FIRST GRADE NEWS and PICS 4-16-21

 Hi! Can you believe we are at April Vacation already? Where has this week gone?!!! It's exciting that we will have our entire school back in session full time when we return. We will also be getting all of our specials back! Things are slowly showing signs of normalcy! 

We have been very busy learning about the rainforest. We made rainforest song books that tell about each layer. We've also been learning about Nabimia with Go2Science. We made life size baby animals. They are so cute but way bigger than we thought they would be! Many chose to take one home to make during vacation, too! 

Miss Russell read us a book called Bandaids. We then wrote list poems about times we've needed bandaids. The best part was that they were on bandaids that we designed ourselves.

We learned how to draw 3D shapes in math. We continued talking about vertices, flat faces and curved surfaces. We also practiced naming shapes: pentagon, hexagon, trapezoid, rhombus, cylinder, sphere, rectangular prism, cube and polygon. When we return from break, we will be on our last chapter in math which is a review of the year.

The weather has been so wonderful! We sent home all extra clothes and blankets to be washed and exchanged out. This time of year we find either the clothes have gotten too small or they're too warm. Please make sure your child returns to school with their blanket or towel (if they brought one home), an extra change of clothes in a labeled bag and a sweatshirt or sweater. Our rooms tend to run cold.

We have noticed our markers are running out. If you would like to buy a new pack for your child's pencil box, I'm sure s/he would love it!!

Happy Birthday, Miss Russell!

Happy Vacation!!

FIRST GRADE NEWSLETTER 4-9-21

 Hello! What an absolutely beautiful day! The weekend looks great, too! Hope you can get outside and enjoy it! We took a little "trip" to the continent of Africa to visit Namibia. We're helping Dr. Muntifering gather information on his hypothesis. Each Tuesday and Thursday we talk to Beth and Curtis live through Go2Science. We are looking at the relative abundance between carnivores and herbivores. We have learned lots of new vocabulary this week! We are also still working with rainforest and Miss Russell, our student teacher, started some lessons on Earth Day. There is so much going on!

READING AND LANGUAGE ARTS

We are doing a poetry unit. We have been reading from our Poetry Books and even writing our own poems. This week we wrote acrostic poems and limericks. We love reading poems that rhyme! We also have been having fun reading Iza Trapani books. She is a Russian author that takes well known children songs and changes the words to write stories. We will be trying our own hand on that this spring!

Reading gets more exciting each day. We love watching the kids become fluent. Many are able to read chapter books now and are working on the comprehension piece. We are working on keeping movies in our heads so we can visualize what we read. The more reading that happens at home, the more of a bookworm your child will be :).

MATH

We worked with three dimensional shapes and venn diagrams. We used venn diagrams to look at the differences between shapes. We were specifically looking at flat faces and curved surfaces. 

ITEMS OF INTEREST

* Many students planted acorn seeds with Mrs. Richard this week during recess. More will plant next week. We will also be starting in the green house after vacation!

* We could hear the frogs croaking at recess! How exciting! If you are looking for an awesome place to walk, the Mount Hope Cemetary has a pond that you can always see turtles and frogs in.

* A huge thank you to Josie, Liam, Eli and Teo for brining in prizes for our prize box. Also, we thank Vincent and his grandmother for donating more masks!

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PLEASE send in a bag (a re-usable grocery bag would be perfect) for your child to take everything home with them on Friday. We are doing a major clean out. They can bring back towels/blankets and extra clothes/shoes after vacation. THANK YOU!!

HAPPY WEEKEND!

PICS FROM WEEK ENDING 4-2-21

 April Fools' Day and Easter all in one week!

Lots of fun with Jelly Bean Math, Silly Pranks, Math Puzzles and a special birthday!

HOPPY WEEKEND!!

FIRST GRADE NEWS 4-2-21

 It's April! Can you even believe it?! Time is flying by here in grade one! We wish we could keep these kids forever. They are so much fun! We continued working on our rainforest unit and added a bunch of Easter projects. We will continue with rainforest the entire month of April and into May. We will also be adding some Earth Day lessons.

READING AND LANGUAGE ARTS

We are writing five sentences everyday when we come into school in our morning journals. We are focusing on spaces, neat writing, punctuation, hearing as many sounds as we can and staying on topic. That's a lot for our six/seven year old brains but we're doing it! After vacation, we will be making that number go even higher! Second grade...we're coming for you!

We wrote bunny stories in our bunny shaped books. We read lots of Easter books and rainforest books. We used Literacy Footprints and read from our book boxes.

MATH

We are working with Geometry. Some of our new vocabulary words are: polygon, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon, octagon and vertices. We had fun making new shapes by putting triangles together. We also continue to work with addition and subtraction. One thing that is tricky for many of the kids is when they change the number sentence around on them for example: 8 = ____ + 5  or  _____ = 9 - 3. Any practice at home with this would be great. We talk a lot about making sure both sides of the = sign being the same so it doesn't really matter how they write the equation. We also like to count up when subtracting.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

* We had Phys. Ed., Spanish, Music and Guidance this week!!!! It's so great to see our amazing specialists again!!! We will be getting Art back after vacation. 

* You might have heard about our treat box. The students get to pick a small prize out of it for good behavior. If you are cleaning out and find any old birthday party souvenirs, we'd love to have them. We are looking for non-food items. Just small trinkets. They love little figurines or shaped erasers, bouncy balls...things like that.

* Thank you so much to everyone that have been donating things for outside play. The kids have been having a blast! We really appreciate all of your generosity and support! 

Have a great Easter weekend!