November's message from Cora

Mentors,

I just wanted to send you a few ideas to do with your student this month. We really appreciate your commitment to mentoring these kids and we ask that you make sure to go every week.

The students will not have school November 24th – 26th
Thanks,
Cora

Take a puzzle to do with your student.

Take a game to play with your student or some of the libraries have games in them.

Make flash cards to learn difficult concepts or memorize things for tests. Making them together helps the student learn.

Do a crossword of thanks – Write the words Thanksgiving across the middle of a piece of paper. Have each person write his own thankful words using a letter in Thanksgiving or in one of the others words someone else has already added.

Get a mentor workout. Take turns finding words and phrases and pronounce them as if they were spelled backwards. See who can turn them around fastest.

You can find mini mysteries at kids.mysterynet.com/solveit read them and try to solve them.

Bring 10 to 20 items and place them on a table and cover with a cloth. Remove the cloth for 60 seconds and then cover it up and see how many things they can remember.

Just some ideas to practice spelling words:

Make a list of spelling words write a rhyming word for each.
Make a 2in. square and see how many words your student can write inside.
Have your student draw a picture. Have them hide their words in the drawing.

I hope these ideas will help you and if you have any of your own email them back to me for next month.

Halloween Ideas!

Pumpkin Art
You'll need black, orange, yellow and green paper.
Use the black paper as the base and together you can tear the orange, yellow and green pieces of paper into small squares in order to create a pumpkin mosaic.

Coloring Pages
Print these out or other pages you can find online

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Halloween Masks
Print out the following images, color, cut out, and wear it by attaching rubber bands. You could also just use construction paper and stencil a mask. Find more masks on this website.

If you have any ideas please email them to mentorybyu@gmail.com or just add them to the comments section.

Happy Halloween

Mentors,
We cannot thank you enough for the time you are sacrificing to be part of the mentoring program. We are working hard to get students assigned to each or you.

Every month I try to do a newsletter with updates and activity ideas. I will continue that tradition this year.

Just a few items of business, please note that the students are out of school October 14th and 15th for fall break.

As for activity ideas I have kind of put together a few Halloween things you can do with your student and I hope they are helpful. You do not have to do them with your student but just wanted to spark your  imagination. Please note that if you are in the classroom with your student you won’t need to be planning activities.

1 . Take cupcakes you have frosted before in white and green and make monsters out of them by decorating them with candies. I found this idea in a magazine a few years ago and they used marshmallows with chocolate chips in the center for eyes. They used black licorice rope for mouths and airheads for tongues. They also used gumdrops for eyes and lips and gummy rings with candy in the middle for eyes,
marshmallows for teeth or whatever you and your student comes up with. They are really cute and it would be fun to just creative with your student.

2 . Decorate pumpkins with paints or markers.

3 . Make bats with the kids. You will need black card stock, double sided tape, black feather boa white paper and marker. For each bat cut bat wings out of black card stock. Stick a piece of black boa to the center of the wings with double sided tape to create a body. Tape white eyes to the boa after you have used the black marker to make the pupils. This idea was in October’s Family Fun (2006).

4 . Since Halloween is just around the corner take some candy corns to help do math facts of addition and subtraction.

5 . If working on spelling words have them write each spelling word inside a pumpkin shape or have them write riddles for each word they are trying to learn to spell.

I hope these have been helpful. If you have any questions feel free to contact me on this email or my district corab@provo.edu or give me a call 801-798-7121

Thanks,
Cora Barrett