Hello Neighbor

Last week was a fun, family celebration week. The children brought their family trees to school and we used them for several activities. We used them to graph the number of brothers and sisters we had total in the classroom, there are more sisters than brothers. We used the family trees to make a book page that says the number of boys and girls that live in our houses. We also completed several projects that will be ongoing throughout the year and will be a surprise for parents some time this school year. We learned about letter "L," the sound it makes and what words start with that sound. We were able to make a letter L list from these words that the children came up with, doing our Show and Share helps with this weekly activity. The morning class had a great day celebrating Clifford's birthday with him and they even got to meet the author on the live webcast.

Next week we will be talking about our community and neighbors. We are going to make a large map in the classroom on the train table and we will be coloring our houses to place on the map. Using environmental print that children see out in the community we are going to cut out several of these signs and place them on blocks so they can help build a community on our large map. We are going to read a story entitled "On Our Street," in this story a dog gets lost and the children are looking for the dog. The children are able to use a map to see where the dog has been and then locate him. We will use several types of maps and map keys to find animals and locations on a map. Using our large community map we are going to play a game with the dog from the story and using location words try to find where the dog is hiding.
Next week's letter is the letter F. We are going to do a Frog on a Log counting activity, some fine motor finger strengthening with the hip hop frogs and counting frogs. Don't forget Thursday is Show and Share bring in something that starts with the letter F. This weeks color is red so make sure you wear Red on Thursday.
We will have several new friends joining our a.m. and p.m. classes soon. In the morning class we will have two new friends: Aarav and Austin and in the p.m. class we will have one new friend Aidan. We would like to welcome our new friends to our class.
On September 30 the online portfolio that I use for the class, Lifecubby, updated and "improved" its software. In the process of doing this several of the editing features were not restored and some pictures that were originally rotated into the proper position were switched back to a sideways angle. I have been in contact with them regarding this and they have advised me to wait until the end of this week before adding any additional entries to cubbies in order for all of the bugs to be worked out, so because of that although I have entries to make I am holding off until all of the glitches have been worked out.  
One last reminder if you are placing a Scholastic order I will need your order by October 4th. Please make sure when you are filling out orders that you are sending in to school (not online) that you carefully review your order and totals.