Welcome back, Aspen!! Thanks to Anna and Gail Bergstedt for presenting information about China and adoption to our class this morning. Suddenly, everyone wants to visit China! I haven't received any picture order forms yet. I am aware that there is now an option to order and pay for your pictures online. In the past, teachers kept track of everyone's money until the actual time of our photo session, then we'd put the check into each child's hand to give to the photographer. I'm not sure how the change will affect picture day.

We read a fun book today called Q is for Duck. Students had to use their brains to determine why each letter was associated with something seemingly obscure. For example, B is for dog because dogs bark and X is for dinosaur because they are extinct. Students worked on their Who Am I? books by coloring their hair and eyes and writing the appropriate color word on the page. The word "blonde" was not well understood and it caused even more confusion when there was not a Crayon to match.

In math, students drew a picture of the way they get to school (walk, bicycle, scooter, car). We put the pictures onto a graph. I can't remember for sure, but I think walk had the most, scooter had the least, and car and bike were tied. For literacy, students listened for how many times the word "the" was used per page of one of our books. Next, they used highlighter tape to highlight the word. "The" and "end" are new words on our word wall, so we will practice spelling them and finding them in books. For writer's workshop, students designed their own quilt and wrote the (very short) sentence, "The quilt."

I learned today that I will need to get permission slips signed in order to take students on our walking field trip to the fire station, so I will send that in next Monday's envelope. If you would please sign it and return it the next day, I'd appreciate it.

Early out at noon tomorrow. Please try to be on time because the teachers have to leave fairly quickly to get to our training. Thanks!