Friday, October 24, 2014

Buckaroo news for October 20th-24th

This has been a super busy week but filled with lots of fun and great learning.  This week in word study, we worked on the sounds of /sh/, /ch/ and /th/.  We learned a chant to go with each one.  Ask your child to share these with you.  Each individual word study team is also working on short vowels, long vowel patterns, or beginning consonants.  Each week your child will be bringing home evidence (rainbow words, words written 3x each, word races) of what they are working on in their teams and you can help them by reviewing their work with them at home.  In writing workshop, we learned to stretch words like bubble gum when we are writing  so that others can read what we've written.  Writers say words slowly and write down all of the letters for the sounds they hear.  We also learned that our stories are richer when we include details.  Together, we did a shared writing where we wrote about going to the pumpkin patch.  I told it first without any details and the children were practically screaming at me because I left out "the good stuff."  They turned and talked with each other about what should've been included and I wrote the story as they dictated it to me.  We agreed that their version was much better than mine:).  We learned that ideas for stories are happening everywhere all the time and we can capture those stories in our hands and put them in our pockets to pull out later for writing down.  We can use the fingers on our hands to help us to retell the story with detail.  We also began learning how to use our dictionaries to help us to write unfamiliar words.  In science, we are continuing our study of bats.  Ask your child to share what they've learned so far.  In math workshop, we have begun learning ways to use a ten-frame to help us add and subtract numbers to 12.  The concepts have been especially challenging the past two days but please understand that we are building a foundation for future learning so your child may not get it just yet but we will continue to work on these concepts throughout the year to strengthen that foundation.  In reader's workshop, we learned how to do the last two parts of the Daily Five which was Working on Writing and Word Work.  On Wednesday, we got to give it a go and I was amazed at how independent they already were.  During this time the children know that I will be working with small groups of children each day to help all of them to become stronger, lifelong readers.

Next Thursday is our 50's Day celebration.  I will be dressed in full 50's attire including bobby socks, saddle shoes and a poodle skirt.  My hope is that all of the children dress in 50's fashion as we sock hop our way through the day:).  

Next Friday is our Harvest Party and the children will be dressing up and parading around the school in the afternoon.  Please send your child's costume with him/her as we won't be wearing them all day.  A HUGE thank you to all of the parents that are helping to put our celebration together for us!  We can't wait!

The SCE spell-a-thon is coming up very soon.  A paper went home today explaining what this is.  It is a lot of fun and a great way to raise funds to be used at SCE!

Our schedule for next week:  Monday - Art    Tuesday-Music   Wednesday-Library   Thursday-P.E.   Friday-Art   the following Monday-Music

We made bats to hang from the tree.  A mother bat can find her pup from a lot of pups by smelling them.  We made bats and our teacher hung them up.  
Bats go out in big groups when the sun sets.  We learned that vampire bats suck blood from cows but it doesn't hurt them.  Bats are the only flying mammals.  Some people are baffled by bats.  Bats are warm-blooded.  Bats use echolocation in the dark.  One type of bat can fit in a teacup.  It is the vampire bat.  Flying foxes are the biggest bats in the world.  Bumblebee bats are the smallest.  Flying foxes hold their pup.  Mama bats can smell their pups in thousands of pups.  Bumblebee bats have a wingspan of six inches.  Vampire bats can jump up.  Vampire bats are the only ones that can run on the ground and take flight.  Most bats aren't able to hold themselves up on their feet.  Flying foxes have a wingspan as long as a bathtub.  Fruit bats eat while they are flying.  Fruit bats also eat fruit because their name starts with fruit.
This is the Daily Five board.  The Daily Five board is for us to pick what we want to do for Daily Five.  One of the Daily Fives you can go on a laptop to listen to stories or go on CD players.
Eagle eye is when you look closely at the picture.
We are learning about how bats smell their pups to find them.  This boy is trying to find the vanilla and that one is the pup.  Lemon was on the other cotton balls.

She is shaking an egg with rice in it.  The mama bat had to find the insects which is the egg rattling with rice in it.  She had to use her ears and echolocation.  
We made a circle out of bears in a rainbow. 

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