Chinese New Year!

Upcoming Dates

* Thursday, February 14th: Valentine’s Day
We will be celebrating Valentine’s Day in the afternoon by doing some crafts, having a snack, and exchanging cards. Every child must prepare Valentine cards for every student and bring them to school on Valentine’s Day. They can be homemade or store-bought cards. Here is a list of all the students' names in our class. Please have your child write: To: (student name) and From: (your child’s name) on each envelope.
Aiko Amit Anna Brian Chris David
Hyunseok Jason Jeffery Justin Kelly Kevin
Kevin L. Kota Michael Nadiya Nasrin Ruth Saketh Yuna Yusuke (21 total students)

* Monday, February 18th – Friday, February 22nd: Winter Recess
There will be no school this week. Have a great vacation!

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Dear Families,

Happy 100th day! On Monday, we celebrated the 100th day of school and had an all day first grade circuit. The students counted to 100 making bead necklaces, hats, and art projects. It was a fun day!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Anna
Poem of the Week: One Hundred Days
Song of the Week: Water Cycle
Kindness is … celebrating special days
Story of the Week: The 100th Day of School
Vocabulary of the Week: House 4
Word Wall: fly, give, good, her, little, our, was
Next Week’s Sharing: Riddle – something you love
(at least 4 clues memorized and hide something to show)

• Language Arts: Theme 5: Home Sweet Home – Week 3
• Stories: The Kite
• Strategy and Skill Focus: Monitor/Clarify
• Word Families: -ite, -ide
• Sounds: long I, contractions
• Grammar: Using I or Me in Sentences

• Math: This week we started our new chapter on Geometry. We have been reviewing plane shapes as well as solid 3-D shapes. Make sure your child can identify all of these. We also talked about how many corners and sides are in each shape.

• Science: We went to Mrs. Burgess’ class on Tuesday and learned about wind. We made pinwheels on pencils to show how wind is measured. We are almost finished with our weather kits!

• Social Studies: We learned about Chinese New Year on Thursday. We read some stories about some of the traditions that take place and made a dragon puppet to celebrate.

• Music: Mrs. Stauter taught us about the difference between rhythm and beat this week. We sang songs and took turns making our own beats using a drum.

• Art: Mrs. Blakeslee had us finish our watercolor landscape paintings. The landscape had to have a picture of something from nature (mountains, water, land). Afterwards we started an abstract watercolor painting, which means that it is random colors everywhere.

• Buddies: We made special Chinese New Year lanterns with our big buddies using envelopes. They helped us to staple the pieces together and assemble the lanterns.

• Assembly: Today we had an assembly called “Water Shed Watch” by Zun Zun. They used real instruments to tell a story and it was very entertaining.

On Wednesday this week, we had a Code Red drill. We talked about how we practice for emergencies including fires, earthquakes, and now if there were dangerous strangers at Eaton. Code Red means that we lock our rooms, turn off the lights, and hide inside as quietly as possible. The teachers also have to build barricades against the doors and to hide the children. Mrs. Rowe and a police officer came around to check each classroom and we did a great job.

Take care over the weekend! I was a little sick this past week and lost my voice for a few days, but the kids have been good listeners still. Enjoy the sunshine!