May 8, 2009

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!!!

Upcoming Dates
* Friday, May 15th: Cupertino Library Field Trip
Please send your child’s blue library card to school! Remember to practice his/her 4-digit PIN number and please return books on your own!

* Monday, May 18th: San Francisco Zoo Field Trip
Thank you to our four parent chaperones: Emi’s mother, Seyon’s father, Jhanvi’s mother, and Mai’s mother. Please have your child dress in layers to stay warm and send a BAG lunch with your child’s name on it. Everything will be thrown away at the zoo!

* Thursday, May 21st: Intent to Return form due
Don’t forget to return this form! It asks you to share whether or not your child will be returning to Cupertino during the next school year. Please fill it out as soon as you can!

* Friday, May 22nd and Monday, May 25th: NO SCHOOL
Friday, May 22nd will be a staff learning day for all of the teachers. Monday, May 25th is Memorial Day so there is no school. Enjoy your long 4-day weekend!

* Thursday, May 28th: Open House 6:30pm-7:30pm
Save the date! This will be your opportunity to come to Room 8 and see all the beautiful work your child has completed this year in first grade. Siblings are welcome too and your child will be your “tour guide” for the evening!

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Dear Families,

I hope you were able to come watch our First Grade Musical, “Leave the World Just a Little Bit Better,” today! We worked very hard learning the words of the songs and practicing the dancing! We hope you enjoyed it!

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Alina
Poem of the Week: Caterpillar Small
Song of the Week: The Presidents
Kindness is … picking up someone else’s trash.
Word Wall: after, before, buy, done, off, pretty, school, wash
Next Week’s Sharing: Regular – Something you made yourself
(at least 4 sentences memorized and picture/object to show)

• Language Arts: Theme 9 Special Friends – Week 2
o Strategy and Skill Focus: Evaluate / Story Structure
o New Sound: base words with –es, –ies endings, prefixes un-, re-
o Grammar: Using was or were

• Math: We finished our eleventh chapter on Time and Calendar. Students now know how to read a clock by hour and half hour. They should also be able to answer questions about the day of the week, month, year, or date on a calendar. Keep practicing finding start times, end times, or the duration between two activities. That was the trickiest part for students!

• Writing: We wrote I Am poems this week. We used different question prompts to help us write a poem about ourselves and our favorite things. We tried to use descriptive words to write the sentences. These will be displayed at Open House.

• Science: This week we continued measuring the cloud cover, wind, and temperature on our weather calendars. On Thursday, we even saw the wind anemometer turning fast because there was strong wind. We also continued talking about the life cycle of frogs and toads. We are reading fiction stories from the Frog and Toad collections by Arnold Lobel. We are also reading non-fiction stories to learn facts and differences about frogs and toads.

• Social Studies: We talked about Mother’s Day this week and made a special present for our mothers! We hope you love our gifts. The clay pots were made from art class with Mrs. Abada and we painted them using acrylic paint. I chose bamboo plants because they’re easy to take care of since all you have to do is water them whenever you want to. You might want to place them on a plate in case water leaks from the bottom of the pot.

• Computer: We continued illustrating and writing our adaptations of the story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Two students are finished now and their books have been bound together!

• Music: We had music practice everyday this week. We had to practice getting on and off the risers, remembering our words and dance moves, as well as learning to stand for an entire performance! On Wednesday, we had a dress rehearsal for the Kindergarten and second grade classes. Today, we performed for the rest of the school and for all our parents! It was exciting to see all the children in their costumes!

• Art: This week was our last art class with Mrs. Abada! We made a chalk pastel drawing after the artist Monet. We focused on his waterlily and garden paintings. They turned out very beautiful!

• Circuits: On Tuesday, we had circuits with Mrs. Bachelor. She talked about windy skies and weather. We decorated our own kites.

If you are interested, I put together our favorite Kindness journal
entries and drawings into a published book which you can purchase online on the website, www.bookemon.com. Just look for the title, “Kindness Is…” and you can see the example. I purchased one for myself to keep and will display it during Open House!