Rain, Rain, Go Away

What gloomy weather! This weather makes me not want to do anything but lay in bed all day. We really do need the rain though. Hopefully it will clear next week so we can go outside to play again instead of having indoor recess.

 In math, we have been working on skip counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. Look at the kids hard at work.

 We learned about spiders. Spiders have 8 legs, 2 fangs, make spider webs, have 2 body parts, and hatch from eggs. I love the Halloween themes going on around the classroom. It puts us in the Halloween spirit.

 We finally received our new class pet. He is a box turtle that likes to pop his head out often to see what we are doing in class. We will have him for 2 weeks before I have to return him.

 In Mrs. Skalaban’s class, the students learned facts about bats. Look at how cool they turned out to be. The students have also been learning about fall leaves and have been working on many writing assignments around the season of fall.

It makes me very proud to see the kids produce sentences independently in Vietnamese Language Arts. Even my non-viets are producing their own sentences independently. Kids really do absorb quickly what they are taught. This is only our third time writing in our journals using our weekly sight words. We have been practicing reading a fall book in class that they kids are enjoying. 

-I will be out the morning of Oct. 29th but will be back for the afternoon.

-Our Halloween party will be Oct. 30th at 1:45-2:30. Thank you for all those who have already brought in Halloween treats for the party! 

Fact Family and Fire Safety!

This week in math we have been practicing simple addition and subtraction problems within a fact family. I was really excited to bust out my fact family chart I purchased last year. The kids really had a fun time with it. We used it daily during the whole group teach before dismissing into doing the assignments at our tables. I will be placing this into the math center after I laminate the numbers. If there are any volunteers who would like to laminate and cut out the numbers for me, that would be great!

We updated our math bulletin board in the classroom. Why not do something Halloween related since Halloween is coming up?! These candy corn came out to be really cute. Look at how neat some of my students are writing. The kids know how I feel about MESSY work! If it's messy, they have to redo it! Rushed and messy work in Cô Tracy's class is not allowed =P

So in VLA, we have been working on the words “con trai” and “con gái” which means “boy” and “girl.” The students got to create their own monster and pick a gender for the monster and then complete the sentence for me. It says “I am a...”

Con trai= boy

Con gái= girl

Đi= go

Là= is

Con= I (talking to an adult)

Em= I (talking to someone near their age, friends)

In the library this week, Mrs. Richey read us Creepy Carrots! The kids really enjoyed the books and made their own creEeeEeEePy carrots. Fun book!

Mrs. Yarborough and Mrs. Farnsworth were good sports about putting on a firefighter’s outfit. They said that the outfit was verrrry heavy but that's how it keeps the firefighters safe from fires. First grade learned about fire safety on Friday. The firefighter taught the kids what they should do during a fire and how to be safe. He said that if you are upstairs and can’t get down, throw a stuffed animal down from the window and when the firefighters get there and see a stuffed animal on the ground, they will know that there is still a child stuck up in the room where the window is.

Please sign-up for our Halloween party if you haven’t yet! The sign-up is in front of our classroom.

SOARING SKYWARD DAY!

It’s October, y’all! Mrs. Skalaban and I have twinning Frankenstein doors to welcome October. This is going to be a fun-filled month. We will have our first class party at the end of the month for Halloween. In front of our doors are Halloween sign-ups for different Halloween treats we will need for our party. Please stop by and sign up for something J

We had such a great Soaring Skyward. I can honestly say that it was one of the funnest days we’ve had this year by far. The kids were so well behaved taking in consideration of the change in our daily routines. Even though we weren’t learning inside of the classroom, we learned so much about flight from so many different stations and so many different presenters that came. Soaring Skyward only happens every other year so next time these children will get to do Soaring Skyward will be when they are in 3^rd grade.

Remote Control Helicopters: We started our day in the gym watching remote control helicopters and drones in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The men taught us about the different parts these machines have and how it works.

Birds of Prey: Pre-k -2^nd grade class got to learn about different birds. We had to be very quiet or else it would have scared the birds. This station was really cool because the birds would fly over our heads. We even saw a kookaburra! 

Hot Air Balloon Tissues: During this station, we got to make a hot air balloon out of tissue paper as a class. We learned what cool air and hot air does to a hot air balloon. We even got to see our class made hot air balloon land on Mrs. Richey’s head! Thank you Mrs. Richey for joining us and helping us in creating our hot air balloon!

STARFlight Helicopter: At 1:00 on Friday, we went outside by the track to watch the helicopter land on Summitt’s track. This was a very exciting part of our day. We got to meet the pilots, take a picture in front of the helpicopter and see a real live helicopter! 

Hang Glider: We then stopped by the hang glider. The kids learned new vocabulary like FLIGHT, ROLL, and YAW. These words are words that describe the movement of the hang gliders.

 Bubbles Dance Party: Last but not least, we ended the day with our new 5^th grade science buddies in a big ol’ dance party! I had so much fun “whipping” with the kids and doing the thriller. It was so good to see kids just being kids dancing their little hearts away. Some of the kids have made such great connections with their science buddies they had just met 3 days ago. We will have science buddies every last Wednesday of each month.