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!