Week of Dec. 18th

The Monkeys had a great time doing fun holiday activities this past week!  We enjoyed our Polar Express day and wearing our pajamas!

Thanks to all of your generous donations, we were able to start our fine motor skills morning tubs!  They are a big hit with the students!

Thank you so much for all of the wonderful cards, gifts and gift cards!  I truly appreciate your generosity and it warms my heart.  It is a pleasure and a gift in itself to get to work with your precious children each day!  The Monkeys had a great time at their winter holiday party!  We really appreciate the room moms, parent volunteers and all parents who helped with our party and who attended our party!

The week before last week the Monkeys were excited to learn all about our last superstar for 2017, Victoria!

We got to learn all about her life and interests!  We will announce a new superstar student on Friday, January 12th before we dismiss!

Have a very happy holiday break with your family and friends!  Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it and Happy New Year!  I will see all of my Monkeys on January 9th, 2018!

Week of December 4th

The Monkeys worked hard and learned a lot this past week!  We had a great surprise with our snowy weather this past week!  The students were very excited!  It was magical to many!

In math this past week, we worked on the concept of more or less.  The students enjoyed comparing numbers by using the terms "more", "less" and "same."  We ended our week by starting our measurement unit.  We began with the concept of length.  We compared our birth length and used the vocabulary, "longer than," "shorter than," and "the same."  We will continue measurement in math this week.

In language arts, we read folktales and learned what folktales are.  We retold a folktale, we created art with another folktale and we made predictions about text.  We will continue to work with holiday stories this week, we will write about our thoughts and create art.  We will also be working on something special for our parents.  When thinking about winter holiday traditions we recognize that different families celebrate different holidays and celebrate in different ways.  This touches on our unit in social studies about culture.

We love to look at our shoe box lid tree in our hallway to see how different families celebrate the holidays.  Thank you for helping your child to create these!

In science, we wrote about many of the things we have learned about rocks.  We also did a fun science experiment where we used a nail to scratch rocks to determine if they were hard or soft.  We will discuss the uses of rocks, water and soil this week and we will learn about the properties of water.

We had a wonderful time learning all about our superstar student, Natalie, this past week!  We learned about her life and interests.

The Monkeys are excited to be learning about our new superstar student, Victoria, this week!

Week of November 27th

The Monkeys had a wonderful time on their field trip Friday at the Zach Scott Theater watching Holiday Heroes!  The play focused a lot on working together and embracing differences during the holiday season.  The students were equally excited about riding the big yellow school  bus!

This week in math we will be continuing to focus on more than and less than a particular number.  We are really working on comparing numbers and are doing some fun, engaging activities where we work with each other.  We will begin our unit on measurement at the end of this week.  

In language arts, we are beginning a Zooming in on Stories unit.  We will learn what folktales are this week.  This a brief unit and we will have a bigger unit focusing on fairy tales, folktales and fables in the 3rd nine week period.  We will read the folktale The Mitten by Jan Brett and The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola which is another folktale.  We will also read The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone which is technically a fairy tale.  We will engage in many fun activities with these books from retelling the story, to writing about them and creating crafts.  In writing we will work on a fun Grinch holiday writing activity, continue to focus on phonics and learn more about syllables and work on more handwriting.

In science, we will continue our unit on rocks, soil and water.  We will engage in fun hands on activities and record our findings.  The students really enjoy getting to experience science with these fun activities.  

The Monkeys had a great time learning all about our superstar student, Logan, the week before the Thanksgiving holidays!  We were able to hear all about his life and interests!

This week, the Monkeys were happy to begin learning all about our new superstar student, Natalie!

Week of November 6th

The Monkeys had a BLAST last week getting to experience Google Expeditions Augmented Reality.  The students used smart phones to explore virtual dinosaurs and ocean animals.  They were able to look at them as if they were right next to them.  The students were very excited!

In math, we finished our unit all about 2D and 3D shapes.  The students had a lot of fun creating 3D shapes with playdough!

We will be looking at deepening our understanding of numbers 1-10 over the next few weeks.  

In language arts, we created turkeys after reading books like A Plump and Perky Turkey and The Great Turkey Race.  We also read A Turkey for Thanksgiving  and then retold the story.  We colored the characters, cut them out and put them in the order that they entered the story.  We took these home with us today!  Ask your child to retell the story to you!  We also wrote stories with the sentence stem, "If I were a Thanksgiving turkey..."  These cute stories are hanging in the hall next to our turkeys.  

In social studies, we read a Scholastic magazine about Veterans Day and a book.  We also watched a video that explained the meaning of Veterans Day and why we celebrate it each year.  We colored a picture of an army person and wrote a thank you note to veterans.

In science, we finished our magnets unit by taking an assessment that was sent home.  We then began our unit on patterns of movement.  We have discussed relative position/location words such as above, below, over, under, between, beside, in front of, behind, etc.  We will also discuss how things move using vocabulary such as zigzag, straight line, around and around, fast, slow, etc.

The Monkeys were excited to learn about our superstar student, Mason, last week!  We were able to learn all about his life and interests.

This week, the Monkeys were happy to begin to learn about our new superstar student, Logan!

Thank you again to all parents for helping your child decorate a turkey feather according to your family's culture and traditions!  The turkey looks great!