It's October!

 We had our 3^rd Spanish lesson on Monday with Maestra Cormack. The kiddos learned about different body parts in Spanish and even learned a catchy song to help them remember how to say the different parts in Spanish. The class seemed to have really enjoyed this lesson.

I introduced these little 100’s chart and number resource page to the kids this week. They keep it in their math journals and use it whenever they need it. We did a lot of basic addition and subtraction up to 20 this week. We also worked on finding missing addends which was a hard concept for the students to grasp. Please continue to work on these skills at home with your child for more fluency! You can even practice in the car while on the way to school!

 In VLA, the students seem to be getting adjusted to the routine. Every day (or at least we TRY) we sit in a circle to work on our Vietnamese sight words. We write the word, think of a sentence to write as a class, and draw a picture to associate it with our word. Then later in the week, we make flashcards of our words and write sentences in our VLA journals using our words. We will try to start using things from our Tomathien curriculum hopefully in November sometime.

 This week, we are still on the unit of matter. We learned the three states of matter and this upcoming week, we will be learning the phases of matter. (Freezing and melting) We had our first Science Buddies experience this week and the kids were so excited! There were 2 first grade class and 1 5^th grade class crammed in one room. It was a complete organized chaos in there. As a teacher, big messes in the classroom are what we try to prevent and when I saw all the cornstarch everywhere on the table, the floor, and on the kids’ clothes and even in their HAIR, it kind of made me want to go crazy inside. Lol. Bottom line is... the kids had fun and learned how to make oobleck which tied into our matter unit. Oobleck can look like it can be magically liquid or solid..at the same time! The 5^th grade buddies were awesome with our little first graders. The students were already asking me when the next time we will be returning back right after we left the 5^th graders. Please make sure the kids don’t wear anything too nice on the days we have Science Buddies. I would hate them to get their clothes ruined or stained.
Thank you for all the parents who donated cornstarch to the class!

 Check out some of their awesome independent writing in Vietnamese.

 We had our first guidance lesson with Kelso the frog from our fabulous counselor, Mrs. Stogdill. She will be visiting us every Thursday afternoon for a couple of months.

If you have not returned the letter regarding participation for our New Years show, please do so by Friday. We need to get costumes ordered soon! Thank you!