October 3-7th: We will focus on using our senses to identify signs of fall. We will examine leaves and learn about how they change colors and create a blanket on the ground as they fall. We will make leaf rubbings, as well as some great little stories that will focus on simple, repetitive text and the words: I, see, the. We will begin to recognize some color words as well.
*We will watch a great little educational clip via the SmartBoard on Christopher Columbus.
Reminder: Friday is a half-day and a Show-n-Tell day too!
October 11-14th: We will continue our brief introduction to Christopher Columbus and learn about why his discovery was so important.
-Following this, we will learn all about Fire Safety Prevention this week: October is Fire Safety Month. The girls will learn all about safety precautions, safe and unsafe things to play with, and they will become aware and educated "junior firefighters".
October 17-21st: Apples!
We will study how an apple grows. The girls will taste the 3 different kinds of apples and graph their favorite, along with a tasting of apple cider, apple juice, Apple Jacks cereal, applesauce, etc. We will measure out the ingredients to make some homemade applesauce. We will make some great books on apples, write about the star that lives inside an apple, learn the word APPLE, along with some color words: red, yellow, green.
October 24-28th: Pumpkins!
We will study how pumpkins grow. We will make little books about pumpkins that have familiar sight words; learn the word PUMPKIN through a fun game; mix red and yellow to get orange...thus learning a new color word; and we will work on pumpkin math. The girls will be put into small groups. Each group will get a small pumpkin. We will weigh them, measure how tall and wide it is, and count out the seeds ( in groups of 10). After logging our results in a book, we will find which group had the heaviest/lightest pumpkin; which had the most/least seeds; who had the tallest/shortest pumpkin.
October 31st: Halloween fun; Come to school as your best impression of Fancy Nancy and enjoy a day filled with great treats and lots of fun activities for the day!
During this month, we will continue to develop our phonics skills; work on letters and sounds; stretch out words; recognize familiar words; continue to develop reading readiness strategies and skills. In math, the girls will make observations from a graph; use pattern blocks as we learn about shapes; use unifix cubes to create patterns; play number/shape games; make number books; class graphs, weather graphs; counting on; number placement, etc. In science, we will read about some interesting things in our Science Spin and National Geographic magazines.
-I will keep you posted on a possible date for a Halloween get-together with our 8th grade "big sisters".
