New year, new theme!!

WELCOME BACK and HAPPY NEW YEAR! We dove right into a brand new theme and lots of learning this week. Our new theme is Hooray For The USA! It's going to be such a fun month! 

Here's a glimpse of what we've been up to:

We are so excited about our new theme! Some students decided to make an American flag in after school care.

Practicing Hooray for the USA songs!

Happy to have mom here to sing a duet together!

 Language Arts

This week we focused on the long a vowel sound and USA activities. In guided reading, we read a book about U.S. Landmarks and created a mind map to represent the information we learned. We will use the mind map to create an expository paragraph about landmarks to go along with our unit of study. Students did a great job researching their famous American as well. They are quickly absorbing a lot of information about their assigned person are going to be well prepared for our program in February!

Learning facts about the different states

50 states app on the iPad

Practice with the magic "e" on the SmartBoard to go along with our spelling words

U.S.A. puzzle

Forming spelling words with play-dough

Turning short a words into long a words

Mountain Language skills

Duck For President- Listening Center

Learning about U.S. landmarks and where they are located

Famous American research

Snowflake spelling

Famous American research "This is so much fun!"

Math

This week we started studying money. We discussed why money is important to know about and real-world situations that we use money. Students did a great job reviewing the names and values of coins and also began to count groups of coins and their values. We will introduce more skills such as finding the value of a mixed group of coins, exchanging money, and making change. Any practice at home will help to boost their foundation as we move into these higher level skills using money.

Identifying coins and their value

Studying each coin and it's attributes

Sorting, graphing, and finding the value of groups of coins

Sorting, graphing, and finding the value of groups of coins

TNT
We have learned all about the bald eagle and got to make one to take home!

Social Studies
To introduce our new theme, we focused on a couple of different American symbols. Students learned about the bald eagle and The Great Seal.

Hands on Science
Students watched a video about the Wright Brothers and early flight. They created their own paper airplane to test the distance it could fly!

Computer Lab
We reviewed the names and values of the coins using a game called "Learning Coins". Students got to practice counting different groups of coins using "Money Bingo" as well. It is a wonderful game which allows students to count money at different levels. It could be as simple as counting pennies or counting dollars and mixed groups of coins. Both games can be found on abcya.com in the 1st grade section.

Spelling
NEW SPELLING WORDS FOR NEXT WEEK:
Regular words (long i vowel sound)- like, twice, kite, nine, time, side, theme, eve, these, here
Challenge words (USA theme)- country, stripes, colonies, scene
"Surprise the teacher word"

REMINDERS
*The sign-up genius for parent/teacher conferences will be sent out in the morning on Wednesday, January 15th. Please sign up on one day for a date and time that is convenient for you. 
*Famous American dolls are due Wednesday, January 22nd. There is a note coming home today explaining this project!
*NO SCHOOL-- JANUARY 20th-- MLK, JR. DAY
*HOORAY for the USA program- Thursday, February 6th @ 9:15 a.m. in the north MPR.

Have a wonderful weekend! 
-Jenny and Melissa-