Week of April 7th

Mrs. Preskill
Apr 11
4 min read

Happy Friday Pandas!

General Updates:

Please check out the specials classes update here!
If you have already signed up to be a mystery guest, I would love to welcome you back to the classroom for a second time!
1. This is a fifteen-minute time slot that you are able to sign up for to either be a mystery reader or to teach us about your beautiful cultures! Please note, there are only two adults over the age of 18 allowed into the building for this volunteer opportunity at a time.
2. Some ideas of things you could share related to your culture (but are not limited to) are: photos (holidays, travels, clothing, etc), videos, music, games, stories, puppet show, art project, etc. You are also welcome to bring in any stories and read them to the class for enjoyment! If you are bringing in books, please bring 2-3 books to share during this time. Cultural connections are totally up to you and what you are comfortable with. We can't wait to welcome you into our classroom this year! If your work schedules are tight and the time slots available do not work for you, please reach out and we are able to plan this over Zoom or you are able to send a video in that we can share with the class!

This week in literacy...

Phonics: The pandas were introduced to three new heart words: saw, own, please. The pandas also continued to learn about digraphs. This week we continued to focus on "sound buddies!" These are special letter blends that make unique sounds, like "bl" in block and "gr" in green. We focused on these blends to help the kids recognize how two letters can work together to create a new sound. They practiced saying words with these blends. We also continued practicing reading and writing words with the "chunk" -all! We explored how words like ball, fall, and mall all share the same ending sound. By recognizing this chunk, we can easily read and spell more words with -all.
- We also continued to identify short and long vowels in words.
  - Short Vowels
    - cat (short "a")
    - pen (short "e")
    - bit (short "i")
    - pot (short "o")
    - cup (short "u")
  - Long Vowels
    - cake (long "a")
    - feet (long "e")
    - bike (long "i")
    - note (long "o")
    - cute (long "u")

Sound Collection: /m/, /s/, /l/, /n/, /f/, /r/, /v/, /z/, /p/, /g/, /d/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /w/, /h/, /kw/, /j/, /y/, /ks/, /z/, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/,

Letter Collection: m, t, p, a, s, c, h, i, d, f, r, o, g, l, n, u, b, k, v, e, j, w, z, q, x, y

Heart Word Collection: the, in, my, a, is, for, I, am, here, and, at, go, it, like, be, to, can, not, you, are, do, will, did, too, with, me, all, was, no, so, say, now, have, said,

down, come, they, that, this, ate, our, who, where, what, must, we, he, she, but, want, there, saw, own, please

Reading: We focused on two wonderful stories! First, we read Come On, Rain, a story that ties in perfectly with our weather unit. The children focused on understanding what the story was about and practiced retelling the key events from the beginning, middle, and end. We also enjoyed The Contest Between the Sun and the Wind, a fun tale that sparked lots of discussion and imagination.
Writing: We focused on creating topic sentences. A topic sentence is the first sentence in an informative book that helps the reader understand what the text is about. We worked together to come up with a topic sentence and then write the sentence that we spoke. We also worked on writing our very own informational books about rainy weather. The pandas loved sharing facts and details they have learned about rain.

This week in math...

We focused on learning about teen numbers (10-19)! The pandas had a lot of fun discovering how these numbers are made up of a group of 10 and extra ones. We talked about how each teen number has one set of ten and a number of extra ones added to it. To help reinforce this concept, we played some exciting new games that made learning fun and interactive. These games gave the pandas a chance to practice counting and identifying the numbers in creative ways.

Reminders

Please label your child's snack daily and pack this separately from the lunchbox.
Water bottles stay in the classroom, if you want your child to have a drink for lunch, please send a separate drink.
If you would like your child to buy a drink at lunch, please make sure there is money in the account for the lunch card.
Extra clothes and PE shoes should be labeled and stored in your child's cubby.
Please see Mrs. Smith's Principal's Message for further information about Willow Grove: principal's message