Week of October 8-12, 2012

Hello Room 4 Families!
October is off to a great start. Thank you to everyone who volunteered in the classroom last week. We wouldn't be able to to everything we do without you!

Language Arts:
We have started our unit on Shadows. During this unit we will be reading lots of expository text about shadows. Your kids can bring in pictures they take or draw of shadows, books about shadows, or other things they can think of pertaining to shadows to share with the class and post on our concept and question board. They all have lots of questions about shadows, so we are already having a good time finding out what we can about them.
New high frequency words: and and we.
This week we will focus on writing the letters Oo, Pp, Qq, and Rr. We will also keep practicing writing first and last names that begin with a capital letter and have all lower case letters after that. Please have your child practice this way at home.
We are also learning about what makes a sentence and how to tell the difference between complete and incomplete sentences. They have learned that sentences have two parts: 1) a naming part (subject or noun) and 2) a telling or action part (predicate or verb). So far we are using very simple sentences to practice this, like "The dog barks."
We are also starting to learn about different end marks on complete sentences, so you can reinforce this by finding periods, question marks, and exclamation marks when you are reading together.

Math: This week we are starting chapter 3, Patterns.
New vocabulary: pattern
Objectives for this week are to copy and extend AB, AAB, ABB, and ABC color, shape, and size patterns.

Field Trip:
Our first field trip will be this month! We are going to Dave's Pumpkin Patch in West Sacramento on Friday, October 26th. The cost for this trip is $5.50 per student. This pays for a hayride, a corn maze, a small pumpkin, and an activity book. Please send cash to school as soon as possible. We will leave school at 9 am and return around 12.
Any parents who have been fingerprinted and would like to accompany us on this trip, we would love to have you! Please let me know as soon as possible.

Staff/Parent work day: Some of you have asked about the staff/parent work day listed on the October calendar for tomorrow October 6th. The school will be open the first Saturday of each month for teachers and parents to get some work done from 9am until 2pm. However, I will not be here tomorrow, so there won't be any work to do in room 4. I may be here another month on the first Saturday.

Thanks again, parents for everything you do!
If you have any questions please email me. carrie-relles@scusd.edu