Thanks for being so prompt today in picking up your child from school! Things went very smoothly on our first early out. Thank you, too, for your response to my request for helpers on our field trip. Three parents have volunteered their time to accompany us, which should be enough to keep everyone safe.

Hopefully you have had a chance to look through your child's backpack tonight. Book orders arrived and if you ordered books they were sent home today. Thank you for your orders--they help me earn points for more classroom books.

Today students painted rainbows for letter R day. They also wrote lowercase Rs and colored pictures of some objects that begin with R. We have been choral reading a letter book each day. I read the line by myself the first time, and the students read it the second time. During both readings, I point to the words as we say them. This helps to teach directionality (reading from left to right), recognition of sight words (at least one sight word is repeated on each page). Here's an example of today's book: "Here is the ring." "Here is the rainbow." "Here is the raccoon." In this example, students would be seeing/saying three words over and over again: here, is, and the. You'll be amazed at how quickly they learn to recognize those words when they see them in other places. Try pointing out "the end" in your child's bedtime story tonight and see if they can read it to you. Chances are they can! Give tons of praise for how incredibly smart they are!