October was a SUPER month!

To the Fabulous Families of Room 4 (and beyond...)

During the month of September we got to know each other, adjust to school, learn about routines and make ourselves at home at Cantiague. With that behind us, in October we truly hit the ground running.  It was a month packed with exploring, creating, thinking, collaborating and truly sinking our teeth into some wonderful learning experiences.

One of my favorite October moments was the incredible love your children showed me on my birthday! There is nothing like celebrating your birthday in our Kindergarten class, no matter how old you are!

In reader's workshop we began book shopping for our "just right" books.  We filled our own book baggies with books from our classroom leveled library. These are books that are on our about right for us to read on our own or with a little guidance.  We learned that just like our clothing, books that are just right for our classmates may not be just right for us!

As soon as we shopped for our just right books we were ready to read them both in school and at home! In October we activated our very first Reading Super Power.  We have POINTER POWER! Using this power, we point to each word and say them while we read.  We learned that we can not say more words than the ones that we see and point to on the page.  We activated special finger pointers that help us remember to use pointer power.  Now that the children will be bringing home just right books twice a week, remind them to use their pointer power as they read to you!

In Science we are learning all about the bones that make up our bodies! We learned some of the names of the bones in our arms and legs.  Did you know that the humerus is the name of your upper arm? Well your Kindergarten kid does! We played bone bingo and even made an awesome skeleton out of pasta bones during our visits to the Cantiague Science Lab.

We also learned all about pumpkins! We learned the parts of a pumpkin and discussed the properties of both the inside and outside of a pumpkin.  After talking about it we got to really experience it by investigating a pumpkin and putting our hands inside!  We carved a pumpkin together and voted on what we wanted it to look like! We named him super pumpkin and he turned out GREAT!

The PTA organized a fantastic PARP week this year and we enjoyed experiencing it together.  One of the most important thing for our children is to build a life long love of reading, so while we celebrate reading every day, PARP gave us an even bigger reason.  We shopped at the book fair, used literacy apps on our class devices, read treasured books and invited our families into school to share our love of reading!  There is nothing more special than seeing our role models and the people we love most share a love of reading as ours grows each day!

In writing we are continuing to use pictures and words to tell our stories.  At the beginning of each week we write our weekend news, when we share something we did over the weekend.  Many of us are using both word wall words, and "word stretching" to form sentences to tell our stories.  Continue practicing the word study words that come home each week.  Reading and writing these words are an important foundation in all areas of our growing literacy skills!

October was fire safety month! We learned all about ways to stay safe and prevent fire, as well as what to do if there is a fire.  We were lucky to have a visit from the Jericho Fire Department.  It was an extra special visit for our class because two of the heroes of our Jericho community are Dads of students in our class!  Thank you to Dr. Foresto and Mr. Spivak for keeping us safe and teaching us that firefighters are here to help us!

In October we also participated in a wonderful STEAM project based learning activity!  We collaborated with friends from the other two Kindergarten classes and had an opportunity to mix the classes and work with new friends.  We researched, planned, gathered materials, designed, built and decorated AMAZING haunted houses.  Watching the children think critically and collaborate on the houses was awesome.  They had fabulous ideas and worked together to make them come to life!  Our students were so excited to act as engineers and designers and both the process and product were fabulous!

It's hard to believe that all of this only scratches the surface of the wonderful learning that happened throughout the month of October.  The children are growing at a rapid pace, and in just 45 short school days together have already shown so much growth!  I can't wait to see what the year continues to bring.

Peace, Love and Kindergarten

Miss Grossman