Dear Families,

During read aloud I have been reading several Winnie the Pooh stories. We are enjoying each of the characters and their little "quirks." You might like to ask your child to describe Tigger the Tiger, Pooh, or Roo, (or another character from these stories), and then have your child compare how they are alike or different.

Mrs. Orr reports about writing groups: In writing group we continue to explore different times of day through literature. This week I read a story called the Legend of the Indian Paintbrush by Tomie dePaoloa. This book explores sunset. We painted our own pictures of sunset using a crayon resist technique. This involves using crayons to draw a ground line and details of a picture and then painting over it with watercolor paints. I encourage your child to look at the colors in the sky at various times of day such as when he/she gets up, goes to school, comes home from school, during dinner, and while getting ready for bed. Writing about these times of day pictures will begin in the near future. We also had our first spelling check this week. Your child should have brought home his/her spelling check on Tuesday to share with you. New spelling words will arrive home on Thursday. You may see some of the same words as last week if your child misspelled them.

We also wrote a response to text about a book called Wangari’s Trees of Peace. This true story takes place in Africa and is about a woman named Wangari Maathai who is saddened by the large amount of trees that were cut in her village. She began to plant more trees and enlisted other women to help her. This was not popular with the local government and she was put in jail. By 2004 thirty million trees had been planted from her example. Wangai Matthai was awarded the Nobel peace Prize in 2004. The children in one group had to write a detail and make a picture to support the following focus: When Wangari returned to her village she saw many changes. The children may have made a picture of birds leaving, trees being cut down, or women’s backs being very bent over from having to carry wood so far away. The other writing group wrote their whole response using the painted essay organization: context (author, title, summary), three details for the focus about Wangari seeing many changes and a conclusion.

The children in one group are working on letter formation and writing in "first grade" writing. This means that they are using uppercase letters to begin sentences only rather than in the middle of words. They are also working to blend sounds together as they become independent writers. The other group is reviewing words with short vowels and using those words in stories and for rhyming or finding similar or opposite meanings.

We also have journals in which children can choose their own writing topic. In these journals I look for proper use of uppercase letters and punctuation.

As you can see, we are working on many writing skills during our writing block.

Monday, September 21 will be our first Four Winds lesson of the year. We will be learning about Ecosystems: Fields and Lawns. Vocabulary we will use include: ecosystem, habitat, living and non-living things, organisms, interconnected, food web, field, sun, wing, rain, and snow.

Next week Mrs. Brown will come into our classroom to talk about allergies. She will tell the children that there are different kinds of allergies. However, the ones that can be most serious are food allergies or allergies to bee stings. She will discuss with us the importance of not sharing or eating food on the bus for safety reasons. In addition, if we will be reminded that if we think someone may have eaten something they shouldn’t, we should tell an adult immediately.

We’ll be having studio art(an extra art class which ties into classroom curriculum) with Mrs. Harvey on Friday. We will be making butterflies to hang in our classroom.

Here are some dates to remember:

September 21: Math homework due

September 23^rd: Early Release

September 25^th: Book orders are due if you wish to order something.

October 5: Fieldtrip to Shelburne Museum. More information will arrive

home shortly.

October 8^th: Open House

Have a lovely weekend~

Brenda