Welcome back to a new year!  We are excited to welcome Mrs. Bourque to our classroom.  She is a student teacher from Bay Path College.   She will be joining us until the end of April.

Literature News

Each morning, we continue to enjoy different pieces of literature.  On Mondays, the children have been working in their Wordly Wise books.  These are vocabulary building stories.  This month, we will be focusing on the genres of fiction, non fiction, and poetry.  The children will also practice identifying story elements and making connections.

Writing News

We will start to write fictional stories.  So far this year, the

children have been getting accustomed to writing using a four square.  They have developed the idea of staying on topic nicely.  Now we will transition our writing to adding characters, setting, a problem, and events to solve the problem.  I can’t wait to read these new pieces.

Reading News

The children continue to work in reading groups.  They build on their phonics knowledge each week, read for fluency, and read leveled books.  All of the children are making wonderful progress.

Meeting

Each afternoon in meeting, the children work with the calendar.  They are becoming experts at reading the days of the week, counting money, making tallies, identifying odd and even numbers, and trading ones for tens.  We also spend some time practicing our phonemic awareness skills such as rhyming, deleting syllables or sounds, and changing syllables or sounds.  Finally, the children fill in the blanks of our message.  They are making excellent progress in applying their skills to do this.

Theme

We will focus on two science themes this month.  We will be studying magnets first.  We will learn about the poles of a magnet, the strength of magnets, and what magnets will or will not attract.  We have many different experiments planned.

The children will then learn about matter.  They will learn to identify a solid, liquid, and gas as well as the properties of each state of matter.

We will also spend a few days learning about Martin Luther King Jr. and his contributions to society.

Math

We are starting some new topics in math.  The children will use base 10 blocks to explore place value.  They will also be exploring shapes.  Naturally, we will continue to review previously learned skills.

Finally, I would like to welcome a new student.  Daniel Stebbins has joined our class.