studies-we wrapped up our "I Can" unit. Each child observed carefully from the photo that showed what they could do and drew themselves, just like the photo, with the black pen. They are amazing, come have a look! Lots of discussion about what we might like to be when we grow up and we made a class book about the jobs we might like to have.

Math-
We finished our Gumball Number Books, played pumpkin roll and cover and a pumpkin shape-fill game. This afternoon we did another glyph. This time, we taught our 3rd grade buddies about glyphs and made a pumpkin one. I began doing some basic number and counting assessing with the children this week. Lots of counting-by ones-forward and backward, by tens and looking at patterns on the hundreds chart. We have been singing songs about the Days of the Week and Months of the year. And...of course counting how many more days until the Fall Festival and Isla's birthday!!!

Reading-
The new exciting reading news for this week is that we will have a Reading Partner and we are getting our book boxes ready! This week, we made our name cards and found out where we will keep our book boxes in the room. I am so excited for the children to get their very own book box!

Our Shoebox book is called Trick or Treat. The star word highlighted this week is "go". Today we read another emergent pattern book called "Little Monster"-it also has the word "go". You can add both to your Shoe BOX. :-) You have probably noticed...the kids are crazy about finding the word "the". What great word detectives!

This week we noticed that there are spaces between words, talked about how words are made up of letters---words can have a few letters or many and that sentences are made up of words----they can have a few or many too. We also practiced pointing to one word/one time for each word that we read. If we look at the words as we say them----even if we know the pattern by heart and don't need to look----it helps our brain remember the words when we see them in another book!!!

Writing-
On Sunday, we shared our weekend news and wrote in our journals. Many children are beginning to add words and labels to their news. The children have been drawing fabulous detailed illustrations that really show what they did over the weekend!

In Writing Workshop, we found out our new Writing Spots-this is where the children will sit next to their Writing Partner. This year, we will learn different ways Partners can help each other become better authors and illustrators. We also continued our discussions noticing the "Smart Choices" or "Craft Moves" illustrators use to make their pictures interesting. Illustrators show movement, thoughts, talking, different perspectives, feelings, etc. The children are really thoughtful about noticing all kinds of interesting choices and are really learning to articulate what they notice and why they think the illustrator may have chosen a particular craft move.

Much of our writing time this week was dedicated to our class book, finishing the timelines and a completing a goal setting page for conferences this week. We look forward to jumping back into the illustration study even more in the coming days as we see how we can start trying out some craft moves to make our illustrations even more interesting!

Swimming----is finished. The next PE unit will be outside. If your child does not have a hat already at school, it is recommended that you send one for your child to wear during PE.

Monster Bash-
Our Little Monsters had lots of fun this morning rotating around fun stations---

They were....
Messy Monsters-playing with glittery gloppy Monster oobleck
Hungry Monsters-making Monster eyeball fruit kebabs
Crafty Monsters-making a Monster headband
Clever Monsters-playing Monster Bingo and dropping the ball in the Monster bucket

Thank you to our crew of Monster Moms who helped with the Monster Bash. I know many of you have been busy with Fall Festival too. Thank you so much for your time and care.

BIG HUGS!

And...a big thank you to all the families who sent in fruit for the party!

Thank you! Thank you! :-)

I LOVE these Little Monsters so much! We had so much fun today.
And now....what you have been waiting for...the Little Monsters in action----

WARNING: I am posting a LOT of photos. Hopefully, in the mix you can find a few fun ones of your special Little Monster!