November 15th-19th

Hello! Hard to believe that the week before Thanksgiving is already here! Time is sure going by quickly, but we're having lots of fun! The children are excited not only for Thanksgiving, but for the predicted snow arrival this weekend. I'm at home in Mason and we have a good thick ground cover of snow...I've heard Ashland had rain/snow mix. Interested to see what we'll have on Monday! Please remember to send your child's boots, snowpants, hats and mittens to school with them every day!

Here's what we'll be doing for the week:

Language Arts:
Our Alphafriend this week is Benny Bear and we'll focus on the letter Bb. Our new sight word this week is 'like' and we'll also review our other sight words: 'I', 'see' and 'my'. We work on a letter each week, but also take time to review past letters and sounds as well as review recognizing all of the alphabet. Please continue to do this at home with your child. When they work on their 'homework' in their notebooks, go over each letter or number or other skill with them so they practice not only writing them, but recognizing them.
Our story this week will be "Shoes From Grandpa", which will help us work on remembering sequence of events, and predicting and drawing conclusions about different parts of the story.

Math:
We'll continue to work on numbers 6 through 10. We'll review numbers 0 through 5 also and continue to work on number order. We'll play various math manipulative games, which helps the children gain a more solid, tangible understanding of the numbers.

Religion:
We'll be focusing on God and how He sent us His Son, Jesus. This will be a good bridge into talking about the upcoming Advent and Christmas seasons. Advent begins on Nov. 28th, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. We will focus on the waiting and preparing for the birth of baby Jesus.

Science:
We will discuss animal habitats. Our Weekly Reader will help us talk about different habitats and the animals that live there. We'll also talk about animals and what they do to get ready for the winter; focusing on migration and hibernation. We'll also talk about what some animals do that do not migrate or hibernate over the winter.

Social Studies:
We'll continue to talk about Thanksgiving. We'll focus on what happened during the first Thanksgiving and the importance of all of the gifts we have to share with each other. We'll talk about being thankful and list things that we are thankful for. This will also come into play as we talk about things we have now and things they had back then.

Centers:
Centers 1 and 2 will focus on Thanksgiving games that have the children take turns picking picture cards and recalling the different sounds that we've learned so far: S, M, R, T and B.
Center 3 will be making a "I'm Thankful For..." Thanksgiving turkey centerpiece that the children will take home to put somewhere to show what they are most thankful for.

*Please remember we have Show-N-Tell on Mon, Tues, Thur, and Fri. I do not have the list of who is on what days infront of me right now, but I will send a reminder home on Monday with that information. Please help your child come up with at least a couple clues about their item and if you can, send in a bag (plastic, paper). Thanks!

**Don't forget...Parent Teacher Conferences on Tuesday afternoon/evening!

That's all for now...thanks for stopping by!
~Mrs. Westlund