Our Busy Weeks at School

Wow! It is hard to believe that it is already almost the middle of October! We have been hard at work in our classroom learning and playing together. Your children are quite comfortable with our classroom routines and expectations and I am already amazed by the growth I am seeing, academically and socially!

Our literacy time is focused on learning what it means to be a good reader and practicing how to take care of books. We have learned many letters as a part of the Fundations program, including: t, b, f, n, m, c, a, i, and r. We practice these letters each day, learning what they are called, a special word to help us remember the letter, and the sound each letter makes. We also practice proper formation of the letter using our special lines: the "sky line," the "plane line," the "grass line," and the "worm line." Ask your child what these lines are and how to form some of the letters we have learned! Also during literacy, we are practicing recognizing and producing rhymes, as well as syllabication.

Math is a well-loved time of our day, with children often asking how long until we will begin this block! The children especially love the math workstations that we use. These workstations offer children a chance to explore with math manipulatives and practice the concepts that we have learned about with a number of games and activities. Some of current math workstations are: Pattern Blocks, Geoboard Shapes, Bucket of Bugs, Unifix Cube Patterns, Polydrons, and Which Bug Will Win?

Also during math, we have spent time making a class quilt. Our "Shoo Fly Quilt" is hanging outside our classroom if you would like to come and take a look. We used triangles to create the quilt squares and then discussed the patterns that we noticed. Please enjoy this photo of our beautiful creation!


Here are some of the observations that the children made about our quilt:

“It’s in a pattern. It goes orange on the inside, green on the inside.”

~ Aidan

“It’s like stairs. Orange, orange, orange.” ~ Shaunna

“The stairs are diagonal." ~ Sam

“It’s a pattern on each row.” ~ Mario

“There’s different rows and different colors and I like the pattern a lot.”

~ Connor

“The pattern can go across and upside down. The quilt is a rectangle.”

~Thomas G.

“The orange triangles are touching in a special way.”

~ Calder

“It’s like an elevator. It goes up and down.”

~ Nolan

“I noticed if you turn your head a little, you see a square.” ~ Sophia

“We made our quilt squares with triangles. Some look like upside down triangles.” ~ Desiree

We have also spent a great deal of time sorting objects be one or more attributes. We started exploring this concept using shapes and recently moved to sorting bugs by a characteristic. Here is a photo of the poster that we created when we sorted bugs into groups of bugs with spots and bugs with no spots.

Thursday we were able to visit the Hinesburg Fire Station to celebrate Fire Safety Week. We had a wonderful time exploring the fire trucks, meeting the firefighters, and learning about how to stay safe if we are ever in a fire.

On Friday, we took a top secret trip to peek in the windows of our new classroom! The room is looking wonderful and should be ready any day now! The children were impressed to see a sink and our very own bathroom attached to the classroom! We are so excited to move into our new space and make it our own.

Next week we will be learning about colors and will complete many fun activities to do so. Please help your child dress for the special "Color of the Day." They are as follows:

Monday 10/11: RED Day
Tuesday 10/12: ORANGE Day
Wednesday 10/13: YELLOW Day
Thursday 10/14: GREEN Day
Friday 10/15: BLUE Day
Monday 10/18: PURPLE Day
Tuesday 10/19: BROWN Day
Wednesday 10/20: BLACK Day

Please check back for photos and descriptions of all of the fun things we do to learn about colors!