Little Blue Bulletin 11/26-11/30

Dear Parents,
It was nice to see some of you on Barnes and Noble night this past Tuesday. The children enjoyed all the Tacky stories. We will have another social event coming up on December 11. We are inviting all K/1 families to see the movie Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium at AMC Theater in Saratoga. We will announce the showtime later! There is a fund raiser at BJ's as well that night. So you can enjoy a movie and then hit the pizza place for dinner!


Don't forget: Please turn in your permission slip and check for the trip to San Jose Museum of Art.

Check attached calendar for upcoming dates. Read again. We added some more dates!

Sharing:
Week of 12/3: Something from another country
Week of 12/10: Ways your family celebrates the season

Preparation Tips:
1. Start with your topic sentence to tell your audience what you're going to share about. Try to come up with an interesting introduction.
2. Add 2 or 3 sentences to describe your topic. Use transition words such as first, next, last.
3. Stand up straight, look at your audience, and speak clearly.

Something extra: Bring a picture to show your audience!

Book Bags:
Please remember to return the bag on Thursdays. If you have any questions, please contact your family room teacher. There will be no book bags during Thanksgiving week, so take this time to read a book about the first Thanksgiving. Talk about the beginning, middle, and end of the story.


Language Arts:

We worked on the short and long sounds of "E". Please remember to help your child study for the test each week.

Teammate of the Week:
We continued our expository writing program this week. Each student in our village will have a chance to be "Teammate of the Week". This is a great opportunity for students to share information about themselves with their family rooms. As students learn about the Teammate of the Week, they will be writing an expository paragraph using Step Up to Writing Program. We will be keeping the writing at school to create a book for each child. Not only is this a wonderful memory of our classmates, but a great writing portfolio too.


Math:
This week we stayed in our family room for math investigation. We made a class calendar for 2008 filled with children's art work for each month. We also reviewed elapsed time by coloring blocks of hours for different events throughout the day. To integrate math with technology, each child took turn to paint a picture on the computer illustrating what they do during the day and at night. For math centers, everyone enjoyed fun math games that reinforce clocks, greater/less than/equal to, and addition facts.



Social Studies:
We started a new unit about being a good citizen. We read The Empty Pot and discussed what it means to be honest. We also had a class meeting to talk about following rules at home and at school.



Thank you,
Little Blue Teachers