Buckaroo News for December 15-19

Hello Families,

I can't believe that it is the last day before our long winter break!  Where did the time go?!  Well, we've had another busy week here at Camp Buckaroo.  In word study, we have continued to learn those high-frequency words that pop up in about 80% of all of our reading and writing.  We've been practicing them with a fun game called SPARKLE.  Ask your child to share about this game.  Our class elf, Flash, told us that Santa is always taking applications for new elves and we each filled out an application in hopes that someday we'll be called upon to walk through the portal that leads to Santa's Workshop.  Many of the children have already decided what elf job they would be best suited for:).  We also practiced our visualization skills with activities that centered around the Polar Express story.  In math, we are continuing to work with larger numbers to 120 and finding ways to solve problems beyond counting on our fingers:).  This week, we used hundreds charts and ten-frames.  I've noticed that the children can really use some extra help skip-counting by 2's and 5's.  We all have skip-counting by 10's down.  An easy way to practice is in the car traveling to your destination.  Once they have counting by 2's and 5's starting at the beginning, give them a number and have them practice counting up and/or back from that number.
Even though we are still in December, I will be sending January's reading log home since the children won't be returning until January 5th.  The kiddos challenge each other by talking about how many minutes they read the night before or that weekend.  Please remember to record the minutes read each night on the log and to total it before returning it to me.  Saves me from having to total 23 logs:).

This is our schedule when we return:  Monday, January 5th - Art   Tuesday - Music  Wednesday - Library   Thursday - P.E.   Friday - Art

Finally, I can't thank you enough for the gift of your children.  I want you to know that I fully understand and take very seriously the fact that they are your hearts running around on two legs and I value and appreciate each and every one of them.  They each bring something special to my life and I'm enriched because of them!  I also want to thank you for all of your support, kind words, encouragement that you give to your child and to me!  I am truly blessed!  I hope that all of you have a joyous break filled with memories that will last a lifetime!

Our classroom elf left Tuesday night with all of our mission folders so that Santa could see how children celebrate in other countries.  Santa accidentally spilled hot chocolate on his laptop and lost all of his files.  We had to learn about different countries and how they celebrate this time of year so Santa knows what kids celebrate.  We can't touch Flash so we had to use a glove to touch him.  Santa sent this glove so we could pick up Flash.

The Chick-Fil-A Santa cow came to lunch this week.  He was here to celebrate the great job we did on the Spell-a-Thon.  

He got his face painted.

We learned about different countries.  You guys looking at this blog right now are probably wondering what is that fireplace and what country is it from?  It is from England.