Good-bye Butterfly!

Monday our butterfly emerged during math and we were lucky to see the process it goes through to prepare for its' life as a butterfly.  Yesterday she was ready to be released and we sang a little song and set her free. What a wonderful experience this was for the Adventurers Team.

We have finished up learning about bugs in Math this week and have moved on to sea creatures today.  We have several new games, our favorite has been "There's a Bug In My Pocket".  This morning we sorted sea creatures in many different ways, then counted them on tens frames.  We estimated how many we had, counted by 10's and 5's, and talked about how many "groups" of 10 and 5 we had.  We have been busy learning about coins and number sentences in Number Corner.

Readers Workshop has been going beautifully!  I'm so impressed by how well everyone is remembering our rules for Readers Workshop and following routines.  We have been learning about ways to choose books (easy, just right, hard, by interest), what readers need to read well, how to handle books gently, and how to return books to their "homes".  These are all important ideas and lessons to build a strong foundation for Readers Workshop.  In addition to this, we continue to assess students to determine their strengths and areas for growth. This information will be used to help us set up guiding reading groups.

We have been talking about reading homework and practicing routines for reading at home.  This Friday your child will bring home an envelope with a book and a reading record inside of it.  They should read for 15-20 minutes every night and record the title, author and pages read on their reading record.  The reading record should be returned to school on Fridays with their homework packet.  Next week we will add regular homework and enrichment choices to their homework packet.  We will spend next week learning routines for homework. Homework for the following week will come home every Friday in the Friday Folder.  If you have any questions about these routines, please feel free to contact me.  My hope is that by gradually introducing different parts of homework, students will have a better understanding of expectations for homework.

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