We met Jamie Swan, or Mrs. Swan today. She was very nice and the students really liked her. Thank you, Mrs. Morledge-Hampton, for coming in today to help with centers. What a cold day! We were lucky enough to enjoy morning recess, but we stayed inside for afternoon recess. Since it was too wet to go out, students had "free choice" centers, including Legos, puzzles, and any of the regular literacy and math centers.

We have been reading The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything. Students read all of the actions from the story. "Two shoes go CLOMP, CLOPM, one pair of pants go WIGGLE, WIGGLE, one shirt goes SHAKE, SHAKE, two gloves go CLAP, CLAP, one hat goes NOD, NOD, and one giant, scary pumpkin head goes, BOO, BOO" (to scare the crows away). Students wrote some of the action words by sounding them out. We'll do this often, as this is how students learn to write and writing leads to reading. At home, you can ask your child to sound out words, one sound at a time. Start with words whose letters make the expected sound. For example, don't start with giraffe, since the g is making a j sound and not the g sound. If they use they leave out silent letters, there's no need to correct them. PRAISE, PRAISE, PRAISE. Relax...the spelling will come later. If they spell rainbow as ranbo, that's fantastic because look at how many sounds they heard!!!

We're working on patterns in math. We've mostly studied visual patterns, but at home, point out patterns that you can think of, including sounds in music, days of the week, etc. We look at what changes. For example, a pattern of all red buttons in different shapes is a "shape pattern" because the shape is the only thing that changed.