Little Blue Bulletin 9/08-9/12

Have you subscribed to the Little Blue Bulletin yet? Just click the RSS feed button and you'll be on your way!


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