Simon says...

We started the day off by practicing our handwriting with the upper case and lower case "Cc".  Next, it was on to our morning routine, for this week that is.  I am trying to introduce our procedures in the classroom slowly by adding only a few new things per week.  Next week, we will begin our full morning routine. 

I'm not sure if the kiddos are coming home and telling you what we have done so far.  We start out with a morning greeting.  I have "special" morning greeting cards I choose from.  One might be, give a high five greeting.  We always get in a circle and greet each other by what card I choose.  This morning it was ankle shake greeting.  They thought it was so funny.  We had to stand up and shake ankles, instead of hands. 

After our morning greeting, we answer our morning message.  An example is:  Do you have a pet?  They answer yes or no right now with tally marks.  We use tally marks to add up the totals, to see which one has more or less, etc.  Next, we move on to our popcorn words (aka sight words).  We only have names on our wall right now.  They love reviewing the popcorn words because it is a lot of fun.  I really enjoy this part.  I also pick from my stack of cards for this.  An example is: the stinky skunk card.  The kiddos had to hold their nose and spell the name on the wall.  It was so funny watching them do this.  I had to do it first because many of them were a bit shy.  Yesterday we had the chicken card.  We had to move our arms and spell the word doing a chicken dance.  Fun fun! 

We began talking about position words today, such as on, above, under, below, etc.  We played a game of Simon Says throughout the day to help learn this concept.  You can quiz your child at home about these position words.  Try and emphasize the different ways you can use these words....like put your bag under the chair or below the chair. 

We also talked about patterns.  The kiddos each had a partner and used unifix cubes to make a pattern.  Most all of them knew what this was.  We also lined up to go outside by making a pattern of boy/girl.  Make sure to point out any patterns you see.

We will be working with all of these concepts continuously; I just wanted to point out to you what you can help reinforce at home. 

Our Fun Run Pep Rally was this morning.  The kiddos seemed enthusiastic about our Fun Run.  It helped having the leaders of the Boosterthon to encourage and cheer on their sales.  Not to mention, they have really cool prizes that all of your kiddos are going to want!  Remember, the Fun Run is next Friday.  I will be sending home another sheet with information about it tomorrow.  Also, you will get other updates about it. 

Anything you can count with your child, please allow them to!  Even if it's counting how many toys they have in their toy box, or how many fruit roll ups are left in the box.  They need to be working on their 1:1 correspondence, meaning putting their finger on the object and being able to count. 

Oh...we were able to add 3 more awesome books to our library today.  Thank you so much!