What are we up to this week?

Language Arts
Reading-
Our focus this week is determining a purpose for reading. Today, we learned the word fiction (ask your child for the gesture) and found out that we read fiction, or make believe stories to have fun.
Later on this week, I will introduce the word non-fiction, and we will learn that we read non-fiction text to learn more about a topic.
We also continue to work on recognizing rhyming words and understanding print concepts such as
 title, author, illustrator, title page, and front cover.
Want to 'sneak' in some teachable moments at home? Go to the library (or you may already have some at home) and check our some fiction and non-fiction books. Talk about how you are so excited to learn more about x,y,or z from said non-fiction book. Or, how you think it's going to be so much fun to find out what x,y,z character does in said fiction book. While you are are at, ask your child to point out the title, title page and front cover. Ask them to tell you what the author and illustrator does in a book.  
Too tired to read your your little one? Have them go online and listen to a fiction/non-fiction book. It's still counts as exposure to different types of texts. I promise, I won't tell anyone lol:-)

Letterland/Foundational Skills:
We continue to work on our foundational skills through our Letterland program. This week we will meet some new friends (letters k-p) and found out what sounds they make.
Want to 'sneak' in some teachable moments at home? Letterland also exposes the kiddos to vocabulary that corresponds to the sound that each letter makes. For example, "Jumping Jim" likes jig-saw puzzles, juice, and jackets. See if you can challenge your child to find more words/things that the letterland characters like. For example, "Do you think Bouncing Ben likes bikes? Do you think he likes zebras?"

In writing this week, we continue to work on creating and labeling our drawings to share our thoughts and ideas. You may have had a chance to look over one of your child's drawings with labeling, that was sent home in your child's daily folder on Friday.  I attached a rubric to their drawing (the score was NOT added to my grade book) so you, the parent, could see what the end of quarter expectations are, and where your child is currently at.
This week, we  are introducing the concept of creating a sentence to go along with our drawings. We have talked about how in a sentence, the words are separated by spaces. Ask your child about the "space men" we used to make sure our words had spaces between them. 

Math
In math, we continue to work on:
-orally counting to 30 (the end of year expectation is orally counting to 100).
-recognizing and writing numbers 1-10
-representing groups of numbers 1-10 with drawings
-counting objects up to 10 with one-to-one correspondence
One-to-one correspondence is also known as 'touch counting'. Ask your child to show you what one-to-one correspondence means.
Want to 'sneak' in some teachable moments at home (and even get a few minutes to yourself?) Click on the link below and have your child sing our numbers song, they LOVE it!! Don't worry if they can't count to 100. For now, have them focus on orally counting from 1-30. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0dJWfQHF8Y
Give your child some play-doh and have them:
-make a number with play-doh. For example, can you make the number 1 with the play-doh? What about the number 3?
-represent a given number with playdoh. For example, can you make a group of 4 snakes? What about a group of 8 soccer balls? Then, have them use one-to-one correspondance (touch counting) to count the objects.