Ask Me About Monday, September 17, 2018

Your child is bringing home homework and a bunch of book order forms today.  The homework is optional and does not need to be returned,  I hope children will be read to each day for 1o - 15 minutes, and they can keep track of that on the homework paper so they can keep track.  The book order forms are for you to order if you would like.  The book clubs are a great way to build your child's library.  I won't usually send so many at once, I think they just sent a lot of different clubs since it's the beginning of the year.  You can order online.  The instructions for ordering are in a letter I sent home.  I changed the due date to Monday, September 24.  Usually I will give you a couple weeks to decide, but since we are more than half way through the month, I needed to set a quick deadline.
We had a busy day!  We read a fun poem and reviewed the word "it."  We practiced writing two new word wall words; the and like.  
We read a book called My Best Friend, by Mary Ann Rodman and illustrated by E.B. Lewis.  This story is about a little girl, Lily, who wants an older girl, Tamika, to be her best friend.  The older girl already has a friend she plays with, and they exclude and sometimes tease Lily.  We talked about what the word "exclude" means, and then looked at our Bells Mill Bear Necessities to talk about "I include others in my work and play."  We talked about how it feels to be included in play and work, and how it feels to be excluded.  This is a topic we will revisit from time to time because it's so important.  We often see children coming to school with friendships that are already established who never get to know other children in their class because they always want to play with the friend they already knew.  They are missing out on building new relationships, so we encourage children to sit with other people at lunch and play with other students during recess so they can have a wide circle of friends.  We are learning about characters and key details in our reading, so we talked about how Lily tried to get Tamika to be her friend.  Ask me to tell you what Lily did to try and get Tamika to be her best friend.  Did it work?
We had a visit from our school counselor in the afternoon.  Mrs. Kanter introduced herself again to the children and told them more about what she does at school.  You will find a yellow brochure in your child's folder from Mrs. Kanter.
In math, we worked in table groups to sort collections.  The children had to decide together on how they were going to sort the collection, then sort them together.  Many children want to just make their own sorts, but I encouraged them to listen to others and put all the items into one sort.  Then they had to find a different way to sort the collection.  They rotated to a different collection and did this again with another collection of items.  We talked about collaboration and how they had to decide together on a plan of what the sorting rule would be and how/where they would put their groups.  Learning to listen to the ideas of others and deciding together isn't always easy, but with practice and over time it will become easier.  To illustrate the idea of collaboration better, we looked at three short commercials, one at a time.  We talked about what the problem was and how it was solved by working together.  We talked about how it looked like the animals had a plan.  Ask me to tell you about how they worked together as you watch the videos together.  

I sent home our daily schedule today.  Tomorrow is our library day, so please help your child remember to bring their book to school.

Have a nice evening!
Miss Wolfe