Sunday, September 28, 2008

Scholastic Book Orders

Scholastic book club order forms will be coming home this week. The orders are due next week, Tuesday, October 7. It seems as if the September orders just came in, however, because we started school so late, September was pushed back a bit. In the future, the order forms will be sent home at the beginning of the month so that books can go home early in the month so you can read about upcoming holidays and seasons. For example the October books will be in by the 14th and you will have 2 weeks to read fun Halloween and fall books! Of course the forms available online too!

Here is the link to order from the Scholastic book orders online: www.scholastic.com/parentordering
User Name: MissStephanieInde
Password: MissStephanieInde

Planting Daffodil Bulbs

As you probably remember, we were supposed to plant daffodil bulbs at back-to-school night, however, the weather did not cooperate. This week we took advantage of the beautiful weather and planted the bulbs in front of our school. We had fun moving the mulch out of the way and digging the holes. Miss Stephanie had to help with a lot of the digging because that dirt was not easy to move! We even learned from Miss Sandy that you have to make sure the pointy side is up when you put the bulb in the ground. Now are are anxiously awaiting some flowers even though Miss Stephanie keeps telling us that we won't see any until after winter comes and all the snow is finished. Bummer! Well, we had fun anyway, even if we have to wait a long time to see some flowers!


Fish Discussions

This week the T/Th class and the M-F class analyzed the graphs we made during fish voting. (The M/W/F class did it the week before but we forgot to take pictures.) We talked about most and least and what that means on a graph.


Classroom Fun

Here are some pictures of the fun we had during work time and some of our activities this week!


Friday, September 19, 2008

Our Class Fish

We have 4 friends in our classroom that stay there all weekend. They are our class fish. This week we had a naming contest! First, we came up with ideas for names. Some of the ideas we thought of included Superman, Spiderman, and Thomas. Miss Stephanie said we already know people with those names and we should think of some original names. Then we came up with some new names. After that, we got to vote on our favorite names.

The choices were...
Rosy Barb:
Orange Juice
Orangey
Choo-Choo-Choo
Tiger Barbs (2):
Ghost
Tiger
Stripey
Algae Eater:
Skinny
Sticker
Log
We all voted by putting a post-it above the name we liked the best. We found out our winners today!

The winners are....

Rosy Barb:
Orange Juice





Tiger Barbs:
Stripey






Tiger







Algae Eater :
Log


Second Week of School

Check out the newsletter we sent home that has all of the fun activities we participated in this week. Here are some pictures of the fun activities we did and our creativity during work time (centers).


Monday, September 15, 2008

Scholastic

Just a reminder...

Scholastic book orders are due by Wednesday this week. You can fill out the order forms I brought on the home visits or place orders online (see post below for instructions). If we get $200 in classroom orders, I will receive a huge bonus of 6,000 points which can buy us a big ticket item for our classroom or 500 books! Thanks for your orders!

Here is the link to order from the Scholastic book orders online: www.scholastic.com/parentordering
User Name: MissStephanieInde
Password: MissStephanieInde

Saturday, September 13, 2008

First Week

Here are pictures from our first week of school!


Hits and Comments

Miss Stephanie said she is excited about all of the hits to our classroom blog! Look at the hit counter on the right and you can see how many times people view our page. You can also click on the world map and see where people are viewing our blog from. Miss Stephanie's sister is living in Africa right now, so that is who the red dot in Morocco is from, but it looks like someone in Europe is looking at our blog too! How fun!

Also, feel free to comment on the posts. If you enjoyed looking at the pictures with your family, leave us a comment and let us know!Or if you thought one picture was really funny, leave a comment and let us know that! You can post anonymously or you can create a Blogger ID and post with your name. If you post anonymously, just make sure you sign it so we know who is leaving fun comments!

Happy Blogging and stay dry on this rainy weekend!

Independence Guinea Pigs

Independence has two new friends this year. We have two guinea pigs named Reese's and Snickers! This week we got to go visit our new friends. We even got to pet them! All of us were very excited about meeting and petting our new friends. Before we met them, we made guesses about who the new friends Miss Stephanie told us about could be. Some of us guessed polar bears (we were really wrong!) but some of us guessed hamsters and that was really close! We can't wait to keep seeing our school pets grow and get to know them throughout the year. They like to eat yummy fresh vegetabables and we thought that was funny to see the radishes, lettuce and cucumbers in their cage!


Wednesday, September 10, 2008

First Day of Preschool for MWF kids

We had a great first day of school today! We learned about all of the fun things in our classroom, drew pictures of ourselves, sang, and played in the beautiful weather outside! Miss Stephanie loves taking pictures and she said she would share them with you tonight!


Tuesday, September 9, 2008

My first day of preschool

We had so much fun our first day of school! Our teacher, Miss Stephanie, took pictures all day because she knew our moms and dads would want to see them tonight. She told us that she would put them on the computer as soon as she put us on the bus! It was the first day for us kids that come to school every day and us kids that come to school only Tuesdays and Thursdays. Our friends that come M/W/F will have their first day tomorrow! We learned about the classroom, drew pictures of ourselves, made placemats, and even got to play outside! On top of all that we got to feed our classroom fish! They were swimming around like crazy! Mr. Rich (the audiologist) came in the morning to help us with our hearing aids and FM systems so we took pictures with him too! We hope you enjoy the pictures of us!

Pictures from the morning class:

Pictures from the T/Th afternoon class:


Thursday, September 4, 2008

Back to School Night

Thank you to all of the families that joined us at Back to School Night tonight. Although the weather did not cooperate (so we could not plant bulbs), we had a lot of fun checking out the classroom, meeting new friends, voting on a mascot, and eating a tasty summer treat. I enjoyed catching up with students and families I have not seen since the summer, seeing those of you again that I met on home visits and I also enjoyed meeting those of you that I did not get a chance to meet on the home visits. I was also excited to hear that many of you are interested in being part of our TOTS Parent Group. They love to have new members! Below are pictures from the festivities tonight. Enjoy!

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Scholastic Book Orders

Just a reminder...

Here is the link to order from the Scholastic book orders online:
www.scholastic.com/parentordering

User Name: MissStephanieInde
Password: MissStephanieInde

You can place your order online and use a credit card!

You can also fill out the hard copies I gave you on our home visits and write a check to Scholastic if you prefer to do it that way.

Orders are due by September 17. Just remember, if all of my classes get a total of $200 in orders, I will get 6,000 bonus points! That means 500 new books or a big item for the classroom!

Click here for step by step screen shot instructions for placing orders online:
http://stephatwell.googlepages.com/Blog-Scholasticbookordersscreenshots.pdf