Week of September 18th

The Monkeys worked hard last week and had fun doing it!  We are going to continue developing number sense up to 10 this week.  Today we looked at a number line with numbers 1-10.  We discussed what numbers come before or after a particular number.  We will continue our work on this concept this week.
In language arts, we will be learning about story elements.  Today, we discussed what a character is in a story after reading the book Brave Irene by William Steig.  The Monkeys drew and colored a picture of their favorite character from the book.  We will also learn about "setting" this week.  
In writing, many students finished their first published story today.  We will continue working on creating stories just as authors do.  
In science, we finished our unit on properties of objects.  We had fun exploring properties of objects with our senses last week.  We recorded our results like scientists.

This week in science we began our new unit on changes caused by heating or cooling.  We were able to explore freezing and melting today.  We froze popsicles and ate them and observed them melt.  We determined that our bodies have a lot of heat.  We also tried to melt blocks of ice to get dimes out of them that were frozen inside.  We put one out in the sun, held another with our hands (body heat), left one on a table and used a hair dryer on another. 

Last week, the Monkeys were excited to learn all about our superstar student, Juliette!  We were able to hear all about her life and interests!

This week, our class is happy to be learning about our new superstar student, Swara!

Week of September 11th

The Monkeys had a fun week of learning this past week!  In math, we began developing number sense up to 10.  We played a couple of fun games, made paper chains and really focused on using one to one correspondence when counting.  We will continue to look at numbers to 10 in a variety of ways next week.

In language arts, we read many alphabet books and looked at letters in different ways.  We really want the students to be able to distinguish uppercase and lowercase letters from each other.  We looked at various magnetic letters and sorted them.

We also studied the sight word "and" in our shared reading of poetry this week.  We also read aloud books about community helpers that work in our schools.  The students have learned about teachers, principals, counselors, custodians, librarians and a school nurse.  During writing, we learned how to use our alphabet chart to help us write words we do not know how to write yet.  We also discussed how we should reread our pictures in our picture plan before writing, so our writing sounds like a story.  

In science, we continued our unit on properties of objects.  We compared salt and sugar and the properties of each using our senses.  The students had to figure out which was sugar and which was salt.  Most of the students had an idea of which was which, and once we tasted a little bit of each they knew for sure!

The Monkeys were super excited to learn all about our first superstar student this school year, Lauren!  We were able to learn all about her life and interests!

We look forward to learning about our next superstar, Juliette!

Week of August 28th

The Monkey class had another awesome week!  In math, we have engaged in many fun activities to see numbers 0-5 in different ways.

In science, we learned all about what science is and discussed what we want to learn in science this year.  We will discuss safety in science this upcoming week and begin a unit on properties of objects.

In language arts, we focus on so many things each week.  We have really been focusing on our names and how they are special.  We will continue that and discuss a different sight word each week with poetry.  Last week, we read the poem The Beach, which highlighted the word "the."  We added our poem to our poetry folders.  We listened to many wonderful books and made some predictions about what may happen in the story.  We also learned about the steps and procedures we use when writing stories during writing workshop.  We thought about how authors come up with ideas and shared our ideas for stories with partners.

Our school will begin a Box Tops collection on September 11th.  A couple of years ago, Mrs. Morris' Monkeys won this competition and got to have a pizza party and keep the trophy all year long!  Please start collecting those Box Tops so our class can have a chance at winning one of the top 5 prizes!

This year our school will be participating in the Box Tops for Education program through General Mills by having our annual Box Tops Contest. My name is Cory Vessa and I am the Box Tops Coordinator and will be facilitating the competition. Classes compete against each other to bring in the most Box Tops. The competition starts September 11th and ends October 6th. Those classes in the top five receive prizes. The winning class receives a pizza party provided by Papa John’s Pizza at Volente Plaza. Second place receives a Dairy Queen Blizzard provided by Qualtech Automotive. Third place receives a free kids’ meal at Chicken Express. Fourth place receives a free kids’ meal from Subway at Four Points. And fifth place receives 2 doughnuts from Ms. Doughnuts. The competition is fierce and each week as you bring in the pink Box Tops from General Mills products, the totals will be displayed for all the children to see. Box Tops Certificates from HEB are also a great way to edge your student’s class closer to victory. HEB runs a promotion (Sept. 6 - 19) in whereby if you purchase 10 Box Top items you receive 60 bonus Box Tops and if you purchase 15 Box Top items you receive 100 bonus Box Tops. Each student that brings an HEB bonus certificate of 60 Box Tops or more will also receive a small prize from the class prize basket provided by the PTA. But competition aside, this is a great and fun way to raise money for our school. Last year we raised over $3000 during our Box Top competition and we hope to do the same this year. The certificates are the key to reaching this goal. Each year almost half of our Box Tops come from the bonus certificates from HEB. For a list of Box Tops items go to http://www.boxtops4education.com/. That way you can plan which items to purchase in advance. The children truly love this competition and look forward to it every year. If you are like me, you have a large bag of Box Tops that have been collected all year just waiting for the competition to begin. If you have any questions, please contact me at vessacory@hotmail.com. I’m here to help make our school’s Box Tops for Education program a success again this year! 

Thanks for your help! Cory Vessa