Community Week 2 November 25-27

Wednesday, November 27 (Dismissal at 10:40)

No School November 27-28 (Happy Thanksgiving)

Community Week 2 
Unit Book
A Day in the Life of a Firefighter

Weekly Question and Vocabulary Related to book:
What do workers in our community do? 
(firefighter, emergency, equipment, protect, community helper, rescue)

Letterlander Review: 
This is a short week so we told the children the Letterlanders are away on vacation:

Small Groups
Turkey Subitize- We will subitize amounts of objects on turkey feathers and sort them quickly onto our turkeys.  Subitizing is recognizing a set of objects without counting.  This is an important skill to master before reading.  

Thumbs Up/ Thumbs Down- We will learn how to listen to the beginning sound of words.  We will compare two beginning sounds in words. Then we will discuss if we heard the same sound in both words.  For example mouse/mail: They both beginning the same sound /m/. We will place those pictures in the thumbs upside of our charts.  If you do not have the same beginning sound such as dog and paper, they would be placed on thumbs downside

Turkey Subitize- We will subitize amounts of objects on turkey feathers and sort them quickly onto our turkeys.  Subitizing is recognizing a set of objects without counting.  This is an important skill to master before reading.

On-set Rime Community Helpers-We will practice blending the onset and rimes of spoken words.  The onset is the beginning part of the word and the rime is its entire ending.  For example, in the word “hat,” /h/ is the onset and /at/ is the rime. We will use our community theme to guess school and fire station words the teacher segmented and glued them to our buildings. 

Centers

Art Table- Turkey Art 

Block Area- blocks and community people

Sensory Table- red, yellow, orange shredded paper(to look like fire) and cotton(smoke)with firetrucks and firefighters
Book Area- Exploring Books about community
Dramatic Play-Firestation
Rug- tracks and roads

Science/Social Studies/Math Circle Concepts
-Locating things in our neighborhoods
-Safety in our neighborhoods
-Jobs in our community

Songs, Word Plays, and Language

-Syllable Sound Off

-Turkey Pokey

-Firetruck Song

Community Week 1 November 18-22

Community Unit 
Unit Book

The Two Promise Walk

Weekly Question and Vocabulary Related to book:

What is our community?
(bridge, traffic, restaurant, airport, forget, remember

Meet our Letterlander of the Week: 
Clever Cat
We will continue to have a special art project based on this Letterlander.   We are creating an alphabet book that will be completed by the end of the school year. 

This week we will be doing the following letter activities in small groups: 
Sorting Uppercase and Lowercase: C and c
Fine motor activity to reinforce letter this week: Tracing C in Confetti Trays
We will be reinforcing "alligator fingers" and "always start your letters at the top.
(How to make a C: C is a Center Starter " Start at the Top in the Center, Big Curve Down, Stop at the bottom ")

Small Groups

-Letter Cc- We will learn what the uppercase and lowercase letter Cc looks like.  We will sort magnetic letters into 3 categories: Uppercase C, Lowercase c, and Other Letters. We will then use hands-on materials to practice writing letter C.

Picture Partners- We will earn how some words begin with the same sound and some words do not.  We will identify pictures on two cubes. Then each child will roll the two cubes and named the two pictures.  We will identify if the pictures have the same sound in the beginning or not. For example, mouse and map are the same.  Duck and nest are not the same.

-Positional Word Train-Students will work to use positional terms to move a train around a train station scene based on a teacher’s directions.  We will practice words such as above, over, below, behind, next to, in between, in front of and besides.  Then we will challenge a partner to follow directional terms while using positional words to place the train.  

-Put out the Fire- We will pull letters out of a bag and then label the letter and repeat the letter sound. After we find the letter on our fire engine papers we will put the letter in a bucket of water for an extra fun step.

10 Frame Pumpkin Seeds- We will introduce a 10 frame. We will show them that it is two 5 frames put together to make 10 frames. Then we will color and cut 10 seeds. We will take turns rolling a number cube and placing the correct number of seeds in the 10 frame. We will make a note to start placing the seeds from the left to right as well as from top to bottom to reinforce directionality. We will also count how many empty frames there are. On our last turn, we will glue down the number we roll too.

-Onset/Rime- We will be working on listening to sounds in words specifically onset and rime. Onset is the first part of the word we hear and the rime is the second part. For example: dog /d/ is the onset and /og/ would be the rime.

-Map of our school community- We will be talking about how maps help people get from one place to another in our communities. After looking at one in a book and then finding the high school map and looking at how it helps us we will create our own maps. The maps will show how we get to school and places we see on the way as well.

Centers

Art Table- Firefighter dog hats

Block Area- blocks and community people

Sensory Table- bridges and boats
Book Area- Exploring Books about community
Dramatic Play-Birthday Party
Math, Puzzles, and Manipulatives- Puzzles
Rug- tracks and roads with trains

Science/Social Studies/Math Circle Concepts
-Locating things in our neighborhoods
-Safety in our neighborhoods
-Jobs in our community

Songs, Word Plays, and Language

-Syllable Sound Off

-Neighbors Chant

-Firetruck Song

Family Week 4 November 14-15

Reminder No School November 11-13
Parent Conferences on November 13
Book Orders Due November 14

Unit Book

Antonio's Birthday Fiesta
Hooray A Pinata

Weekly Question and Vocabulary Related to book:

What do families do together for fun?
(guest, celebrate, decorate, musician, instrument)

Small Groups and LetterLander Review
Letterlander review- We will review the letters and sounds that we have learned so far this school year.  We will label a set of pictures and figure out the letter that makes that sound.  Ask your child at home to say the picture and the sound that begins each picture.  (For example: Turtle says /t/ like Talking Tess)

Guess My Rule- We will play a sorting game use a mat. We will give your child a category and have your child sort the provided pictures into the circle that fit the category. Play this game at home: Use any small objects that can be sorted into a group (think pasta of different shapes and sizes, different types of coins, buttons, etc.) Sort the objects by one, single rule (that you do not reveal.) As you sort one by one, have your child try guess your rule!  Some rule ideas may be: It has to be small or it has to be a specific color or shape. Get creative! Challenge your child to create and sort by a rule while you guess their rule. This may take some additional modeling and practice. After all items are sorted, discuss the similarities among the items in the circle and why the other objects did not fit the rule.

-Cupcake Math- We will practice matching written numerals to quantities.  After rolling a number dice, we will add sprinkles to our cupcake using our dot markers. When we finish we will discuss how many of each color we added and counted how many sprinkles we had altogether.

Centers

Art Table- Painting Pinatas/Birthday Cakes

Block Area- blocks

Sensory Table- Confetti with Letters
Book Area- Exploring Books about families
Easel-Markers and paper
Writing Table- Draw a picture of your family and things you like to do with them
Dramatic Play-Birthday Party
Rug- Legos

Science/Social Studies/Math Circle Concepts
-Going Away on vacations with your family
-Celebrations of other cultures

Family Week 3

Unit Book

Kevin and His Dad

Weekly Question and Vocabulary Related to book:

How does everyone in a family help?
(chore, clean, inside, outside, tidy, slippery, dust)

Meet our Letterlander of the Week

Umpy Umbrella

This week we will be doing the following letter activities in small groups: 
Sorting Uppercase and Lowercase U  and u
Fine motor activity to reinforce letter this week: Water Trays
Handwriting Without Tears: Letter U
We will be reinforcing "alligator fingers" and "always start your letters at the top.
(How to make an U: " Start at the Top, Big Line Down, then little curve up to the Top")

Small Group Letter Book: Decorating U to look like Uppy Umbrella

(Each week we will be adding a page to our letter book which will be staying at school until we complete all of our letters.  We are creating our own individual Letterlander book

Literacy Small Groups

- Deleting Syllable Game- We will play a game to practice taking away syllables in words.  First, we will look at each picture and clapped the syllables. Then, we will guess the teacher’s word after she took away one of the syllables.  We will use a dot marker to make our guess. Remember we are exposing them to listening to parts of words and this skill does not need to be mastered.

-Zones of Regulation- Our friend Kate (social worker) will come in for an activity related to our emotions and how to regulate them appropriately.

Syllable Spinner Game- We labeled words on our bingo boards and clapped the syllables of the word. Then taking turns we spun a number spinner. Next, we found the pictures that had the same number of claps.  Clap the syllables at home with your child to reinforce this skill.  

--Inside/Outside- We will use mats and counters to tell math stories with a up to a set of 5. After we tell stories to our group, we will draw a picture of our math story and explain our math story to our group.

-How Many in the House?-We will use house mats and people counters to act out math stories. Partners will take turns telling stories about a number of family members that were in the house and some joining the group. They will show these problems with their counters and tell how many altogether.  Our house will have 2 five frames and stairs to challenge us to use both five frames in our math stories.

Button It Up- In this week’s story, Kevin & his Dad, Kevin and his father did the laundry together.  We will play a Button it Up math game to practice adding buttons and matching our total quantity to a number.  After listening to a number story about buttons we will place them on our mats. We will carefully count how many altogether and found the number to match that quantity.  

Centers

Art Table- Handprints (How we help our families)

Block Area- House and families 

Sensory Table- washing dishes with bubbles (related to story)
Book Area- Exploring Books about families
Easel-Markers and paper
Writing Table- Draw a picture of your family and things you like to do with them
Dramatic Play-Dress Up Area
Math, Puzzles, and Manipulatives- Letters in a room hunt using clipboards
Rug- dollhouse and families

Science/Social Studies/Math Circle Concepts
-House Chores? What are they? How can we help?

- How to take care of pets?
-How many are hiding? (5 objects altogether, hid your eyes, cover 2 objects and ask how many are hiding)