Litte Bulletin 9/22-10/3

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Upcoming Events:
NEXT THURSDAY AND FRIDAY the Little Blue Teachers will be at our APPLE training, so this newsletter will be covering this week and next week (BUT, we will have subs and your children will be very busy). We will resume newsletter when we come back from October break.

Project Cornerstone will kick-off next week. Please refer to the Press for details and the letter that goes home with the project. The theme this month is how to build positive friendships. We will talk about putting warm fuzzies in our buckets. Ask your child what a warm fuzzy is...

OCTOBER 5 through OCTOBER 19th is our break. We hope you all have a wonderful two weeks off. Make sure you keep reading over vacation.

PLEASE REFER TO THIS LINK AND KEEP TRACK OF ALL OF THE UPCOMING EVENTS!

The Little Blue Village Calendar

Sharing:
9/29: Some signs of fall!
10/4- 10/19:Vacation
10/20: Three Ways to Stay Healthy

How to prepare for sharing:
1. Tell us your topic
2. Prepare for one ending sentence
3. Make eye contact with classmates and teacher when talking

BOOK BAGS!!!
The book bags are coming home today! Please read the book with your child each night. It's important to reread books again and again. After reading the story several times, do the activity listed on the instruction sheet. The kinders have the directions on the yellow sheet and first graders have directions on the white sheet. On Wednesday night have your child put the journal, the book, and the instructions back into the bag so that it is ready to come back to school on Thursday morning. It is very important to the success of our program that book bags are returned each Thursday morning.

NOTE: There will be no book bags going home over the vacation. It would be a great time to visit your local library.

There will be no homework folders on Fridays due to the book bags.

Extra assignment:
Please visit your teacher's blog. With your parent's help, add your comment. We look forward to hearing from you.


Review of the week:
Language Arts:
We continued our new handwriting program--Hand Writing Without Tears. We are still working on holding our pencil correctly and starting letters/numbers at the top.
We are reviewing the following concepts in reading skills. It is helping us prepare for reading and spelling!

• short/long vowel sounds
• beginning letter sounds
• sight words
• rhyming words
• recalling facts while reading
  

The students are using their summary skills to describe what they learned. We read a Scholastic News on friendships and used the same skills to tell what we learned at our assembly called "Street Smarts." Please refer to the following colors to help you understand our color coding.

• green - Go! Topic Sentence
• yellow - Slow down. Add a detail
• green - Finish the paragraph

Fall has begun. This week and next we will be learning more about our changing seasons. Using our senses, we will write some poetry about fall.


Math:
We are continuing to work with numbers. We are practicing ways to count on, adding doubles (5 +5=10), and using various strategies to help us add and subtract.
We are practicing our new vocabulary:

• equal
• less than
• more than
• place value: tens, ones
• addend, sum
• number line
  

Science:
This week we built the life cycle of the apple. We started with a seed, and ended with the apple. The students were very curious about how the blossom turns into an apple. Hopefully we can help answer this question further as we start our pumpkin studies. Next week we will be learning about how a pumpkin grows. This will help us prepare for our upcoming field trip.


Special Events:
We had an assembly on staying safe when we our outside. Remember to always wear a bike helmet and cross in safe places. Ask your students what jaywalking means.




Thanks,
The Little Blue Teachers

Little Blue Bulletin 9/08-9/12

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Upcoming Dates:
Saturday: Family Fun Night! 4-7pm
This week: Parent Teacher Conferences. Early Dismissal at 12:30.
Friday: Teacher Learning Day! No school for kids
The Little Blue Village Calendar

PLEASE REFER TO THIS LINK AND KEEP TRACK OF ALL OF THE UPCOMING EVENTS!


Sharing:
9/15 -- Three ways to show good manners
9/22-- Share a classroom rule and why it is important

How to prepare for sharing:
1. Tell us your topic
2. Prepare for one ending sentence
3. Make eye contact when you talk

BOOK BAGS!!!
The book bags are coming home again today! Please read the book with your child each night. It's important to reread books again and again. After reading the story several times, do the activity listed on the instruction sheet. The kinders have the directions on the yellow sheet and first graders have directions on the white sheet. On Wednesday night have your child put the journal, the book, and the instructions back into the bag so that it is ready to come back to school on Thursday morning. It is very important to the success of our program that book bags are returned each Thursday morning.

There will be no homework folders on Fridays due to the book bags.

Extra assignment:
Please visit your teacher's blog. With your parent's help, add your comment. We look forward to hearing from you.


Review of the week:
Language Arts:
We continued our new handwriting program--Hand Writing Without Tears. We are still working on holding our pencil correctly and starting letters/numbers at the top. We've reviewed the following concepts:

• short/long vowel sounds
• beginning letter sounds
• sight words
• rhyming words

We used our reading and writing skills to learn more about apples. Students used describing words to create poetry. We learned how to use our senses (sound, sight, feel) to help us. We also did our first Step Up to Writing lesson using our colored dots. The students summarized a Scholastic News reader, finding three key points to remember.

• green - Go! Topic Sentence
• yellow - Slow down. Add a detail
• green - Finish the paragraph
  

Last, we created an apple glyph. A glyph is a symbol that means something special. For instance, the students chose the apple color according to boys and girls. Come in to see our great work.

Math:
This week we started our Number Sense strand. We are practicing ways to count on, adding doubles (5 +5=10) and using various strategies to help us add and subtract.
We are practicing our new vocabulary:

• equal
• less than
• more than
• place value: tens, ones
• addend, sum
  

PSCO News:
Reminder - Spirit T-shirts available for Kinders!
Murdock-Portal Spirit T-shirts are available for $10, sizes Small or Medium. Your Kinder can get their very own Penguin T-shirt, to wear on School Spirit Days! Don’t be left out - Forms are in the office. (Not sure what size? Check the sample T-shirts in the Office.)

Coming Soon on Wed 24th – Jungle Play-date!
Save the Date and meet up with other K/1 village parents, for a School play-date at the ‘Jungle’ on Wed 24th Sept, from 5pm onwards. This is a great opportunity for new Parents to get to know other K/1 parents over a coffee, while your children get to play for free at the Jungle, at El Paseo de Saratoga opposite Westgate Mall. Look out for flyers next week in your Thursday folder, to get free entry.

Special Events:
We started our week with an awesome "Wildlife Assembly". We had several animals visit our school to help teach conservation and appropriate ways to handle wild animals. The students were very excited to see the snowy owl, and lynx.

Chicken Dance! Thanks you for joining us for our first performance of the year. It was so nice to see so many parents watch our students cluck and rock today.

Here is a link so you can cluck along at home too!
http://www.funpages.com/chickendance/

Thanks,
The Little Blue Teachers

Little Blue Bulletin: 9/2-9/5

Welcome to the Little Blue Bulletin. We will keep you up to date on news in our village. Please remember to read the weekly updates. You can also subscribe to this blog by clicking the RSS feed button.

NOTE: Family Fun Night is still in need of volunteers. This great event might be canceled if we can't get some more help. Please consider helping out. Also, the direct donations are due to come in to the office. We are only at a little over 50% of what is needed to keep our school's programs and great instructional aides going.

Upcoming Dates:
Sept. 10th through Sept.18: Parent Teacher Conferences. Early Dismissal at 12:30.
Friday, Sept. 12th: Chicken Dance at school at 11:00 on kinder play area
Saturday, Sept. 13th: Family Fun Night

The Little Blue Village Calendar

PLEASE REFER TO THIS LINK AND KEEP TRACK OF ALL OF THE UPCOMING EVENTS!

Sharing:

9/08 -- Memory of your grandparents
9/15 -- Three ways to show good manners

How to prepare for sharing:
1. Tell us your topic
2. Tell us one memory of your grandparents
3. Prepare for one ending sentence

4. Extra: Bring a photo or draw a picture of your grandparents

BOOK BAGS!!!
The book bags are coming home again today! Please read the book with your child each night. It's important to reread books again and again. After reading the story several times, do the activity listed on the instruction sheet. The kinders have the directions on the yellow sheet and first graders have directions on the white sheet. On Wednesday night have your child put the journal, the book, and the instructions back into the bag so that it is ready to come back to school on Thursday morning. It is very important to the success of our program that book bags are returned each Thursday morning.

There will be no homework folders on Fridays due to the book bags.


Review of the week:
Language Arts:
We continued our new handwriting program--Hand Writing Without Tears. We are also working on holding our pencil correctly and starting letters/numbers at the top. We've reviewed the following concepts:

• short/long vowel sounds
• beginning letter sounds
• sight words
• rhyming words
  

Math:
We enjoyed our Math Investigations this week. Kids showed excellent teamwork by sorting, tallying, and graphing our class favorites. We are very proud of our students! They also demonstrated their knowledge by making graphs independently using stickers and fruit loops. Please continue to work with your child at home and find different ways we use charts and graphs. Next week, we will start our new strand: number sense.

Social Studies:
We started a project called, "Me in the World" this week. We focused on how we are a small part of the world. We start being part of our home, then our school community, which is a small part of our city, extending to our state. Our state, California, is a part of our country, the United States, which is a small part of the world!

We also talked about what we do at home or at school could affect the larger community. That means we should always be aware of our choices and actions, so that we are a good member of the community.

Science:

Apples, apples, apples! We learned the different parts of an apple. Students learned how to label a scientific drawing, and then assemble an apple diagram. We also read a couple of apple poems to add to our Personal Reader Binder.

Special Events:
Don't forget the Chicken Dance on Friday at 11am!

Thanks,
The Little Blue Teachers