First Grade News: Senator Blunt's visit to SPEDS

What a great looking group!


A Keepsake picture! Thank you Senator Blunt.

Our official reports on our famous Americans are almost finished and they are amazing!!! We have two childhood facts, three grown-up facts and why we admire them included in the report. The students are learning about each other's famous person through literature the teachers are reading to them. We have read books on Rosa Parks, Abraham Lincoln, Sacagawea, Lewis and Clark, ANnie Sullivan and Helen Keller. Next week we will read mor on President George Washington, James Maismith, Dick Clark, Louisa May Alcott, Dorothea Lange, Georgia O'Keefe....This coming week they will learn about each other's American through reports. I've always said as a former St. Paul's parent that one of the things SPEDS does well is prepare their students for public speaking.

Senator Blunt came on Wednesday. It was informational as well as exciting! The first graders greeted him by singing The Missouri Waltz, then You're a Grand Old Flag ( on parade) and finished with My Country Tis of Thee. Thank you to Mrs. Everly for the accompaniment. He asked each of the students who their famous American was. He asked if anyone had President Andrew Jackson. Jackson County is named after him. We did not assign a child to research that. A great idea for next year! Senator Blunt read a book, Mouse House Senate Mouse, to the class and donated a signed book in honor of our 50th anniversary. He also is going to commision a flag to be raised on top of the capitol building on January 25th--the flag raising ceremony for our school--and donate the flag to the school afterwards. Thank you to Eva's mom for putting a bug in Mrs. W's ear three months ago ---to book a date.

You're a Grand Old Flag

Eva and her grandpa.

In Math we have introduced coins and their values by playing tic tac coin. The pair of students playing together had a bag of coins and each pulled out one coin. Whomever had the highest value placed an X and O on the tic tac toe sheet. We are beginning to add coins. Nightly review of math facts is encouraged throughout first grade. If you would like to go on line for some fun math games please look for a list to come home of those sites.

Is there a difference between the inside of brown egg and a white egg? We did some invesigating... There is absolutely no difference and as Van said "it's just like different skin colors." We did this observation , we felt the egss, we smelled them, and agreed there was no difference. There is no better opportunity than this weekend to tell the story of the work MLK began of peaceful protests for the rights of people who were tired of being treated unfairly. In chapel, Chaplain Nolan provided a rap song with MLK, jr.'s story. There are many books that tell of his work.

Integrated Language brought out the i_e sounds and the o_e words. We will continue with this new work in words we are seeing more in our reading. Long i sounds with a bossy e and long o sounds with a bossy e are popping up everywhere. The spelling tests were great.