Newsletter October 5 - October 9

 Welcome to October--this is the last week of our first quarter of school!  I am so glad we are still in school and have made it this far! It was nice to visit with you last week for SEP's.  Please don't hesitate to contact me anytime with questions or concerns.

Here are this week's happenings:

• Picture retakes (or taking for the first time) are this Friday, October 9.  If your child did not get their picture taken they will go, but I will not send students who already had their pictures taken unless you let me know.
• Take-home books were again sent home tonight.  I can't reiterate enough how much it helps to have books on your child's independent reading level to read at home.  Please take advantage of this.  September reading calendars are due this Wednesday for a certificate and treat (due October 1) but giving you a few days to get them in.  I told my students today about the last chance Wednesday deadline.
• If you haven't signed the computer use form on powerschool please do that by this Wednesday, October 7.  Believe me I wish I could do it for you, but I appreciate those that have signed it so your child can continue to use a computer at school. If not during computer time your child will be doing an alternate activity.
• We are trying for a field trip to the pumpkin patch on Tuesday,  October 20.  I will let you know more details about that if we get approval and transportation. 
• Remember that we have Monday, October 19 off for Harvest Holiday.
• In our learning we have just finished our first unit in reading.  This unit was mostly a review of kindergarten "stuff".  We reviewed all the letter sounds, and names along with the /sh/, /ch/, and /th/ sounds as well as double consonants (ff, ss etc.).  In unit 2 we will begin looking at and learning about long vowel sounds.  We will start with words with "vowel consonant e" (silent e, words like 'take' etc.).  
• We just finished learning about ancient Mesopotamia.  We learned about the importance of the rivers, religion in Mesopotamia, writing, and about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.  Ask your child about the Hanging Gardens :). We are now moving to our unit our the Human body which we will continue in October since it fits in well with Halloween and skeletons.  We will then pick up with the Ancient world civilizations unit and study Ancient Egypt. 
• In math we are almost finished with our unit on subtraction within 10.  We have learned how to  'take-apart numbers' (9 - 0, 9 -1, 9 -2 etc.).  Students understand simple subtraction problems right now, but we need some more work on "parts of number" and how addition and subtraction relate.  That will come in subsequent chapters.  We will also work more on recognizing if a word problem requires an addition or subtraction equation to solve it. 
• We will NOT have library this week.  You are welcome to send back those library books anytime though and your child can keep them in their mailbox here at school until the following Thursday, or you can keep them home until our next library day which will be Thursday, Oct. 15.

Happy Reading (remember to read every night for 10 minutes--the take home books are the BEST!)

Mrs. Armstrong