May 18, 2007

Upcoming Dates
* Thursday, May 24th: Open House 6:30-7:30
Please plan on attending this night to see all the work your child has done this year! This is an informal night where your children will be your “tour guides,” showing you all of their work around the classroom.

* Friday, May 25th: Last Day at Eaton Library
Please be sure to return Eaton library books no later than this date or you will be fined!

* Monday, May 28th: NO SCHOOL – Memorial Day
Enjoy your long weekend!

* Monday, June 11th: End of the Year Trip at Almaden Lake Park
More information will come later!

* Thursday, June 14th: First Grade Musical at 1:30pm in MP room
Please plan on attending our musical on this afternoon! Next week we will be sending home costume lists for your children to bring to school.

* Friday, June 15th: Last Day of School! Dismissal is at 12:20pm.


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Dear Families,

Less than one month of school is remaining! The dates listed above are some of the important events taking place from now until the last day of school. Please mark your calendars!

Our daily schedule is also changing in this last month because there are so many activities left to finish. We did not do centers this week because it was a short week and because we also went on the Insect Fair field trip on Tuesday. We may or may not continue centers depending on if we have time in the next few weeks.

We had a great time looking at insects and spiders on Tuesday at Sanborn Park! Thank you to Mrs. Woo for coming with us! We went on a nature hike, ate lunch, then touched and looked at many creatures including walking sticks, tarantulas, bees, and millipedes! We even were offered the opportunity to eat cooked mealworms!!! Nobody in our class tried one, but many other first graders in other classes did! Eeeew!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Janani
Poem of the Week: The Robin’s Secret
Song of the Week: Presidents
Kindness is … giving a praise note to someone
Vocabulary of the Week: Animals 1
WWW: baby, edge, enough, garden, only, sharp, together, watched
Next Week’s Sharing: Riddle – something you find at the beach
(Memorize at least 4 lines and hide picture/object in a bag)

• Language Arts: Theme 9 Special Friends: Week 3
• Stories: The Surprise Family
• Word Families: -aw (saw, raw) and –ay (say, day, play)
• Sounds: vowel pairs oi, oy, aw, au and suffixes –ful, -ly, -y
• Grammar: describing what we see

• Writing: This week we started writing our final page in our Insect books on silkworms. We completed the prewriting, editing, and revising stages together but the students worked on the drafting and publishing by themselves. We are becoming proficient in writing expository paragraphs!

• Math: We finished Chapter 11 on Time and Calendar this week and started our final chapter on two-digit addition and subtraction facts. This is an easier chapter for most students because it deals with computation, however, I am still noticing silly mistakes and am encouraging students to check their work!

• Science: We have butterflies now! Our caterpillars emerged from the chrysalis and now we have four painted lady butterflies. We will keep them until Open House and then we will let them be free! Also, several of our mealworms turned into beetles! It has been exciting watching our insects change! This week we also started learning about the life cycle of frogs. We completed several activities and stories to learn about how frogs grow and change.

• Computer Lab: Since we didn’t have centers this week, we worked on our Kindness journals in computer lab. A few students continued working on their Very Hungry Caterpillar stories. We are hoping to finish them in time for display next week during Open House!

• Music: We sang some fun May songs and even got to dance with the May Pole. We used wooden sticks and ribbons to make music.

• Art: This was our second to last art session with Mrs. Blakeslee. We finished up our Indian symbol stories and drawings. Next time we will be sharing the stories to the class.

• Assembly: This week the West Bay Opera came to entertain us! They did a great job using music to tell a story! Congratulations also to Catherine, who was our Author of the Month today! She read her expository piece on the life cycle of a mealworm. Great job!

I hope to see all of you next Thursday evening at Open House!