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Just a quick update, in an attempt to streamline our communication: photos and other daily events will be shared via our electronic portfolio (Seesaw).
The students have been telling me lately what pictures to take and send your way and I'd like them to begin to have even more independnece. Exciting times!
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We express ourselves in so many ways and through this unit of inquiry we are looking specifically at how we express ourselves through celebrations and traditions. We started our study off we a Gallery Walk looking at all our pictures. *Thank you for sending them over.  We took all our pictures and used our awesome writing skills to share what our tradition was and put it up for others to read and learn more about us and our families. We sure are proud of our work!  Our investigation area has some things we are familiar with and other things we are wondering about.  We know that writing is a great way to express ourselves. We wanted to share some kindness with our CSU students, so we created letters and pictures to spread a little happiness their way.
Did you know the Cleveland Ballet came to perform the Nutcracker for us (well, parts anyway). They did an amazing job expressing the story with music and dance.  Giving a gift to those we care about is another way to express how we feel. Today we went to the Holiday Shop. We had a great time picking out just the perfect gift and then wrapping it up.   Writing, Writing, Writing!Our writing is fantastic. We are working hard to write all the sounds we hear in each word. We have had a ton of fun labeling parts of our class and working together to write even longer words. Take a look...    Just had to share this great group of readers...  Well, the snow today was a surprise, but it really made everything that much more magical. We were excellent inquirers and thinkers during our adventure, and had a whole lot of fun exploring living and nonliving things.       Of course eating lunch there was fun too!  We are having so much fun INVESTIGATING and exploring CHANGES IN NATURE, two of of our lines of inquiry in How the World Works. Ohio certainly gives us many opportunities to do both! Many of the kiddos are even bringing in fall items they have found outside on family walks. Please know, we have added them all to our investigation area. Beyond apples, pumpkins and leaves we took our investigating to SPIDERS. They sure seem to be everywhere right now, so why not learn more about them?  A fun book packed with interesting information. After reading this book we decided to have a little STEM fun. We worked together to create webs. Our webs had to be strong enough to support two spiders. Oh my goodness, the creativity and problem solving was amazing. Somehow we even extended some of the webs out into the hall and joined two together.  THANK YOU, THANK YOU for all the donations to help us create our yummy Pumpkin Fluff and super fun Fluffy Pumpkin Slime. Being able to do these fun projects would not be possible without your generosity.   Book Characterr Day was also SO MUCH FUN. I loved the thought each child gave to tying their book character into part of our learner profile. Thinkers for sure! By the way, it was their idea to post their pictures to their Seesaw portfolio. What a great idea.    Of course all the teachers got in on it too. Here are just a few pictures I snagged...
  Our fun continues next week with more pumpkin investigations. Tying it into our line of inquiry living and non-living. Just in time for our fieldtrip the follwoing Tuesday to Shaker Lakes Nature Center (permission slips will be coming home this week).  Reminder: No School on Tuesday for Voting Day,Who We Are, our first unit of inquiry has come to an end. We ended our investigations with conducting interviews with our friends on Seesaw. I wish I cold have recorded their conversations. They were priceless!  We have already had a lot of fun with our new unit of inquiry, How the World Works. You will have a chance to learn even more about our work during our student-led conferences on Wednesday. Great questions and investigating have already begun!  The Dance-a-thon was a blast! Thank you all so much for your generosity!! Not only did we have fun with all the dancing, but we had extra fun when Playhouse Square came later that afternoon to get us ready for our upcoming field trip..
ANOTHER treat for that big day was enjoying ice cream sandwiches on the playground!  Of course Picture Day was really exciting!! Their smiles tell it all!  Student-led ConferencesThis Wednesday we will be holding our Fall Student-led Conferences. The students will come to school this day, but will be released at 11:00. Thank you all for signing up.
What to Expect: During your visit you will be giveen a guide to navigate our Exploration Centers with your child. You may choose the order of how you would like to explore,but please limit one family per center. Within the centers are activities that we use to reinforce the skills we have been working on. This is a wonderful opportunity to highlight and take note of your child’s strengths, as well as areas for growth. I will be rotating around the room to visit with everyone! See you Wedensday! We are part of many communities! We are part of our family, class, school, city, state, world and so much more! Investigating similarites and differences within each has been so interesting. and the connections with our firends has been a lot of fun. 
 Using technology in many ways to show what we know and want to learn.
 In all we do, we have learned that working together is an important part of being in a communicty!   
Kindness BusThe Kindness Bus was a great reminder about our responsibility to be kind in every community we are a part of! 
Our Own PromiseAfter reading many books this week about kindness and ways we can show it, we made our own promise. *Just like in the book The Juice Box Bully.  Signing it was a big deal!
Upcoming: 10/11 Dance-a-thon
10/22 Field Trip to Playhouse Square 10/23 Student-led Conferences 10/26 Lit Fest 11/1 Book Character Day 11/5 No School (Election Day) 11/11 No School (Veteran's Day) 11/12 Field Trip to Shaker Lakes Nature Center 11/27-29-Thanksgiving Break Very special! Self portraits are a great way to work on adding details in our writing and illustrations. We had a lot of fun looking at what makes us unique. We love WHO WE ARE!!
We are Scientists!In our unit of inquiry, Who We Are, we continue to learn all about what makes us unique, what we know and what we do. Being scientists is a fun way to learn about the world around us.
 Our new STEM Bins were a hit! We are hard workers!!
We are Friends!!We had tasty fun thinking about what makes a good friend!   Reading with our 2nd grade friends is always a treat!    We are caring!
As our nation honored the events on 9/11, we had a day where we set intentional good deeds. They all had wonderful ideas to make our world a better place! 
Open HouseThank you all for attending our Open House!! It was so fun to share our room with you.
 Things to Remember:9/20: Father's Walk
10/22: Field Trip-Playhouse Square (Jungle Book) 10/23-Student-led Conferences (sign up was sent via Seesaw) 10/26-Literature Festival We are full swing in to our first unit of inquiry and we are having a great time with it. Our focus is Who We Are. Through this unit we are focusing on recognizing our similarities and differences and using that to help us understand each other and the world around us. Through this we are working on being CARING, OPEN MINDED and BALANCED. We have already found out that there is a lot to being a kindergartener! Take a look at some of what we have already uncovered! We are Curious!  Be sure to check out all our Thunderbird wonders at Open House!
We are Readers!This week we met our second grade reading buddies. We will read with them each Thursday afternoon.     We are Friends!
We are Balanced! I love their ideas! I can't wait to see how their thoughts evolve over the next few weeks too.  We are Writers!  We write in our journals daily, but enjoy using other tools too! *Thank you again for all our play-dough donations. We are Mathematicians!
 We have been learning how to SUBITIZE (yes, already in kindergarten. Can you believe it?). We are also working hard to look for similar properties of objects and expressing what makes them similar or exactly the same. We are Listeners!We sure are! We have been using our listening skills in lots of ways, but one way is to make some fun crafts.
We also used our listening skills as we learned all about bus safety.  We are ready for some FOOTBALL! Things to Remember:Vision First came this week, but had to leave because the van had issues. We are still trying to find a new date, but they have promised, they will be back! WEDNESDAY-EARLY DISMISSAL (11:00) OPEN HOUSE 6-8 *This is recommended for parents only. Friday-NO SCHOOL FOR KINDERGARTEN THANK YOU FOR COMPLETING THE HOMEWORK WITH YOUR CHILD. THEY ARE DOING SO WELL!! THERE IS NO NEED TO SEND IT TO ME. I WILL SHARE INFORMATION ABOUT RAZ KIDS AND THE NEW MATH PROGRAM AT OPEN HOUSE. BE SURE TO CHECK OUT OUR SCHOOL BLOG TOO. THERE IS A LINK ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THIS PAGE.
Our first full week is in the books and what a wonderful week it was. We started getting into the full swing of evrything and after just a few short days other teachers were commenting on how amazed they were with our fantastic group of kinders! Writing our names with correct captial and lowercase letters is a big change for many of us. We celebrated our capital by making a fancy one! It was also a great time to talk about using scissor safety.  We are writers! We had a great time starting writing workshop. We discussed all the ways we can write. Please ask your child about the very important MAGC LINE.  Navigating our center rotation system was a big step! We have to find our name and move independently to that center. You know what? We are doing an excellent job!    We had so much fun reading many David books by David Shannon. We loved making the puppets and acting out different parts of the books. David sure is silly! Funny how many of his family and school rules are just like ours.  Another big step was taking care of our own mail. We have mailboxes that we have to put our folders and any papers in. If there is anything in our folder that needs to be turned in we can put it right on top. We organize our own papers and pack it up too. This is a lot of responsibility but we are figuring it out. Remembering our folders every day is really important!!  With our beautiful warm days, we have been enjoying our playground too. It is fun to play with so many other CIS friends. There is even a Little Free Library for those that would like to read in the sun.   Updates:
Well, the first week is a wrap! Thank you so much for your flexibility with all that occured last week. I know it was a lot to ask and we appreciate it greatly! On Friday, I sent an email with the run down of our first day, but I did snap a few pics and thought I would share those as well. What an awesome day!! Celebrating our First Day of Kindergarten!    Our DayParents were welcomed, maybe comforted, with one of our school bands, bagels and coffee. What a sweet surprise from our PCO!
Getting use to things in our room:
Recess fun was complete with a DJ and full on dance party!
 It was important to learn about how to be use the playground and stay safe!  After all our play, we had to get organized and go eat our lunch. We did it like pros!
Here we are managing the Balanced Cafe and feeling pretty grown up!
Our day continued, but I totally forgot to take anymore pictures! Even teachers get tired. haha I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. We look forward to seeing everyone on Monday! Reminders:
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