JOY TO THE WORLD!

WE ARE JUST A LITTLE EXCITED!

Brady as the GRINCH!

Elfie is resting in Miss Fate's birthday flowers!

The energy is high, but we are experiencing such JOY here in first grade. It has been a great week as we learn about Christmas and its traditions. We have enjoyed hearing about your traditions and seeing your children so excited everyday! Please take a look at the pictures below from our language arts morning block:

TRACE AND ERASE your spelling words!

THIS IS THE STABLE (listening center)

Rudolph craft!

BANANAGRAM spelling!

Hannah puts Christmas words in ABC order!

Mrs. Waller has continued with guided reading and Miss Fate has been guiding the children in their Handwriting Without Tears & Grammar workbooks as well as some holiday crafts. In TNT on Wednesday the children put together their very own gingerbread houses!

Marin works on her very own book, summarizing the story: THE CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD!

In math this week we continue to review place value with some great place value activities. In BUILD IT, MAKE IT, BREAK IT!....the students work in pairs. Each child has their own bag of unifix cubes. Roll the dice and move; if you land on 10 collect ten unifix cubes. When you reach finish you have a big pile of unifix cubes. Each child then builds as many tens as they can and counts the leftovers. The person with the biggest number wins. They loved this game and are starting to really understand place value.

Scoop and Sort-William counts out his groups of tens and ones-what's the final number?

8 tens, 5 ones = 85

Build It, Make It, Break It!

Jordan is building her tens on her place value mat.

Quinn and Wolf build their tens, so far Quinn has 2 groups of 10=20!

In social studies we are learning about the story of Christmas! What a fun time. Check out the list of traditions on our tree below:

Thursday we celebrated Miss Fate's birthday. We composed and presented her with a class book; telling her why we love her so much.

ADAM reads his letter to Miss Fate!

IN computer lab on Friday the children visited www.primarygames.com and played Christmas games!

In Hands-on Science this week we have made stars out of pipe cleaners, placed them in hot water saturated with BORAX.....we asked the children to predict what will happen. It will be a beautiful chemical reaction....but we have to wait until Monday to see the results. Stay tuned!

REMINDERS:

Tuesday, Dec. 18th @ 9:45 Storyteller Fun!

Wednesday, Dec. 19th @ 9:00am: 1st and 2nd grade music program

Thursday, Dec. 20th- Last day to bring in items for the Shoebox Christmas 2012

Friday, Dec. 21st, talent show-optional/student only in the morning, pizza party for lunch in our room & a Christmas Party in the afternoon!  Christmas Break!!

*NO NEW SPELLING WORDS ARE BEING SENT HOME THIS WEEK. We will resume the tests in 2013! *WE WILL NOT SEND HOME ANY BOOK IN THE BAG NEXT WEEK &WE WILL PROBABLY START IT AGAIN AFTER BREAK DEPENDING ON OUR NEXT BIG THEME....HOORAY FOR THE U.S.A!!!

Have a wonderful weekend with your children. We look forward to next week!
Love, Sara & Melissa