Mrs. Eckert was our first parent reader last Friday! You all have BIG shoes to fill now because she was an EXCELLENT model for voice inflection for the children!

Mr. Thompson works with a small group in math.

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a fun and relaxing Labor Day weekend! We are back on track at school! Here is a look at this week:

Spelling: We will focus on words with short vowel /i/. Beginning with today's homework calendar, the spelling word sort activity will be a part of Monday night homework (tonight since there was no school on Monday). The children will need to cut the words apart and complete the activity sheet. Please do not send the "baggie" of spelling words back to school. They are to be kept at home. You do not need to keep them in the folder anymore if you prefer not to. We are learning about the "naming part" of a sentence. The naming part (who or what the sentence is about) is usually found at the beginning of a sentence. While reading, we will be working on the comprehension strategies of classifying, categorizing, and making inferences.

Don't forget that the word card ring should be worked on daily at home and returned to school on Thursday. This week's words: hold, soon, so, home, get

Handwriting: We are working on numbers and beginning our lowercase letters. Ask your child about "magic c".

Writer's Workshop: We will continue to work on stretching our words and spelling the best we can.

Math: We will practice counting up and back on the number grid and working with complements of 10. The children will learn to play a game called "2 Fisted Penny Addition". Please play this at home as often as you can. Here are the directions: Place 10 pennies on a table. Ask your child to grab a handful pennies with one hand and pick up the rest with the other hand. Have your child to provide information using this format: "I have 3 pennies in one hand and 7 pennies in the other hand." Using such language reinforces the idea that each number is a count of objects. Take it further by having them say "3 plus 7 = 10". This is great practice for addition facts! I will also introduce the calculator this week and we will be adding this math tool to our tool kit bags.

Your child's Math Journal will be coming home on Thursday for homework this week. Please be sure to complete page 8 together with your child and return the Journal on Friday.

Social Studies/Science: We will continue our character education unit through our author study of Kevin Henkes' books. We will begin our study of the Human Body next week. The children will love this unit! I am looking for doctors, nurses, EMTs, or others that work in the health care field that would like to volunteer to come in to share during this unit. If you are interested, please let me know!

Things to remember:

Word card rings are to be returned to school on Thursday.

Math Journal will come home on Thursday this week and MUST be returned on Friday.
Library check-out begins this Thursday! We will have library check-out each Thursday from now on. Please make sure that all library books are returned by then.

Picture Day is next Tuesday, September 14.

Volunteers this week:

• Tuesday - Art - Cynthia Biondi (12:00)
• Thursday - Library Check-out - Julie Piper and Molly Camp (2:35)
• Friday - Math Game - Emily Golden (9:00)
  
• Friday - Parent Reader - Margaret Young (2:20)

It's going to be a great week!
Susan