Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! What a gorgeous day! I hope that it lasts and stays nice for all of the trick or treaters this evening. I know my Benjamin is very excited for tonight!
Hard to believe that it's the last day of October though. November is here and with it comes the end of our first quarter! Please be sure to check your child's folder for information on Parent/Teacher Conferences coming up soon!

This past week we've been very busy with Halloween fun. We've been learning about Mimi Mouse and the letter Mm. Thanks to all the parents who were able to help this week...we had helpers in each day! In centers, we worked on spiders and numbers 1-8, monster paper bag puppets and the growth of pumpkins. Some of the children still have some to finish up, those who weren't done will finish and bring them home this week.
On Tuesday we had a fun day with real pumpkins! The children predicted their pumpkins weight, circumference and number of seeds; then they measured and counted each. I was hoping that the smaller pumpkins would maybe have a bit fewer seeds (easier for us to count) but I was wrong.....the pumpkins still had a lot of seeds. With parent helpers some got up to 100 and still had more to count...so we decided to just say 100+ (we were starting to run out of time!) Then, the children decorated their pumpkins with glow in the dark stickers...they did a great job! They were so creative! I did get a nice group photo that I'll put in our Kindergarten Collage at the end of the year.

On to this week.....

Language Arts: Our new alphafriend is Reggie Rooster. We'll be learning all about the letter Rr. We'll read a pourquoi tale (a pourquoi tale tells why something is the way it is...fictional)- "Why the Birds Got Their Colors". In this story we will continue to work on predicting what will happen next and with the sequence of events.
We'll review the stories that we read the past few weeks for this theme of colors...."I Went Walking" and "In the Big Blue Sea". We'll also review and continue to work on our sight words: I, see.

Math: We'll be working more on numbers, specifically zero and five. We'll also do some graphs to show these numbers.

Religion: On Nov. 1st we'll talk about All Saints' Day and hear some stories about them. We'll also be learning and focusing on "The Lord is my Shepherd" this week. This is the focus of the 1st Graders Mass coming up next week on Nov. 10th. The Kindergarteners will not be joining the 1st Grade with this Mass, but we will have the opportunity to join them later in the year. We'll take some time to help the 1st Graders practice throughout this week. It will be a good opportunity for us to learn some new songs and more of our Mass parts.

Science: We'll be learning about Healthy Foods. We'll learn and talk about the food pyramid and do a collage of healthy food we like to eat. This ties in well with talking about what living things need to survive.

Social Studies: We'll read our Weekly Reader about Thanksgiving. We'll talk about the food we eat and the traditions we have. We'll hear a story about the first Thanksgiving and talk about the differences and similarities between then and now.

NO CENTERS THIS WEEK! After a busy week last week, we need some time to cool down before we start Centers again. A calendar will go home this week. If you are able to fill in a blank spot, please be sure to write me a note in your child's assignment notebook.

IMPORTANT DATES:
Nov. 2nd: End of 1st Quarter
Nov. 5th: Early Release Day

That's all for now, thanks for stopping....please be sure to take our online poll for this week!
~Mrs. Westlund =)