Winter Recess!

Upcoming Dates

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

* Monday, March 3rd: February Book-It Reading Logs Due!
Please turn in your February reading logs. I will be sending home March reading logs too.

* Friday, March 7th: No School – Staff Learning Day
Teachers will be coming to school to work on writing strategies.

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Dear Families,

Happy Valentine’s Day! We had a nice party on Thursday and the children enjoyed giving and receiving Valentine cards! Thank you for working with your child and preparing those for the class. Also, tank you so much for the sweet cards and gifts on Valentine’s Day! I am always thankful for the kindness your children and family show to me. It was a very fun day! If your child happened to bring home a brown puppy stuffed animal after our Valentine’s Day party, please return it to school. It is lost!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Aiko
Poem of the Week: Dear Valentine
Song of the Week: Water Cycle
Kindness is … showing others you care.
Story of the Week: The Emperor’s Egg
Vocabulary of the Week: House 5
Word Wall: by, climb, found, morning, out, shout, show
Next Week’s Sharing: Riddle – something healthy
(at least 4 clues memorized and hide something to show)

• Language Arts: Theme 6: Animal Adventures – Week 1
• Stories: The Sleeping Pig
• Strategy and Skill Focus: Summarize / Story Structure
• Word Families: -oke
• Sounds: long o, long u, and final clusters –ft, -nt, -lk
• Grammar: Naming Words for People and Animals

• Math: This week we reviewed our vocabulary words for plane and solid shapes.
We also worked on identifying patterns and talked about symmetry or equal parts. This idea is used to understand fractions and we are learning 1/2 , 1/3 , and 1/4. We also learned about probability and this was a challenging activity. We have to remember how to make tally marks correctly and be able to compare different circle graphs to see the probability of spinning a certain color.

• Writing: We are still working on our rough drafts of the Mitten story. I am reminding students to proofread their work for capitals, periods, and too many “and’s.” Also, I am teaching them to re-read their own work and add more details to their sentences. We will be finishing our Mitten stories after the break.

• Science: We went to Mrs. Barelli’s class on Tuesday and learned about clouds. We read the story, It Looked Like Spilt Milk, and made clouds in different shapes. We have finished our weather book, although there are still a few more activities we will be doing. This week we did an experiment to find out that on a sunny day, it is hotter wearing dark clothes vs. light clothes. Also, we tallied our weather observations for the month of January. Finally, this week we learned how to read the weather page in the newspaper. This involved some social studies skills such as reading a map and finding imformation.

• Social Studies: We read many stories about Valentine’s Day. We made our own Concrete poems describing Valentine’s Day and decorated a craft. Our kindness journals had to do with showing others we care by making Valentine’s for our classmates.

• Music: First graders are busily preparing for our end of the year musical on May 2nd. Our theme this year is Sesame Street so we have been learning many songs from the show. I am watching to see if students are participating and trying their best!

• Computer: This week we used Kidpix to make a heart tree that matched our poem of the week. Students learned how to type using the text tool and how to change the fonts and sizes of text. They also used stamps and drawing tools to make their trees.

Have a wonderful week vacation! I will be going to San Diego and Mexico over the break so I hope the weather stays warm! See you in one week!