MRS. ANDREA H. DAVIS THEME: Community

Weekly Newsletter UNIT: Careers

January 23, 2015EXTENSIONS: Money

Key Measure: When I grow up, what will I be? I can choose a career to earn money.

LANGUAGE ARTS

PHONEMIC AWARENESS AND PHONICS: We are focusing on phoneme R in the beginning and ending positions this week. We went on a word search today finding and writing five words beginning with letter /r/ and five words ending with letter /r/. Help your child sound out or read those ten words at home. Decoding new words gets easier with practice. If your child can easily read the words, have him/her write a sentence using each word.

SPEAKING: Our classroom word wall is a huge list including every classmate’s first name, last name, color words, number words, our sight words, days of the week, months of the year and holidays. Each day two students get to tell the Calendar helper which letter to read on the word wall. The helper guides the class in reading all the words that begin with that letter, while holding a long pointer. The students are exposed to the sight words everyday.

WRITING: The students practiced writing numerals correctly when they wrote the value of each coin.

LISTENING: At the Listening center, we heard the book, The Rubber Bit Round Upabout letter friend Mr. R inventing rubber bands.

READING: We read and illustrated the book RED to reinforce /r/ sound in the beginning position and help us recognize color words and rhyming words. See if your child will sing the song that goes with the story.

SOCIAL STUDIES

The students talked about how they can earn money when they grow up. They drew pictures of jobs their parents have. They illustrated a book with pictures of what jobs they want in the future. We noticed that some jobs are harder than others, some jobs are fun, and some jobs provide lots of money! We talked about the fact that the President of the United States probably has the most powerful job in the world! He is the leader of the country. We learned that the President has many jobs and that he’s in charge of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Marines. We have had 44 Presidents and so far, they have all have been men. MATH

We noticed that U.S. coins have Presidents on them. We’ve had several work time activities involving coin stamping, penny flipping, estimating and counting, as well as coin graphing and sorting. We play a group game called Circle Countdown several times a week. Ask your child how many times s/he has been the last one standing in the game Circle Countdown.

SCIENCE

We learned that coins are made in a factory called a mint. Coins made in the Denver Mint have a little D on them. Coins made in the San Francisco mint have a little S. Coins made in the Philadelphia Mint have no special mark.

ART

VISUAL: We will send our future career drawings home in a book for all to see. MUSICAL: We sang some songs for letter R this week such as, "Rags", "Robin in the Rain", "Riding' up and down in my little red wagon," and "Singing in the Rain."

MOVEMENT: Everyday we put on music that gets us moving around the room in a fun way. We have one song that tells the children how to move just by listening to the music. It’s funny to get to crawl, run and fly in the classroom! Once we get those wiggles out, we are more attentive listeners.

FYI

**Wear your class shirt on Fridays!!

**LATE START Thursday, Jan 29 – School starts at 10:40 a.m.

**Friday morning, Feb6 - Dynamic Dads! Dads and Granddads are welcome – done by 9.

**Thursday, Feb 12 – Class Valentine’s Party @ 10:30-11:15. Families are welcome to come. We’ll sing songs right at the beginning, so bring your camera. We’ll make Valentine sacks at school the week before. I’ll send a list of classmates names for help in making Valentines at home.

**Monday, Feb 16 – No school – Teacher Workday

**LATE START Thursday, Feb26 – School starts at 10:40 a.m.

**Spring Break is Mar 16 through Mar 20 - No school 

Have a great weekend! Andrea Davis