Mrs.

Mays Messenger
April 13, 2012
What We Have Learned This Week:

Dates to Remember:
F 4/20 NO SCHOOL M 4/30 Miss Owens last day M 5/7 through F 5/11 Orange Pods Australian Market (more details to come)
TH 5/10 School House Rocks Program AND Australia Exhibition Day (more details to come)
Journal Writing
Parents, please forgive me for not informing you about the recent change of page orientation in your childs March Journal. We began the year writing landscape the purpose being that they needed lots of space to illustrate the stories. The illustration was a scaffold to the writing. In March, our daily journals changed to a portrait orientation, as the children do not need as much space for their illustrations since their writing is now the part of their journal entries where we see the details of the story unfold. They are now able to write very detailed stories without the aid of a picture. In fact, you may even notice that some entries do not even include an illustration. As your childs reading skills progress, so do their writing skills, thus giving our journals a more chapter book looking style. First grade, here we come!!!!!!

This week, we continued our author study of Eric Carle. We read several of his most famous very books, including: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Very Busy Spider, The Very Quiet Cricket, The Very Clumsy Click Beetle, and The Very Lonely Firefly. We have learned many interesting facts about him, including that he was not very good at math when he was a little boy. Because of this, many of his books include mathematic concepts to help children learn more about math. After reading his book, The Grouchy Ladybug, we began learning how to tell time. At centers, each child made their very own ladybug clock, which they later used to help me reread the story. In addition, to math concepts, we have also been learning about adjectives (a super-cool first grade word ). While some of us may be sad that this author study has come to an end, we now have accumulated 3 new class books and lots of pages in our math journals to help us remember some of Eric Carles wonderful stores. During the second week of May (7th 11th), orange pod will hold an Australian Market. This is a pod-wide culmination activity for our year-long theme of Australia. During the market, all orange pod children will be buying and selling merchandise that they have made. Each class will make 4-6 different items to sell in their store (classroom) at the market. I spent quite a bit of time this week explaining and taking about the market what it will look like, what the children will be doing, how we will earn money for shopping, etc. We made a list of possible items to make as our merchandise. Next week, well finalize the decision and begin earning pennies to use as shopping money. Even though the children will be doing ALL of the work on our market days, parents are more than welcome to come and observe your child as he/she buys and sells merchandise. Ill keep you updated on our progress, and Ill be sure to end home a schedule of days and times during which your child will be participating in our market. We are SO excited!!! Our new class pet, Stingray the tadpole, seems to be thriving in his new home (the Discovery Center). After having BoBo the turtle in our room for a bit, the kids were interested in the differences between reptiles and amphibians. So, we looked at some! Some cool facts about amphibians: they breath using both gills and lungs; they have moist, sticky skin; and they go through a

THANK YOU!!! A very sincere thank you goes out to everyone who helped make this such a special Teacher Appreciation Week! All of the flowers, classroom supplies, sweet notes and cards have brightened up each day! EVERYDAY this week PTA has fed the teachers amazing lunches! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

Please Return:

~1st Grade Registration Form (complete with 2 proofs of residency) ~Parent Involvement Survey ~March Journal (as soon as you finish reading it with your child )

Have a wonderful weekend!!! ~Mrs. Kristin May

metamorphosis stage. As the kids watch Stingray metamorph into a little water frog they have been recording their observations and questions in The Diary of Stingray. He may be smelly, but we love him!!