Almost December!

Upcoming Dates

* Monday, December 3rd: November Book-It Reading Log Due!
Remember to turn in your November reading log! I have included December’s Reading Log in today’s Friday Folder.

* Monday, December 3rd: Elves & The Shoemaker Play Field Trip
Thank you to Mrs. Yang who will be our chaperone for this trip. We will be leaving school at around 10:30am and will return by lunch time.

* Tuesday, December 4th: Book Fair Family Night 6:00-8:00pm
The Eaton library is holding a book fair next week. You can come to the Family night Tuesday or go after school any day next week to look at books for purchase.

* Monday, December 17th – Friday, December 21st: No homework packets
I will not be sending home homework packets the week before Winter Recess, so there will be no spelling or vocabulary test because of the holidays. However, please continue to prepare your child’s sharing and continue reading daily for 15 minutes for the Book-It! Reading Log. Remember the reading logs are due when we come back after Winter Recess. *** Friday parent volunteers: You do not need to come help on Friday, December 21st. Thank you!***

*Friday, December 21st: Polar Express Party
This will be a special day to celebrate the holidays! We will be doing activities and games based off of the story, The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg. It will also be a pajama day (because we are pretending to be the children in the train)! Please send your child to school in their favorite pajamas and they can also bring one stuffed animal or pillow too.
Monday, December 24th to January 4th: NO SCHOOL – Winter Recess
School will resume on Monday, January 7th.

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Dear Families,

I love this time of the year! I hope all of you enjoyed your long Thanksgiving break! I stayed around the area and had a feast with my family! Tuesday before Thanksgiving we finished our Thanksgiving books. I hope you were able to read their books with them! Afterwards, I had students try a pumpkin pie. Almost all the students had never tasted one before and they loved it!

Thank you to all the families who donated books for our Eaton Book Drive. Part of teaching kindness is helping the students understand that we really are so fortunate to have everything we have. Some kids don’t have basic needs such as homes, food, or clothing, so we can show kindness by donating things to people less fortunate than us. Thank you for your participation.

Also, we had a great time on our field trip last week to Natural Bridges State Park! It was an all day adventure. After we rode the bus there, students had time to play in the sand, eat lunch, then play some more. Our butterfly tour started at 1pm. We first looked at real-life stuffed animals like owls, sea otters, and wolves. Then we watched a short instructional video on the monarch butterfly life cycle. Afterwards, we got to hold and feel butterflies whom had died and we learned that we shouldn’t try and touch real butterflies. We also wore glasses that showed us what butterflies see from their compound eyes! Finally, we took a little walk to the butterfly grove and there were hundreds of monarch butterflies in the trees! It was an amazing experience. Thank you to Mrs. Okubo for coming with us that day!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Miss Yu =)
Poem of the Week: You and Me
Song of the Week: Four Seasons
Story of the Week: The Little Ant
Kindness is … using good manners.
Vocabulary of the Week: People 4
Next Week’s Sharing: Family Poem
(at least four lines memorized and a picture to show)

• Language Arts:
o Theme 2: Let’s Look Around - Week 1
o Story Selection: Seasons
o Strategy and Skill Focus: Evaluate and Topic, Main Idea, Summarizing
o High Frequency Words: animal, bird, cold, fall, flower, full, look, of, see
o Word Families: -ack, -ap
o Phonemic Awareness: blending and segmenting
o Sounds: final consonants (-ll), short a, plurals with -s
o Grammar: What is a Sentence?

• Math: This week we practiced estimation and talking about greater than, less than, or equal. This chapter really focuses on knowing numbers to 100 and skip counting. Next week we will take our Chapter Test.

• Computer Lab: This week we finished pictures in Kidpix for our November kindness journals. I have updated all the pictures on our Kindness website so please check it out! (www.geocities.com/missyu_grace - Classwork section)

• Social Studies: For the next four weeks, we are learning about holidays around the world. Our first grade circuits are also on this topic. This week we learned about Germany, Sweden, and Hanukkah. We found out that the Christmas tree idea started in Germany and it is really called a Tannenbaum. In Sweden, we learned that the eldest daughter dresses up to pass out goodies to the family. We also went to Mrs. Bachelor’s classroom to learn about Hanukkah. Also, we learned that there are seven continents and illustrated a world map.

• PE: This week Mrs. Burgess taught us some games such as Dead Bug tag and Roadways. We also used hula hoops to learn skills.

• Library: Our regular Eaton library visit on Friday morning is cancelled because of the book fair. Our next visit will be on Friday, December 14th. Next week you can visit the library after school to see the Book Fair!

Look for the Room 8 Directory in today’s Friday folder! Thank you for returning the information sheet. I hope this comes in handy for play dates after school or just getting in touch with others in the class!

We have a new student! Please welcome Nadiya and her family who just started on Monday in our class. She can speak Russian! We are excited to get to know Nadiya and we are happy to have her! You can read about Nadiya in our Prince and Princess section of the website (also under Classwork).

I hope you have a wonderful weekend! Stay warm!