News for the Week of October 1st

I hope you all enjoy your nice, long weekend!  I will see most of you this Monday at the fall conferences and I will see the rest of you later this week.  We had a fun week in kindergarten!

In math this week, we continued our unit on 2D shapes and sorting and classifying.  We learned about the trapezoid, rhombus, heart and hexagon.  We sorted groups of pattern blocks and organized them into a graph.  We discussed which shape in our graph had the most and the least.  We played a fun game where we used a spinner and then traced the shape we landed on.  We were trying to trace every shape on our game board.  Next week, we will use pattern blocks to make large shapes out of smaller shapes.

In language arts, we read the poem, I Like, and focused on the sight word, "like."  We wrote the word "like" several times and looked for rhyming words in our poem.  We read the book The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Steven Kroll and discussed the characters in the book, the setting and the main event.  We then made jack-o-lanterns, just like the mice did in the book.  Our jack-o-lanterns are hanging in our hallway.  Come and see them!  We also integrated social studies into our reading time by reading about historical figures that helped shape our country and state.  We learned about Christopher Columbus (before our Columbus Day holiday on Monday), George Washington and Stephen F. Austin.  We will learn about Jose Antonio Navarro next week.  We usually learn about these figures at the end of the school year during our patriotism unit, but the RRISD curriculum asked us to study them earlier in the year this school year.  Next week in language arts, we will learn about what authors are trying to tell us about in their books.  We will also create a fun rhyming words craft.  During our word study, we focused on syllables or word parts.  We recited a fun poem over and over and added in different food words.  We clapped how many syllables were in the food words.  The students then got to make their own poem with a food word of their choice and illustrate.  For example, "I like pizza, Yum, yum, yum! I like pizza, In my tum!"  In writing, we worked on learning about changes that happen in autumn/fall.  We wrote about these changes on special pumpkin paper and they are hanging in our hallway next to our jack-o-lanterns.  Our class also continued work in our handwriting book and worked on the forming the letters S, A, I, T and J.  

In science, we finished our unit Heat Causes Change.  We took chocolate chips and tried a variety of things.  We put one bag of chocolate chips in a bag on the floor and left them alone, we took another bag and put it on a heating pad, we put another bag in ice, and we held the other bad in our hands.  We noticed that our body heat melted the chocolate chips, the heating pad melted the chocolate chips and the ice hardened the chocolate chips.  Nothing happened to our bag that was just sitting on the floor.

We used a hot plate (only the teacher) and put a pan lined with foil on it to melt crayons.  The students were amazed at how quickly the crayons melted.  They also thought it was very cool how the crayon colors mixed together.

The Monkeys REALLY enjoyed making ice cream on Friday!  It was a lot of fun!  We noticed how cooling materials changed them.

We took an assessment on our Heating/Cooling Causes Change unit.  We will begin a new unit called Forms of Energy next week.

The Monkeys were super excited to meet their 3rd grade reading buddies on Friday!  They worked on a getting to know each other activity this week.  Every Friday afternoon we will be reading together with our 3rd grade buddies.  This is a great way to work on reading skills and meet new friends!

The Monkeys were excited to learn all about our superstar student, Luka, this past week!  We were able to hear all about her life and interests.

Reminders

Parent/Teacher Fall Conferences will be this upcoming Monday, October 8th.  I look forward to meeting with you.  If you are not having a conference on Monday, I will see you later this week.

Please be sure to check out the "Dates to Remember" below. 

Upcoming Dates to Remember: 

Oct. 8        Student Holiday/Parent~Teacher Fall Conferences
Oct. 9        Student Holiday
Oct. 12      PTA Movie Night, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Oct. 17      Bush's Chicken Spirit Night, 4-7 p.m.
Oct. 19      Kona Ice, after school
Oct. 22-26 Red Ribbon Week
Oct. 26      PTA Run Wild Fun Run, 6 p.m.

Superstars & Birthdays:

Morris Superstar:

None

Morris October Birthdays:

Siddhant-10/24