2014_10_31 Friday

Cat-erina

From Elise's teacher: Good afternoon and Happy Halloween! Wow what a fun-filled day we had! We had a free play and calendar time in the morning. Then we talked about our costumes and took some awesome pictures! We made a sign for the parade! We then decorated our pumpkins. And we made a ghost treat to take home. We also made a balloon ghost. Hopefully it makes it home! We listened to which witch is which? and 12 days of Halloween. I read Halloween Hoots and Howls and The Best Halloween Hunt Ever.  We enjoyed some time outside. Then we had our parade! :)

It was great seeing everyone!! Thanks to all who helped out!! Show and tell is next Wednesday- bring in a cool rock or fossil to share!  

What fun we had roaming around our neighborhood with 40 of our closest friends. The street behind us gets blocked off, and families are everywhere.  Dave was a 70s funky guy; Elise was Cat-erina with a tail, paws, and ears; Jonathan was a soldier/military dude; and I was Cersie Lanister (from Game of Thrones). On Saturday, the kids divided up their candy for themselves and to give away. whew. My belly can't take it anymore!

Dave had two work buddies from Vietnam over for dinner earlier this week, and they all carved up pumpkins (such an American tradition!). They were pretty funny to watch as they used spoons to dig out the guts and carve fancy designs with special tools.

2014_10_30 Thursday

From Reading Club: Hello, On Monday, we completed a My Color Book with simple sentences.  We colored a witch picture that had color words on it that they had to read to color. We worked on the word look. On Tuesday, X and X worked on colorful pumpkins to identify color words. They also worked on the word come. They each also got to choose a I Can Read book that I have borrowed from the library and they will work on reading their book. Elise will get to choose one on Wednesday if she is feeling better! On Wednesday, we worked on the word make. Elise worked on the word come from yesterday. Elise chose to read the book Reading Makes You Feel Good. X and X finished their books and did a great job recognizing the sight words we have worked on!! On Thursday, Elise finished reading her book. We worked on reading sentences with the word here. The girls put 2 Popsicle sticks together to make out sight words. It was quite a challenge. We also had some fun doing math pattern art with Halloween stickers. Have a fun and safe Halloween!!

From Elise's teacher: Hello, Today we talked about bats. We discussed that they are nocturnal and about their body parts. We made a witch craft. We discussed the different shapes that made up the witch. X knew that the blue shirt was a semicircle shape! We practiced writing our uppercase letters. We talked about our festivities for tomorrow and what we should do during the parade. They had Italian. 

Tell me a bat fact: 

Elise- I learned that bats can see very good in the dark. 

2014_10_29 Wednesday

From Elise's teacher: Good afternoon, Today in the morning we made cards for troops who will not be home for the holidays. We learned about the pumpkin plant life cycle. We made our own Jack- o-lantern by cutting out and identifying different shapes. The pumpkins are on our pumpkin patch in the hall! Some completed the Halloween math sheet from yesterday. They had French and learned summer words. We had a Mystery Reader at the end of the day. Thank you X mom for reading some Halloween books to the class and they met Raggedy Ann! They enjoyed it very much! 

What is your favorite season and why? 

Elise - my favorite season is winter because I get to build snowmen. 

2014_10_28 Tuesday

Poor Elise had to stay home from school today b/c she was booger-y and had a decent cough. What a boor it is to be home. no TV, just in bed relaxing. who wants that?! she was back to school on Wednesday without even having to ask!

2014_10_27 Monday

I'm back from a whirlwind, amazing trip to Germany. Will be catching up today and tomorrow. Stand by for updates and photos!

From Elise's teacher: Hello, We will talk about Halloween this week. We discussed how we celebrate Halloween and how other countries around the world celebrate it. Today we discussed names of bones such as femur, tibia, fibula,  cranium. We made a skeleton and included all the bones we learned about. They had Japanese today. Some matched uppercase letters to their lowercase letters using clothespins. We completed a Halloween number book. We also completed a My Color Book. We danced to Dem Bones or Skeleton Dance. 

How do we celebrate Halloween? Or you can tell me how other people around the world celebrate Halloween? 

Elise- people in Austria leave bread and water and a lamp at the table for Halloween night. 

2014_10_26 Sunday

I got to read with Elise at bed time:

2014_10_25 Saturday

Today is Dave's 40th birthday celebration since I was in German for the actual day (Tuesday). I organized a full day of festivities for him and his boys. The kids and I took him to Cracker Barrel for breakfast; I had to hold back my vomit (I hate that place). He loved it, despite having to drive 25 minutes out of town, shocking, to find one.
At 11:30, I had a party bus pick up the guys at the house and deliver them to paintball.
(Then, Jonathan had a birthday party to attend.) Ahh, a bit of girl time. It was scheduled to return them at 6, but somehow the poor guys were so tired that they were home by 5. Somehow I got un-invited to dinner out; I guess the memo didn't get passed to the ladies to meet up, so it ended up being just the guys...better that way, me thinks. Dave was home 'relatively' early, but then again, they started a lot earlier than usual! good times.

2014_10_24 Friday

From Reading Club; Hello, On Monday, X worked on the words play, with. We all practiced counting halloween pictures and circling the correct number on a worksheet. Elise and X played a roll the dice and color the moons game. On Tuesday, X finished up the halloween counting worksheet from yesterday. He also worked on words not, here. We all worked on the word look. The girls completed an ending sounds worksheet. On Wednesday, X worked on ending sounds. Each of them made a sentence strip with a sentence that they each came up with that included our sight words. Then they drew a picture to go along with it. On Thursday, we worked on making a certain number of dots on candy corns. We did numbers 1-12. We went over flash cards. We played a round of bingo with sight words. Soon we will start making and reading little booklets with sentences and pictures. We have a handful of sight words to go. Everyone's doing a great job! 

From Elise's teacher: Hello, Today we took turns playing Starfall on the computer and phonics games on my Kindle. Some read Go Go Go! We went over some sight words. Some made letters and animals with play-doh. X played a phonics game on my Kindle with safari animals. X completed a matching game where she had to match 2 rhyming picture cards. X and X completed simple addition facts with the candy corn parts using rubber animals as counters. Elise and I worked on addition facts on the dry erase board. We all played a pumpkin/starry night roll the dice math game. They had German. Most know their German color words! 

OMG, I returned from the most amazing, albeit short, work trip to Germany!! I was in Munich and Stuttgart for two days each. I'm so tired, but what fun it was to be 'back home' again. Weather was cold and rainy, but that's winter in southern Germany. I gave a 90-min briefing/impromptu discussion on Ebola in Munich. I was thinking and dreaming in German by the first night there (in Munich). I have video of the Glockenspiel for the kids/Dave to watch. I got to help lots of silly Americans and had a fair share of Dunklebier, Schnitzel, und Gurkensalat (but not much Spatzle, unfort., and no Apfelkorn!). I took the train to Stuttgart (so darn nice; why don't we have that here!? took video of the landscape too) for a one-day conference where I met some super cool folks at Kelly Barracks. Didn't sleep a wink on the flight home. Oh, I'm just so re-energized!!!

2014_10_23 Thursday

From Elise's teacher: Hello, Today we had calendar time in the morning. We went over the days of the week. We practiced our letter sounds from A-H. I also discussed the Indian holiday Diwali which is today. It is the Festival of Lights and we decorated a diya (lamp). I also read the book Families Are Different. We talked about how families are made up of different people and can look different. Then we all went around and said who is apart of our family. We finished up our other 4 seasons tree. They had Italian today. X brought in Rosemary for us to smell from yesterday. She wanted to share it with us. 

What are you going to be for Halloween? 
Elise- for Halloween I'm going to dress up as a butterfly. 

2014_10_22 Wednesday

From Elise's teacher: Today we made a favorite apple graph and we picked which apple we like the best. We all got to taste a red and green apple at snack time then chose our answer. We discussed how many people chose each color apple. We talked about what senses we use that relate to apples such as touch, taste, and see. We counted apples and wrote the number. They had French today. We finished up our seasons trees. 

Show and tell shares: 
Elise- for my show and tell I brought a crayon puff(melted crayon block). It smells like crayons. 

2014_10_21 Tuesday

Happy Birthday to my beloved!!!! Welcome to 40!!

From Elise's teacher: Hello, Today we continued to work on math and counting. We learned the 5 Little Pumpkins song/rhyme and made our own scene for art.  We talked about our 5 senses. We smelled a vanilla candle and a pumpkin spice candle. We made a what is your favorite Fall activity? graph and counted how many students were in each category:
Elise- my favorite fall activity is Halloween and pumpkin picking. 

2014_10_20 Monday

From Elise's teacher: Good afternoon, Today we talked about monsoons. We discussed that they happen mainly in Asia. We talked about what tornadoes, hurricanes, snow storms can do to buildings and where we live. We also worked on math today such as counting and adding. They completed simple addition problems (1+2, 3+2) and they had to piece together candy corn parts to find the answers. They used rubber animals to count out the addition facts. They also took turns playing the season sort game on the pocket chart. Some friends also counted out a specified number of leaves to put on a tree. We also painted a fall tree with corks since we will be discussing fall this week.

What is something you learned about monsoons today?
Elise- You can have monsoons in the summer in India.

2014_10_19 Sunday

We did our annual journey to the Southern Belle farms today...and randomly bumped into Elise's school director (for the second year in a row!). This is such a cool farm; we spend more than the day there (they let us hang for an extra hour after closing) to do all the fun things.

2014_10_18 Friday

ack, somehow our days are off...

From Elise's teacher: Hello, Today we had calendar time in the morning. We made the letter Hh with playdoh. We painted a summer scene for art and then we added Kool-Aid on top and friends described the smell of it. They said it smelled like strawberry and that is was sweet. It was tropical punch flavor. I read Starry Safari and we continued to talk about rhyming words. The sentences in the book rhymed. They had German today.

What is your favorite thing to do in the summer?

Elise- My favorite thing to do in the summer is go to my grandparents beach house. 

From Reading Club: Hello! On Tuesday, the girls worked on the words not, with. X is learning her number words 0-10. On Wednesday, we worked on the word play. We also reviewed our vowel song. We went over flash cards. We also talked about rhyming words. The girls had to put 2 picture cards next to each other that rhymed. Ex rain , train. They were 4 seasons-themed.  We also did a rhyming words worksheet. X also worked on a four seasons book that she read to me. On Thursday, we worked on the word here. X's sentence- Here are my toys.  Elise's sentence- Here were my erasers. X also put Halloween witch letter cards in abc order. Both girls read the 4 seasons book together from yesterday. Elise worked on matching numbers with the same number of leaves on a pocket chart. She did numbers 5-12. 

2014_10_17 Thursday

From Elise's teacher: Today we talked about opposites. We made a flower using felt petals and beans as seeds for the middle-- felt is soft and beans are hard. We went over other opposites. They picked 2 colors and made an AB pattern for the flower. We worked on writing the letter Hh in our journals and we also practiced writing numbers 1-10. Each student also practiced matching season-themed picture cards that rhyme- such as rain, train, rake, cake. We also made a 4 seasons booklet with sight words like, the, I , to , in. They had Italian today. 

We discussed the traits that make something living or non living: Name a living thing or a non living thing and tell me why it is that--
Elise- A nonliving thing is a pen, because it does not eat or drink or grow 

2014_10_15 Wednesday

From Elise's teacher: Today we talked about our sense of smell. We all had the chance to smell different foods--cinnamon oil, mint oil, lemon, vanilla extract, thyme, and clove. Friends used words such as spicy, yucky, good, pepper, sweet to describe the smells. Some didn't like the clove smell very much. We also worked on beginning sounds of words pertaining to the 4 seasons such as m for mittens. We also worked in our letter folders and drew hay, heart, horseshoe. They had French today. We had music time at the end of the day. We practiced hopping on one foot and walking backwards. 

What is your favorite thing to smell? that smells good to you?

Elise- I like the smell of lemons. 

2014_10_14 Tuesday

From Elise's teacher: This week will be about summer. Today we talked about the things we do during the summer. We talked about listening to big sea shells and hearing the ocean. We painted a seashell. We also learned about letter Hh and the sound it makes. We added green leaves to our four seasons tree. In the morning, everyone shared stories about what they did over the long weekend. They had Spanish today. We practiced counting out sea shells. We also counted black stripes on bumblebees 1-10.  We also continued to talk about plants. 

What is one beach memory you can share with us?
Elise- When I went to the beach with my grandpa Papa, I went to his beach house. 

2014_10_13 Monday

Happy Columbus/Indigenous Peoples' Day! Either way, both kids have been off school since Thursday!

Today, we slept in until about 9:30 and had a leisurely morning. Once we got motivated, we hopped in the car and went to the Tellus Science Museum. It's been on my to-do list for some time, and today was perfect. Hardly a soul there. They have a great minerals hall; dinosaur hall; science of movement hall; kid room; and panning for gems and dino bits center. Of course, the latter was the overall hit.

The minerals were neat b/c they were mostly from GA, and there were some really interesting shapes, colors, and textures for the kids to compare. We also talked about volcanoes (Mt St Helens, specifically) erupting and all the ash. The kids center had a weather station, so we read a bunch of the climate reports and wondered if we'd have all those at school too. They also have a solar house and a wind turbine to walk around and some really big construction-type trucks (not sure what that was about). We were there for about 4 hrs, so I think it was a success.

The kids scarfed up an entire container of 'cotton' (aka cottage) cheese and a whole acorn squash (meat wasn't as big of a hit) at dinner tonight. ha.

2014_10_10 Friday

Elise had school, but Jonathan did not.
Elise's reading club: Hello, On Monday, we all worked on the word you. Then we all worked alone and had center time. X played a phonics game on my Kindle. X worked on a big life cycle pocket chart for animals and a pumpkin plant. Elise worked on reading CVC words that shows the picture so they can self-check if they got the word right. Then they all got to switch around and do all 3! On Tuesday, we worked on the word big. We also did flash cards. We worked on counting objects 1-10. On Wednesday, we worked on the word run. We did popcorn sights words. We have all learned at least 15 sight words! Great job! On Thursday, the girls and I worked on the words big and run. We also did sight words flash cards. We played a variety of games. 

Elise's class: Good afternoon, Today we combined my class and Ms. Ann's class due to the holiday. We discussed the Columbus Day holiday and the significance of it. We made the 3 ships the sailors sailed on for art. We read the books The Scarecrow's Hat and Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer. We completed a math activity where they got to put number foam stickers in order from 1-10. We did not have German. We enjoyed some time outside.

Then we asked what is your favorite season and why? 
Elise- My favorite season is winter because you get to make snowmen. 

2014_10_09 Thursday

Elise had school, but Jonathan did not!

From Elise's teacher:  Today we talked about the butterfly life cycle and made butterflies with clips. They all took turns completing the pocket chart cycle of the butterfly. We completed a sequencing sheet for a bean plant. We worked on writing the letter Gg. They had Italian today. We played a game of musical chairs with Ms. Ann's class. X wanted to share something-- For my show and tell I brought my bug book and I wanted to share the grasshopper because it starts with G.

What are you going to do this weekend? 
Elise- I'm going to play with my babysitter Buggy.

2014_10_08 Wednesday

From Elise's teacher: Hello, During calendar time we discussed the date, shapes, weather, did the days of the week song. Today we talked about trees. We also talked about the life cycle of a pumpkin plant and they completed pocket chart picture cards of the cycle. We talked more about the parts of a plant. We drew grapes, girl, grass in our letter folders. We talked about the 4 seasons. We practiced counting from 1-50. I read the books A Seed is Sleepy and Rain.  We learned about different seeds in the seed is sleepy book. They had French today.

What is something you have learned about spring or plants this week?

Elise- I remember about that one tree the evergreen tree. That means it never loses its leaves or changes colors. 

2014_10_07 Tuesday

From Elise's school: Hello, Today we talked about parts of a plant and what plants need to grow. X told us that roots are connected to the plant. We planted iris bulbs in our class. We used our bodies to grow like a plant starting with being a seed on the floor. We completed a sequencing sheet for how a tomato plant grows. We also drew a flower and used brown yarn to add roots to the bottom. I read the books The Plant Cycle and What Blossoms in the Spring? 
  
Show and tell shares: 
Elise- for my show and tell I brought gold coins and a gem. And I'm sharing them with everyone. 

2014_10_06 Monday

From Elise's teacher: Good afternoon! This week we will be talking about Spring. We discussed what types of things happen during the spring. Today we talked about rain sticks. We discussed that they came from South America and were used to bring about the rain when it was very dry. We talked about what they used to make them out of.  We made rain sticks and performed our own rain dance and listened to real rain stick music. The letter of the week is Gg. We worked on writing the letter on the wkst and discussed the sound. 

What is something you see during springtime or what happens when spring is coming? 

Elise- I see butterflies and bees. 

2014_10_03 Friday

From Elise's class: Hello, Today we talked about igloos and made some with marshmallows. We
continued to read Snow Babies and talked about arctic animals such as snowy owls and arctic foxes. We made a winter tree and we talked about how there are no leaves on it because in the winter it is too cold to grow. We had some center time where they took turns on the computer
playing Starfall, playing Zingo, doing Alphabet Express puzzle, playing with Alphie the robot. We had rainy day recess indoors and went out for a little bit. They had German.

What is one fact you remember from the Snow Babies book?
Elise- I learned about the horses gallop around to keep warm.

From Reading Club: On Monday, we worked on the color word orange. We also worked on our

fall sight word tree. We will be adding words that each of us know so far. We also read sentences with words is, big. They underline or circle sight words that I call out. On Tuesday, X read words in flipbook Spelling and Counting. X and Elise played popcorn sight words. We all went over flash cards. X also worked on Barnyard colors. We read sentences with the word for. On Wednesday, they all finished their sight word fall tree which is up
on the wall in the classroom. X and X worked on the word gray. We also played a math counting game with dice. We colored leaves with numbers on them. We went over flash cards. X counted from 1-30 on the 100s number chart in my classroom. On Thursday, Elise worked on the word are and played the roll the dice and count game. We all played 3 games of sight word Bingo. We went over flash cards.

2014_10_02 Thursday

From Elise's school: Hello, Today we finger painted a snow scene with cold, white paint. We talked about what it would be like if it was winter all year long. I asked what would you like? What would you miss? Elise said she would miss the butterflies and the birds.  X said if it was winter all the time I would like to play with snow. X said she would build a snowman. We talked about opposites today. We worked on our journals on letter Ff and numbers 1-10. In the morning students practiced learning shapes such as pentagons and octagons and counting stickers 1-10 and putting the number in the correct pocket. We did a snowman math story mat and counted how many children were dancing around the snowman. We read the
book Snow Babies (which Dave/Elise bought for her!).

Name 2 opposites:
Elise- close and open

2014_10_01 Wednesday

From Elise's school: Hello, Today we made snowmen and I read Snowmen All Year. After I read this book about having a snowman that doesn't melt I asked the question below. Everyone had great answers!  We also went on a nature walk outside and collected leaves and acorns. We completed our F is for Fall art. We also drew foot, five, fall tree in our letter folders. X and I read Go! Go! Go! For music we went ice skating on the carpet. 

What would you do if your snowman had magical powers and didn't melt?  
Elise- if my snowman had magical powers I would take him to the pool.