October 2, 2015

Dear Parents,

It's hard to believe that September has come and gone and October is already here!  We have finished most of our apple projects and will be starting our unit on mammals and other zoo animals soon in preparation for our field trip to the zoo at the end of this month.  More info about this trip will be going home next week.  Once we confirm the date, please let me know if you are interested in chaperoning. Please make sure you fill out a CORI form at the Central Office (back of the High School) in order to accompany us on a field trip. I have an updated CORI list from the office, but if you haven’t been CORIed yet, I cannot have you come on a field trip. Mrs. McDonald is planning another parent confidentiality meeting on Monday October 5th at 8am. After this one, she plans to hold one every first Tuesday of every month at 8am.  The number of chaperones for this trip is limited so I will most likely be drawing names from a basket. We are planning on going to the Franklin Park Zoo Wednesday October 28th.

We had a wonderful day at the apple orchard on Tuesday.  The children enjoyed picking apples and pumpkins, eating a picnic lunch, feeding the goats, and playing in the hay maze.  We want to say a special thank you to Mrs. Ohol and Mrs. Arokiaraj for coming with us!

As always, we have been working very hard in Room 115.  The children completed two class books this week, Apples Up on Top and Room 115 Likes Reading.  The books are now circulating to your homes along with three others.  Make sure to have your child read the book with you before you return them the next day. Please try to return them the next day so someone else can bring them home to share!

The children will be taking their first journals home next week.  They wrote their words in their best guess spelling.  We help them by saying the words with them and accept the letters they hear.  You will be able to see tremendous growth as the year progresses.  They also brought home their Brown Bear, Brown Bear books.  They read them to the class and should be very proud of their work!  These books can stay at home for them to practice reading!

Students have also practiced writing the numbers 0-5, which are not always easy to do for those 5 and 6 year old hands!  We have also begun a new unit in math and have been working more with counting.  We will start sending home homework next week. It will just be practicing the numbers we have learned in school.  Students should complete them at home with pencils and then return them the next day.  Hopefully the extra practice will help students to learn them better!

We started having parent volunteers come into the classroom to help from 9:45-10:20am with our art projects.  I sent a volunteer calendar home to parents who emailed that they were interested in helping.  I will send an email towards the end of the month asking for volunteers for the month of November.  You can respond with the days and how often you are interested in helping.

We had our first day today with our Fourth Grade buddies! Mr. Stead’s reading group came down to our classroom and read with our class. We will be working with them during the year to complete various projects.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Kerry Marsh and Emma Noce

PS...Don’t forget to have your child practice putting on his/her jacket/sweatshirt.  As it gets cooler we will still go outside. Please dress your child for the weather.  It is greatly appreciated! Thanks! :)