The Brook, Literacy and Parent Night

Hey Folks,

It's been a beautiful, sunny week filled with laughter and learning in our room. There's a lot of information here, so please take note!

Nuts and Bolts:

• If you haven't and want to, please send in a spare set of clothes in a labeled bag. We'll keep them in a private place in the room
• The U-32 Cross Country Invitational is this weekend and there are kids races starting at 8:00am.
• Parent Information Night is this Wednesday, September 20th, at 5:30pm to 7:00pm. Christine and I will be doing presentations about our 1/2 program. We'll be free to touch base from 6:30-7:00. Again, please, no conferences! If you;d like to schedule a more formal conference, just let me know. I'm happy to meet any time.
• We'd like to start doing book orders in class. If you are interested in doing the organizing and ordering, let me know. The sad fact is that I don't have time to do it, so without help it is unlikely to happen.

We have been working really hard on our Big 4 and filling in the details on what we see them as

meaning. We have hung the poster in the room and the kids have begun to add their "signatures" around it as our social contract. We reference it daily and we have done some great learning around our expectations for one another and for our friends throughout the building. As a part of this, we are going to do a special project and we need your help. Next week we'll be doing an activity and we're asking the kids to have a set of darker clothes to wear for it. Please try to send them in on Monday.

We've continued our hard work in literacy. We're up to 30 minutes of continuous work time and will be moving up to 45 by the end of next week. We're working on writing and reading to ourselves.

We'll be introducing word work next week, where kids get to work on their sight words. To get a look at literacy in our class, check out the side bar on the blog page.

We traveled down to the brook, using our senses to observe our surroundings. We did a little writing along with our watercolors. Look at the example of the science journal cover as well as some of the

beautiful writing they are working on. We've continued enjoying our butterflies in the room as well. We avoided a close call with one of our caterpillars and had a great chat about the nature of all things living...

It is going to be lovely this weekend, enjoy the outdoors! Be in touch with questions, concerns and celebrations.

Best,

Ben and Tammy