Hello Families,

Another busy and exciting week has come to a close. In Writers' Workshop, we have been working really hard on putting letters and words down on paper so that we can read our illustrations. Labeling pieces of pictures is also a great way to do this and the children see this tactic used a lot of the time in our non-fiction texts. They authored their second whole class book this week and I can't wait to read it all together early next week! 

In Readers' Workshop, we have been focusing on concepts surrounding rereading beloved storybooks. This group of children is in love with fairy tales and are usually begging to reread these stories each day after they come in from recess. The children have been doing some wonderful small group and partner reading each day. Hearing them recite the stories from memory and talk about new details that they noticed in the illustrations has been wonderful to watch. 

Some snapshots of our partner reading...

On Thursday, we went to the Williston Fire Department to celebrate Fire Safety Week and learn more about these community helpers and what their job entails. The children learned about smoke detectors, how to stay low and go when you hear an alarm, and got to check out the station and the fleet of firetrucks and ambulances. 

Stay Low and Go

The Day Room...Firefighters read and watch TV to relax too! 

Climbing Aboard

Learning about Firefighter Equipment

Our week culminated with Forest Friday. We went for a nice, long walk on the bike path and noticed and observed some of the weather changes around us. We even found a fuzzy friend while we were walking! We read a story about why leaves change color and fall and then did some collecting. The children became great at noticing if a leaf had lots of chlorophyll or not really any chlorophyll. We learned that leaves are green because of chlorophyll and that their true colors are really there all spring and summer long--we just can't see them. 

The children have become really skilled at sorting based on certain attributes during our math lesson. They did an excellent job sorting and organizing our leaves and made some beautiful observations using color upon our return to the classroom. 

Hope you all have a great weekend. I will see everyone at conferences at some point this week!