Happy New Year! We are off and running in Grade One! We are very excited to start the New Year learning about space! It's always a favorite unit! A really cool, FREE, app is called SkyView. It lets you hold your phone up at night and see what is above you. It's great for locating planets and constellations. Check it out! Also, start observing the sun and the moon with your child. Just take notice to different shapes, where they appear and when they are present. We will be talking lots about this all month.
A FEW NEW THINGS
A New Year...Some New Things! We will be starting Spelling Tests next week. On Mondays you will get a list of words to practice with your child. We will practice at school as well. On Fridays we will have a test over the words. We will also incorporate these words into sentences to practice using good handwriting and conventions.
In Math we will be playing LEVEL UP. Three days a week the kids will be given 25 addition problems to do in four minutes. If they finish all 25 correctly, they move to the next level. If not, they get to finish/correct problems for practice so they can level up soon. Once they get through ten levels of addition we move onto subtraction.
One more very exciting new thing...Miss Chloe Bilodeau will be here student teaching with us for eight weeks! She has already been in our room last semester for her 100 hours. We are very excited to have her with us!
MATH
We started place value. We are using base ten blocks to help us with this. Flats are hundreds, Longs are tens and cubes are ones. We use the words interchangeably. We will also be using dollars, dimes and pennies for place value. A fun game you can play with your child is called The Exchange Game. To play you take a bowl and put 20 pennies, 20 dimes and a dollar bill in it. Use a dice. Each player rolls and takes out whatever the dice says. When you get ten pennies you exchange for a dime. When you get ten dimes, you exchange for a dollar and win. You can challenge yourself and play this backwards where each player starts with a dollar and tries to get to zero. It helps the kids understand place value and work on carrying/borrowing without knowing it.
READING AND WRITING
We continue to read daily. Books will be coming home each night. Please have your child reread them for practice, even if it's to a dog or stuffed animal. If your child has a longer book, s/he will know if they are supposed to keep for a couple days or only read a part of it.
We are writing our own fairy tales. This will start us on our journey to publish many books. We have some very creative kids in grade one! It's fun listening to their ideas as they develop their stories.
ITEMS OF INTEREST
* OUR PLAY - We are still doing our play, THE RUNAWAY UNICORN. However, due to the increase of Covid numbers going up, we will only be doing it for the PRE-K and Kindergarten students. However, Mrs. Shannon and Mr. Arell have both offered to help me video tape the production. So if all goes well, you will all get to see it in the comfort of your own home. We tried on costumes and made scenery this week. We also went without scripts!! I'm hoping to do one more week of rehearsals and then start taping.
* SNOW - It's here. Please remember to pack your child's snow gear (coat, pants, boots, mittens or gloves, hat and scarf). We go outside twice a day. It's also a good idea to send an extra pair of mittens because they tend to get wet. Your child can leave snow gear here in their locker or bring it back and forth in a big reuseable plastic bag.
* Extra Clothing - It's a great idea to leave some extra clothes in your child's locker incase they get wet at recess or get cold and want to put on a sweater/sweatshirt. They can hang a bag with their clothes in their locker.
* We toasted the New Year by making toast! It was a huge hit!
* We would love donations for our treat box. When in doubt...don't throw it out! Send it to school! They love all kinds of treasures hahaha.
HAPPY WEEKEND!
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