Fall Leaves

This week our theme was Fall/Autumn and changing leaves! This is such a hard concept for kids of endless summer, so they loved getting to see all of the beautiful trees change in a timelapse video of NYC in the fall. We also looked at real fall leaves and did crayon rubbings.

Ask Your Child About:

-Writing: What things are on our writing checklist? (Start with a capital, finger spaces, punctuation, picture matches our words, used our sounds to spell words). What are ghost lines and how do they help us?

-Content Literacy: Matter! What are the 3 states of matter? Give an example of each.

We did so many fun matter activities this week: Diet Coke & Mentos, Water experiments, and we acted like the molecules in each state of matter...

We huddled real close together and stayed still like statues for solids... We walked around the classroom slowly for liquids, and their personal favorite was...

Jumping around like crazies for gas! :)

(Work hard, play hard... but our work FEELS like play... so we play all day!)

-Letters: Ll, Vv, Ww ... What are the motions and sounds for each letter? (MY personal favorite is W... because they put their arms like a W and say "Wassup!") **A lot of the kids have been asking for the name of the songs we sing because they want to do them at home... A couple of them are on YouTube and it's called "Heidi Songs Letters & Sounds"- I know S is on there and that's a class favorite. We are doing so well learning all of our letters and sounds & I am SO proud of them! The kinesthetic aspect of the songs and motions are so helpful for so many of our active learners.

-Phonemic Awareness: What is the beginning sound in: cat, rat, yellow, dog, wind, etc.? Name some things that rhyme!

-Reading: This week we focused on informational texts/non-fiction and explaining how the illustrations match the text, identifying the main idea & key details, and finding similarities and differences within the same text and two texts. How do we know if a story is going to be real or pretend by looking at the front cover? What colors can we find in nature? What colors do the leaves change during fall? What does it mean to gallop? (vocabulary) Can they show you how to gallop? (we did this on the playground Friday!)

-Math: We moved onto unit 2: two-dimensional shapes. How many sides and vertices does a triangle/square/rectangle/hexagon have? Does a circle have sides or curves?

We had a wonderful week and I cannot wait for our pumpkin week starting tomorrow! Thank you so much to those who donated $1 for our pumpkins and matter experiments!