Mrs. Buxbaum’s K4 Class
October 15, 2015
We continue to work on our Essential Agreements (classroom rules). Last week,
during our In-service meetings, we worked on making permanent signs/pictures of
the hallway, bathroom, lunchroom, and playground Essential Agreements (as
directed by our students those days before the In-service). The signs/pictures
are now posted throughout the school.
Our library walking trip is coming up on October 28th. Our chaperones will be
Carney, Robertson, and Voge (please let me know if you are not able to join us).
The children should wear their uniforms and comfortable shoes for walking!
Halloween is fast approaching. We will celebrate on Friday, October 30th. The
children should come to school in costume. We will join the other K4 class and the
K5’s for a costume parade. The children can wear clothes under their costumes –
that way, if they are hot or uncomfortable, they can take the costume off after
the parade. Please no masks or costume accessories – we don’t want to lose
anything! Also, please be sure the costumes are cute/funny and not too scary.
Thanks!! The Halloween party will be the afternoon of October 30th from about
1:30 – 2:45. Mrs. Kolbe has offered to help put it together for me. There will be a
sign-up sheet available during conferences if you would like to help with our party.
The poems/songs that we are working on this month are: What Is It?, Five Little
Pumpkins, and The Ghost Is Here To Play. We are also working on a song for our
IB word of the month (Thinker). Please ask your child to say/sing them for you!!
We had our first fire drill at the end of September (we will have one every month).
It went very well!! We will have our first lock-down drill tomorrow (10-20-15). We
have practiced but I know some of the children are afraid of hiding and that they
might not be quiet enough. They have done an awesome job at our practices!!
We began working on our auction project for our donation to the parish auction. It
is a picture collage of each child holding a little chalkboard that says what they
would like to be when they grow up.
CONFERENCES!!! If you haven’t already done so, please sign up for a conference.
These first conferences are mandatory (Mrs. Hernandez sent an email with the
Sign-Up Genius several weeks ago). Thanks – see you at the conferences.
Conference Schedule:
Wednesday (10-21-15) – 12:30 Dismissal
Conferences 1:00 – 4:00 or 5:00 – 8:00
Thursday (10-22-15) – No School
Conferences 9:00 – 12:00
Friday – No School
Literacy:

We have worked on letter Pp (Pippa Pig), and Tt (Tiggy Tiger), and Oo
(Ozzie Octopus). We are currently working on Xx (Mr. X-Ray). We spend
about a week per letter. We sing songs, find words and pictures to go with
the letter, play games, use the Smartboard, and we draw letters in the air
with magic pencils (ask your child to show you how).

We continue to practice writing our names.

We have been studying different versions of Goldilocks and the Three
Bears. We’ve read several stories and we’ve watched several versions of
Goldilocks on our Smartboard. We are making puppets so we can practice
retelling and sequencing.
Math:

We continue to work on shapes. Our focus is squares. We have coloring,
tracing, cutting and gluing pages to help us practice the shape.

We count every day!

We practice recognizing numbers in order and out of order.

We’ve been doing some practice with patterns.
Religion:

We pray every day. We are still working on the prayer called “Thank you”.

For the most part, our Creation stories are finished and ready to be bound.
Once finished, I will take pictures of the books to go into the children’s
files (evidence of our IB unit entitled: How We Express Ourselves – Taking
Care of God’s Creation).

We have been using our text (Discovering God’s World ).
We’ve been
discussing, and using pages from our text, and learning some songs about
God giving us people to love us and take care of us.
Science/Social Studies:

We continue to practice colors and the color words. It’s fun to add a new
color to the song we are learning (ask your child to sing it for you).

We’ve been talking about the change in the season and have been reading
stories about Fall.
As always, please don’t hesitate to contact me with questions/concerns.
Thanks!!
Mrs. Buxbaum