We had a very busy week!  Besides being our first full week of school, we also had Curriculum Night, Book Fair, and our first Mystery Reader!

Curriculum Night and Other "Parent Stuff"
I really enjoyed meeting you all at Curriculum Night!  I hope my presentation was informative and my expectations clear.  If you have any questions or concerns about any of our routines or any of the information, please let me know!   

I put together a distribution list for email and sent my first email out on Thursday.  If you did NOT receive this email, please contact me with your information so I can add you to our list. If you would like to add or delete any additional email addresses, let me know and I will make the appropriate changes.  I am asking all parents to email me back as a confirmation that you received the email.  I appreciate your help with this!

With Thursday's email, I attached our Classroom Directory, Conference Schedule, Mystery Reader Schedule, Emergency Snack Schedule, and Volunteer Sign-Up.  Please check the information in these documents carefully and contact me if I need to make changes.  The Mystery Reader schedule is a work in progress - I will send a final version within the next week or so. 

Our Room Parents this year are Tammy Gilbery and Jocelyn Edwards.  (Yay!)  I will be in touch with them early next week to start organizing schedules for our Computer Lab volunteers, Spelling Helpers, and Copiers.  I hope to get that information out to you all ASAP.  We had so many parents sign up to help this year - it's amazing!  I'm really looking forward to working with you all!  Thank you!!

Classroom/"Kid Stuff"
Students were very busy this week.  They are starting to settle into the routines and, as a result, are becoming more and more productive!!

Reading
In reading, we have identified different kinds of genres.  Students should now understand that books can generally be divided into fiction and nonfiction.  Within those categories, however, there are subcategories including:

FICTION
Fantasy Fiction
Realistic Fiction
Traditional Fiction
Science Fiction
Historical Fiction

NONFICTION
Informational Nonfiction
Biographies

There are more, of course, but they ARE only 7-8 years old!

Math
In math, students learned and played several new games this week - all of which reinforced important math concepts. 

Addition Top It
This game is like "war" except students flip over two cards each, find the sums, and the person with the highest sum takes all the cards.  (This can be played with a regular deck of cards - play at home!)

Money Exchange Game
This game is played with paper bills - $1, $10, $100.  Students roll a dice and start collecting $1 bills.  When they reach 10, they trade their 10 $1's for a $10 bill.  The first person to trade for $100 wins!

Penny Plate
To play this game, partners need 20 pennies and a plastic bowl or plate.  One child closes his/her eyes while the other places some pennies under the plate.  The remaining pennies are placed on top of the plate.  The child whose eyes were closed now counts the pennies on top of the plate and tries to figure out how many pennies are underneath (by counting up or counting down). 

Mystery Reader
Our first Mystery Reader of the year was Mr. Markey - Julia's dad.  He read The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Janet Stevens and Susan Steves Crummel and Today I Feel Silly by Jamie Lee Curtis.  Here are a few pictures from his visit! :)