Lucky Letters!

Ssss-ock, ssss-un, ssss-ushi. These are just a few of the words that our friends thought of in reference to our lucky letter this week, the letter "S". You may remember Sesame Street credits with children exclaiming, "Today Sesame Street was brought to you by the letter S. . .." Well, we do a similar thing in our class except we call it our lucky letter of the week. We sing songs, say rhymes, draw pictures, practice writing, and even paint things that begin with the lucky letter. We also make a book of our drawings and then begin sending those books home. Some of you may have already seen and read "Our Mm Book" and "Our Rr Book" and even a book of our favorite colors book.

Today we drew our Ss pictures for the latest book to be published by our class. After they draw their pictures they write the letter "s" for each picture and then share their picture with me. Together we decide if they would like to sound out the word, or copy the word from the picture words on the board, or have me write the word (sometimes in Kindergarten we share the pen between teacher and student). Students also used sss-ponges to paint seashells, stars, swirls, squares, snakes, and other "s" words. These creations were incredible (I'll send them home soon!).

In math we are practicing counting things and in using pattern blocks and color tiles to make designs. We also are practicing days of the week, and counting the number of days in each month and also the number of days we've been in school (23). Ask your child to say the S-E-P-T-E-M-B-E-R rhyme for you. And what do you know, it's another "S" word! Those things are everywhere!

Next week holds a whole new slew of activities and we'll be reviewing our letters for the last 3 weeks: M, R, and S. May you all have a sss-mashing SSSS-aturday and SSSS-unday!

Important September Dates

Just a reminder about some of the important dates this September:

September 14 -- Mills Directory Envelopes due (call or email if you need another one!)

September 15 -- Library (Have library books back by this date)

September 22 -- Picture Day (Tuesday Folders will have details)

September 29 -- Library (Have books back by this date)

As always, call or email if you have questions! :)

Goldfish, & Guppies, & Frogs, Oh My!

"It's on the LOG, IT'S ON THE LOG!!!" exclaimed H.P. dashing about the room hands waving. The other children excitedly zoomed to the terrarium to see our new tree frog nestled comfortably inside the little log. This is important, you see, because we've been singing a song about a log and a frog. "On a log, Mister Frog, sang his song the whole day long: Glump, Glump, Glump, Glump." While our frog doesn't sing (he's particularly quiet), we sing a LOT and the frog is just one of our musical topics. The little hopper in our classroom is a White's Tree Frog and we have him visiting us for the next two weeks.

But the frog isn't the only creature in our class right now. We've also been studying goldfish and guppies. We've observed both types of fish and discussed the parts of the fish -- eyes, fins, scales, tail, mouth, gills. One student, M.T., even reminded us that the top fin is called the dorsal fin. We've talked about the different sizes of the two types of fish, watched them swim, and even painted pictures of them.

Amidst all the excitement over the various creatures in room 106 we've also been working hard to practice our letters and numbers. Last week "Mm" was the featured letter -- we practiced writing it, named things that started with it, and even made a new class book, "Our Mm Book" to send home with different students each night. This week we studied "Rr" and created a book about things that begin with "r". We also read books including, "Mary Wore her Red Dress" (based on a folksong), and "Only Six More Days" by Marisabina Russo.

In math we've been counting fish, counting days of the week, talking about the calendar, and exploring with interlocking cubes. On the first day of the week little hands got tired and some friends were frustrated, "I can't make what I want to make..." The cubes have little holes on five sides and a connector on the remaining side. They do require some hand strength and determination to fit together, and sometimes they can be hard to pull apart. But each day the students worked a little more with the cubes and by Friday were making all kinds of spaceships, people, color patterns, and candy canes ("This one costs ten dollars" said O.H. to which N.B. replied, "Well, mine's 25 cents." ...Price wars in kindergarten... but I still bought both!). During this exploration they are having fun, but also working on important skills such as strengthening fine motor skills, improving problem solving strategies, and honing spatial awareness. Later in the year we will make patterns they have to visualize and copy, but for now it's all about exploring.

So with the frog, goldfish, guppies, letters, numbers, playground, painting, snacks, resting, singing, centers, computer labbing and such we have been very busy this week. So rest up, Moore's Marvels, because we have a whole new slew of activities and fun again next week. Rock on!!

Welcome!

Welcome to the Moore Marvels blog! Here you will find a bevy of juicy tidbits including important dates, listings of current class themes and topics, book recommendations, homework reminders, links to cool websites, and even memorable quotes from your kids! And because it is a blog, you can leave your comments as well and share your ideas. For the privacy of you and your children I will not be putting names on this blog, and any pictures will be uploaded only after I've received from you a signed district photo permission slip (sent home in the Tuesday Folder September 12).

As always, if you have school business to discuss please use my school email address and phone number rather than this blog. But if you want to share ideas with the class, by all means, blog away!

So happy reading & happy writing to all of Moore's Marvels!