Tuesday, November 1, 2016

 And...somehow it's already November!!!!

A few reminders for today...

Muffins for Moms…is tomorrow Wednesday, November 2! Moms (or grandma, aunt, etc) meet in the church basement between 7 and 7:45 AM to enjoy a donut and some coffee or juice with your child(ren).  Everyone is invited to stay for chapel if you can (please bring your child to the classroom first!).  What a great time to spend time with the kids before they go off to school!

No school on Tuesday, November 8 due to election day and Zion being a polling location.

Picture Retake Day…is Tuesday, November 15.  Your child will receive a retake form if he/she did not get a picture taken at open house in August.  If you would like a true retake done, please bring in your original picture package on the day of retakes.

Onto our day...

We began our day with a special check-in!  Each child completed his/her "November My Name" for his/her portfolio.  I asked each friend to write his/her name from memory this time! I am so proud of everyone for giving it a try!  Many were surprised and excited that they were able to do it without peeking! 

While each friend wrote his/her name I took special note of :

pencil grip

right or left hand

copied name or wrote from memory

did he/she know the letters in own name

We enjoyed our morning outside time today...

Running...

Climbing...

Sailing away...

And a bit more climbing!

We noticed that our weather chart now reads November and that our October pie graph had been colored in!  First we compared August and October...which has more black (cloudy) days...October.  Then we compared September and October...which has more yellow (sunny) days...September! But, wait, October has orange (windy) that we had zero of in August and September!  We then looked only at October...we decided we had the most cloudy days and the least windy days in October!  The ability to compare more, less, and the same is an early math skill!

We then finished up morning meeting with Wiggle Worm...he is back!!!  Today he brought with him lower case letters on cookies.  If wiggle worm was picked from the bag...everybody WIGGLE, then stop!  Having to stop is tough, but it helps us learn self regulation!

   If a letter is picked, that friend told everyone the letter name and the letter sound!

Then...another surprise...a field trip that came to us!  

Miss Debbie from the Kisker Road library came and read to us (and Mrs. Rouland's class) 4 awesome books.  In between books she taught us some fun songs and large motor moves to help us keep our wiggles out!

After reading all of the books to us, she placed the books around the room and each friend stood next to the one that was his/her favorite to cast a vote.  "Rex Wrecks It" had the most votes by far again today!

Time for small groups (centers)!

With Mrs. Mudd, we began creating a "not-so-scary" spider.  We improved our small motor control as we strung fruit loops onto to pipe cleaner "spiders"! (Some of our friends even chose to add the fruit loops in a pattern!)

With Mrs. Hopkins we worked on recognizing and understanding shapes (an early math skill).  We used playdoh to create squares, triangles, circles, rectangles, ovals, and diamonds.

We introduced and wrote new food words in journals.  You can never get too much writing practice!

I know I mentioned earlier that it is in fact November already...but...our warm temps tell a different story!  We took advantage of this awesome weather before heading to lunch!

During Jesus Time today we learned that when we know that we need to do something, even if we don't want to do it, we can trust that God will help us!