Getting ready for Christmas

We had a great week back from Thanksgiving Break! I think everyone was well rested and ready to start working on Christmas things!

In Reading we started a new unit- unit 3. It's all about the world outside. We read a book about the seasons and a book called "Jump into January." The students talked about the different seasons, about things they like to do in the different seasons, how they are alike and different, and also drew pictures about their favorite season and what they like to do in it. We learned the word "subject" this week and talked about how every sentence has a subject. The students did a great job of picking out the subject of every sentence and they also worked on saying and writing sentences that had a subject.

In Phonics we focused on the letter K/k. We listened to a song about the letter K/k, wrote words that started with K, found pictures that started with K/k, made kite puzzles, and decorated and wrote about our "magic keys." The students also added another page to their writing ideas journal. We added a page of things that we don't like or that make us sad. I was so impressed by how well they are doing on their journals. They come up with great ideas!

In math we worked on part-to-whole relationships. We built towers and would break them into pieces and talk about how many we had in each set and how many there were all together. We also did a spill-out activity; where we would spill out red/yellow counters and count how many landed on red and how many landed on yellow. Then we would talk about how many of each color and how many counters were there in all. We are still counting to 60, saying the days of the week, and the months of the year. Most of the students have mastered all of these things too!

Our classroom also got decorated for Christmas this week! We have two Christmas trees, a countdown to Christmas, a snowman, and snowflakes in the classroom! The students got to make candy cane reindeer ornaments for our tree and snowflakes to hang up around the room. We'll add some more decorations this upcoming week too!

Using our letter tiles to sound out and spell words. 

Adding another page to our writing ideas journal. 

Our Countdown to Christmas chain!

 Making snowflakes and candy cane reindeers!

 Decorating magic keys and writing about what they would do with them. 

Some of the students sharing what they wrote with a friend.

 In the Computer Lab this week the students decorated gingerbread houses. And they loved getting to see them hung up in the classroom. 

 The snowflakes the students made!

Our Christmas tree slowly getting decorated and some of the students reading books underneath it. 

Hope you all are enjoying your weekend. See you tomorrow!

Mrs. Ray

November 14- November 22

Hey! Sorry I've been falling behind on keeping the blog up! It's been a crazy hectic holiday season already!
But I'll let you know what we were working on before Thanksgiving Break.

We are still working on adjectives, and that week we were focusing on size and shape adjectives. We read a story called "David's Drawing" and another story called "Mouse Shapes." We reviewed lots of shapes this week. We also reviewed the letters C, P, A, and T.

In Phonics and Writing we started our writing ideas journal. We will probably try and do a writing activity twice a week. Students created a page with ideas of things that make them happy and also a page of things of pastimes they like to do. We did one writing activity already. The students picked one of their ideas from their journal, circled it, drew a picture for their writing, and then gave it a sentence. They are getting so good at sounding out their words and writing sentences that make sense!

Also in phonics we focused on the letter R/r. We listened to a song about R/r, made rainbows, wrote words that start with R/r, and did a few activity pages that focused on the letter R/r.

In math we worked on more than and less than. The students practiced counting groups and deciding which had more and which had less, they also practiced graphing. On Friday, they got to make patterned bead bracelets. If you want to work on something with your student at home, you can be reviewing ABC and ABB patterns. They have pretty much mastered AB patterns, but some students are still struggling with ABB and ABC patterns. Have your child look for patterns around the house or while you're driving in the car. They love when they find patterns out in the real world!

We also had a great Sharing Feast on Tuesday! And a huge thank you to all the moms that helped make it such a big success! It was great to see so many parents and grandparents get to come and eat lunch with their child. The students also loved getting to see their Thanksgiving placemats, paper bag turkeys, and apple turkeys on the table.

And sorry I don't have any pictures to put up for this week! I'll do better for the next week :)

Mrs. Ray

Letters to know

This week in Reading we read a story called "Good Morning Digger" and "What Do Wheels Do All Day?" We talked about different kinds of wheels, why we need wheels, and what we can use them for. We focused on the letter P this week and sang a song for our alphafriend Pippa Pig. We also focused on adjectives for numbers and how number words can describe something. Our sight word for the week was "to." 


Here are all the sight words your child should be able to recognize and read: I, a, and, to, we, see, the, like. Please be reviewing these with your child at home. But most of the students are doing a great job with these words!


In phonics we focused on the letter F/f. We did our normal phonics worksheets and tests. We also watched and listened to song about the letter F/f. The kids really enjoyed it, it was easy to sing along with and they got to practice saying the sound and writing the letter in the air. We fingerpainted the letter F/f, made a "fire" page, decorated a fish, and made a flower out of the letter F. For writing, we started our Thanksgiving Journal. Each day we will add another page to it.

Here are the letters that your child should recognize and know the sound for: l, o, g, m, n, a, i, s, t, h, g, f. So these are the letters that make up the words on the reading practices. They are all words that your child should be able to sound out. Please be reviewing these at home as well. It is important that the students be able to blend the sounds correctly. I am seeing a big improvement though from even just a month ago! We have a hard-working class!

In math we worked on sorting. The students sorted buttons, pasta, and beads. The did a great job of describing the different ways that things could be sorted: by color, size, shape, etc. We are still doing the days of the week, months of the year, and counting to 40.

Sorting buttons- this group decided to sort theirs by color. 

This group did it by size. 

Sorting pasta.

Making the numbers with playdoh. 

The front cover of our Thanksgiving Book. 

The first page in our Thanksgiving Book: we learned that pilgrims came to America. 

2nd page. We learned that they came over on a ship called The Mayflower and that they landed at Plymouth Rock. 

Make a flower and fingerpainting for the letter F/f. 

 Making our "fire"

 Every week we have a poster with our letter on it for the week. The students can add pictures and words to it if they'd like. This week they came up with: frog, fox, feather, and flower. 

Halloween and Community Helper Parade

We had our Halloween Party this week which was lots of fun! Thanks again to all the moms who helped out! The kids had a great time making mummy hands, eating "dirt and worms," and playing Halloween Bingo! We also had our Community Helper Parade on Monday morning. We dressed up as different community helpers and got to walk around our school and the intermediate school to show the older kids our outfits!

This week in Reading we focused on the letter C/c and our alphafriend for the week was Callie Cat. We read stories about how different animals move. We worked on coming up with adjectives to describe how animals move and also worked on color words. Our new sight word for the week was "a." 

In Phonics we focused on the letter S/s. We did our normal phonics worksheets and made two kinds of snakes for the letter S/s, and also "Sally Square." On Friday we listened to the story Stone Soup and made our own stone soup! And one lucky student got a stone in their soup! But we all got to take a small stone home to help us remember the story and the importance of sharing and that we are all special. We are continuing to do our reading practices each week, and the words will be getting more difficult to sound out. Please be working with your child at home on sounding out these words, so that they can all become successful readers!

In math, we continued work on patterns. We made patterns with pumpkins, linking cubes, bears, and color tiles. We focused on making ABB patterns and ABC patterns. We also worked on our handwriting when it comes to writing numbers. We really practiced writing the numbers the correct way.

We had some special things happen this week too! On Tuesday afternoon we got to go to the intermediate school to hear the 7th grade band play. The kids loved seeing and hearing the different instruments. On Wednesday, we got to go hear about the new butterfly garden that is going to be built at our school. We learned about the butterflies that will live there and what we can do to take care of them. 

Getting ready for our Parade!

Stuffing our Mummy Hands!

Getting some "dirt"

Hearing the directions on how to play bingo

Getting the goodie bags!

Making a snake for the letter S/s

Our stone soup

Making more snakes!

Sally Squre

Painting our snakes

Thank you so much to the moms who got playdoh for our room! The kids LOVED playing with it during center time!

The lucky student who found the stone in his soup!

Trying the stone soup!

Have a great rest of the weekend. See you all tomorrow!

Mrs. Ray

October 24- October 28

This week in Reading we got the new sight word "we." So now the students have six words that they should be able to recognize and read: I, like, the, and, see, we. Please be reviewing these at home too. We read the book "Amelia's Show and Tell Fiesta" and "Mice Squeak, We Speak." The students learned about and listed lots of different types of descriptive words. We talked more about sensory words and practiced writing different sensory words in sentences. We had the alphafriend card Tiggy Tiger and worked on hearing the /t/ sound in words, writing the letter "T" and coming up with words that start with the letter as well. We continued to talk about the characters in stories that we read and we also discussed whether or not we liked certain books and why. We read an informational book on the animals that live in the Fort Worth Zoo, and the students really enjoyed seeing pictures of some of the animals.

This week in Science and Social Studies, Mrs. Foegelle and Mrs. Brown got some community helpers to come to school to talk to the students about what they do. They got a veterinarian, some firefighters, some police officers, and a woman who owns a restaurant to come and speak. On Monday, the students will get to walk to the dentists office to hear about his job. They have really enjoyed getting to meet some new people and to hear all the exciting things they have to tell us about their jobs!

Our letter for phonics this week was I/i. We made two different ice cream cone crafts, colored pictures that began with "I", practiced writing "I", and made a letter "I" book about the Indians. We practiced writing in complete sentences in writing this week by writing about what we are going to do on Halloween and drawing a picture to go along with it. We also worked on matching uppercase and lowercase letters and pictures that start with specific letters. The students did a great job on all their work this week!

We learned about the color brown this week and got to color our crayon book brown!

In math, we are still counting to 40, reciting the days of week and also the months of the year. We got to use a story map this week and we practiced counting linking cubes. It is the first step into addition and subtraction. We would listen to a story and put the correct amount of linking cubes on our story map, then we would either take away some or add some to it, and the count how many linking cubes we had at the end. We used the linking cubes to make different designs and also did a couple counting worksheets.

 Our Ice Cream Cones!

Working on our story map

Making designs with our linking cubes

The boys made a dog with theirs!

Our Friday art: Ice Cream Cones

Don't forget about our Community Helper Parade on Monday! We will be walking around the school in the morning to show the other classrooms our outfits! 


We are also having our Halloween Party at 2:30 and look forward to seeing those of you who can make it! It should be lots of fun!


Have a great Monday!
Mrs. Ray
stephanie.ray@saladoisd.org