Pumpkins and Math Practice

Yesterday we had a drawing lesson on pumpkins in Art.  The students used oil pastels to color their pumpkins.  Even though everyone had the same instructions, it is interesting to see how all the pumpkins are special and unique in their own way!

I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by during the last two months.  Report cards will be going out shortly (November 10) and I will be doing a lot of assessing during the next two weeks.  Here are some things you can be doing at home to help your child practice skills and concepts we have been working on in class:

• Math - counting forwards and backwards to 20 (starting at different numbers - e.g. start at 7 and count forwards to 19, start at 17 and count backwards to 5), writing numbers to 20, reading number words to 20, filling in the missing number in a counting sequence, showing numbers in different ways (8 can be 5 and 3 or 4 and 4), identifying how many on a ten frame or in a collection of dots without counting (see past post for youtube video link to practice this).
• Language Arts - reading stories and sentences with all our "heart" (sight) words, reading and spelling simple 3 letters words with short vowel sounds that belong to the word families we've learned (-at, -ot, -it, -ap, -an, -og)

Tomorrow we will be cutting open several different pumpkins.  The next day we will count seeds to see which pumpkin has the most seeds!  If you have any pumpkin tools (for scraping out the seeds), please send them to school tomorrow.  Please label your tools.  I will provide the knives.

I apologize for the error on the Halloween note that was sent home last week.  Our Halloween activities will take place on Monday, October 31, not Friday!

Thanks!