January 23, 2009

Upcoming Dates

* Friday, January 30th: Snowmen Project Due
Please turn in your snowmen projects by Friday. Remember not to use any food!

* Monday, February 2nd: January Book-It Reading Logs Due
Please turn in your reading logs. I will be giving out the February reading logs.

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Dear Families,

This was a short week! On Tuesday, we watched the first 20 minutes of President Obama’s inauguration! We talked a little about our new president and now they should all at least be able to recognize his face! This week, we also had to say goodbye to Dodam because today was her last day. We will miss her and her family!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Hadas & Matthew
Poem of the Week: Bear-ly Awake
Song of the Week: Money
Kindness is … building peace around me
Story of the Week: I am Freedom’s Child
Vocabulary of the Week: Body 1
Word Wall: grow, light, long, more, other, right, room, these
Next Week’s Sharing: Friendship Poem
(at least 4 sentences memorized and bring object/picture)

• Language Arts: Theme 5: Home Sweet Home – Week 1
• Stories: Moving Day
• Strategy and Skill Focus: Question, Compare/Contrast
• Word Families: -ash, -ush
• Sounds: digraphs sh, th, wh, ch, tch
• Grammar: Exclamations

• Writing: We are working on our “sloppy copy” Mitten stories. These are our rough drafts. We are learning about good transition words and how to add more details in our stories. We also learned about dialogue, and using quotation marks to show someone “talking.”

• Math: This week we continued learning about money. It is really important that your child has mastered skip counting by 5’s and 10’s. Please continue practicing counting and making different combinations using pennies, nickels, dimes, and this week we introduced quarters.

• Circuits: On Tuesday, we went to Mrs. Bachelor’s class for circuits. We talked about snowmen and made a winter scene using white and black crayons. Last week, we went to Mrs. Byers’ class and talked about snowflakes. We used raisins to design our snowflakes and then solved math problems using the raisins.

• Social Studies: We learned all about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this week. We read many stories about his life and why he is famous today in America. We also made a project and learned a poem about his dream of one day everyone being kind to one another. Also, we learned about Kwanzaa and how they celebrate the winter holidays with a candle holder called a kinara, and a straw placemat called a mkeka.

• Science: We continued observing our grass, alfalfa, and wheat plants. They grew really tall this week! We even “mowed” our lawns by cutting them shorter and now we’re waiting for them to grow again.

• Art: On Thursday we saw Mrs. Abada. We made a neat garden sculpture using a Styrofoam base that we decorated using sharpies. Mrs. Abada gave us lots of sticks and materials to create our gardens.

• Music: We saw Miss Rachel on Thursday and she read us the story, “Follow the Drinking Gourd” and taught us some songs and dances to match the story. Also, we watched the second graders perform their musical this week! They sang songs about the seven continents and danced too! The first graders will also be performing a musical in May, so it is important that they are all participating in music class and learning the words of all the songs.

• Computer: To say goodbye to Dodam, we wrote her letters in Computer Lab and decorated them with different stamp designs. We printed these letters out and made a book for Dodam to keep.

• Buddies: This week we saw our buddies and made a neat Chinese New Year lantern using lots of red envelopes!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I will be returning to school on Tuesday. Thank you for your thoughts, understanding, and kindness during this time.

January 9, 2009

Upcoming Dates

* Friday, January 16th: Book Orders Due
I will be including the January book orders in today’s newsletter. If you would like to purchase books, please write ONE check payable to Scholastic Book Clubs and return to me by next Friday!

* Monday, January 19th: NO SCHOOL – Martin Luther King Jr. Day
We have been learning about Martin Luther King Jr. and how he brought peace to our country. We are learning about his dreams and thinking about our dreams for the world.

* Friday, January 30th: Family Snowman Project Due
Today’s Friday Folder has a Snowman project for your family to decorate this month. Please be creative, but do not use any food! We will be displaying them in our classrooms.
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Dear Families,

Happy 2009! I hope you had a nice vacation with your families. I enjoyed listening to everyone’s sharing about their winter vacation this week. I spent the holidays here with my family and was able to relax at home. I went to Lake Tahoe for one weekend and got to go snowboarding with my husband.

On Tuesday, we had a new student join our classroom! His name is Ryan Liu and he speaks Chinese and English. We interviewed Ryan as our Prince of the Day on Thursday and learned about his favorite things. You can read about him on the Classwork section of our website!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Seyon
Poem of the Week: Winter Cheer
Song of the Week: Continents and Oceans
Kindness is … making New Year resolutions.
Story of the Week: Mrs. McNosh Hangs Up Her Wash
Vocabulary of the Week: Clothing 3
Word Wall Words: friend, girl, know, play, read, she, sing, write
Sounds: clusters with s, short e, silent letters kn, wr, gn
Word Families: -ell, -est
Strategy and Skill Focus: Evaluate, Compare/Contrast
Grammar: Telling Sentences

• Writing: We talked about what New Year resolutions mean. We tried to think of four different resolutions, or goals that we will try to do this year in 2009. We wrote them down and decorated a nice project to display each student’s 2009 resolutions. We will be typing these up in the next kindness journal entry. Also, we are starting a big unit on The Mitten by Jan Brett. This week we read several versions of the story and began planning out our own stories.

• Math: We finished addition and subtraction to 12 and took our chapter test today. This week we also started talking about pennies, nickels, and dimes. We will be counting money over the next few weeks. It is really important that students have mastered skip counting by 5’s and 10’s.

• Science: We started our next big unit on Plants and Animals. This week we learned about grass seeds and alfalfa seeds. We planted them into our own cups and observed them twice so far. Our seeds have begun sprouting. Also we learned about wheat seeds and planted a seed in a straw.

• Computer Lab: This week we talked about the four seasons. Since we are finishing the Clothing Vocabulary words in Centers, we completed an activity in Kidspiration where the students chose different outfits for each season.

• Music: We saw Miss Rachel this week and we got to use big tubs as drums. We also practiced reading and counting beats using the drums.

• Buddies: Today we saw our fourth grade buddies! We did an activity about Martin Luther King Jr. and our dreams. We are thinking of ways to help the world when we grow up.

• Social Studies: Our next first grade circuit will be all about winter. This week, our class began learning about the Emperor Penguin and how they take care of their babies. We made a project showing their life cycle.

Have a great weekend!