Plan to spend an hour at CVES two weeks from tomorrow.  Our feast is too much fun to miss.  Sit down family-style with the entire Kindergarten extended family in the cafeteria.  It will make your child feel extra special.  Next week we will be working on a mini play and silly turkey poem to recite for you after the feast.  You will want to come back to the classroom for about 15 minutes.

What a treat!  Not Halloween but the new science lab.  We had 4 parent volunteers, one helping at each of the 4 tables.  Mrs. Sourant who we have enjoyed as a wonderful sub was in charge of organizing and facilitating the lab for kindergarten.  She did an outstanding job under the watchful eye of Mrs. Ziegler the VP of Academic Affairs who along with Mrs. Schulz put this whole project together.  Of course all those who participated in the Boosterthon and other PTA events contributed as well. 

I managed to snap nearly 100 photos and you can find them on our Podcast & Pictures page.  I used a new free online program called voicethread.  I plan to get the students to comment on it in the next few days.  I can see using it as a digital story telling tool.  It is possible to sign up and make comments if you like.  It's designed to be fully interactive.  I have comment moderation set so there will never be any unwanted comments.  Go ahead and surprise us if you dare!  Try to make a comment.

What an exciting week! 
Our first science lab visit will be on Wednesday at 11:30

Some will be celebrating Halloween.  Thursday will be a regular school day so start early.

We  begin our Robot project and hopefully finish by Friday. 

Our KSU student Mrs. Majors started full time today and will be planning and implementing 4 lessons this week.

And the Fall Festival is this Saturday! I don't think we have to worry about getting rained out.

Transportation change forms were sent home last week and many have been returned.  Please be sure they reach us as soon as possible even if your child will be traveling the usual way. Wonder what we do all afternoon? We have a variety of mini courses to choose from.  All teachers will be learning about the new RTI or response to intervention program.  This program replaces the previous student support team by setting up research based interventions for immediate application in the classroom for struggling students. I am currently enrolled in a special education course so I expect to become very knowledgeable on this new process. There will be various technology mini courses, First Aid training for paras, new curriculum sessions and I will be teaching a web design class for new teachers. Needless to say we will all be very busy.

The Reading Rockets website is an incredible resource.  I browse through it from time-to-time.  This time I discovered a reading readiness tool.  There are 20 questions pertaining to reading readiness. It can be taken online with immediate feedback. Print awareness and the use of phonics are the key ingredients for reading readiness. 

A fun filled family night of spaghetti dinner followed by a visit to the Book Fair, what could be better? The times are as follows to help with crowd control:
K-1  5:30-6:15
2-3  6:15-7:00
4-5  7:00-7:45
Book Fair 5:30-7:30

Today we ironed down the dates and times of our three classroom parties.  Mrs. Richards will be coordinating party volunteers. 

EC brought in some chocolate covered popcorn for me and I shared it with the class. Yummy! Be sure to visit Peterbrooke Chocolatier at the Forum for a tatse of your own!

Alpharetta Video filmed on Thursday the first week of school.  Out of 160+ students they have only sold 50 copies.  It's a cute video.  If you decide you are interested you may still purchase a copy by calling 770 521-0020.  Here is a link to the preview.

Google if you will, but your children should be able to tell you about this humorous story. Who are the characters? What are they doing in the beginning? Where was the shop keeper?  What did they all want to eat? What was the Tragadabas going to do?

I used this story to discuss 'ing' words, drama and sequencing.  Here is a link to a lesson showing how this story can be taught to introduce a second language or appeal to students who speak Spanish. We may learn some of it in Spanish, we'll see.

Our new science unit is called Physical Properties.  We are kicking it off with a 5 senses day Tuesday, October 16.  Yes, it will begin right after the book fair.  Our class will start with the sense of taste in our home room and proceed to Mrs. Grinkmeyer, Mr. Dunmire and Mr. Francis to experience 3 mores senses.  At the end of the day we'll be back in our own classroom to talk about 'touch'. Today I passed around a Megaladon shark- tooth my son dug up off the coast of Florida last Spring.  Each student had to make one observation about its' physical properties. Later we collected rocks to create a class rock collection. We will be exploring the physical properties of these rocks toward the end of the week.