New Year, New Theme!

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

 

Language Arts

This week we focused on the magic "e" and USA activities. In guided reading, we read books about U.S. Landmarks and started creating a booklet to represent the information we learned.  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!

Magic "e" SmartBoard Activity

Duck for President listening center

Snowflake Spelling

Starting our USA journals

Mountain Language

Boggle!

Fun State Facts

Making words with the magic "e"

Handwriting Practice on the IPad

Reading Magic "e" word slides

Magic "e" practice on Starfall

USA puzzles!

Mapping the USA in guided groups

Researching our Famous Americans

 Math

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

Money Chant to help us review the different coins

 

Race to A Dollar

Bubble Mapping the different coins

Counting Quarters!

Sorting and counting mixed coins

Counting a BIG pile of money!

TNT

In Try New Things, we had our big Famous Americans Reveal!!  Everyone was so excited to learn who their Famous American would be!

Social Studies

We started our new theme, Hooray for the USA!  This is one of our favorite themes throughout the whole year, and we are so excited for the month to come!  Next week we will dive into the research of our Famous Americans, and the speeches will be sent home soon for the students to start practicing.  During this time, we will pause the book-in-the-bag homework, so the students will have more time to practice. 

Learning songs for our program

Matching and labeling the 13 colonies

Hands-on-Science

In hands-on-science, we learned how light and distance affects shadows.  We even created our own shadow puppets!

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.

Mr. Myler brightened our indoor recess by making friendship bracelets with some of the kids!  Its always a drag not to be able to play outside, but these girls certainly weren't complaining!

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

*Famous American dolls are due Wednesday, January 21st. There is a note coming home next Monday explaining this project. 

*NO SCHOOL-- JANUARY 19th-- MLK, JR. DAY

*HOORAY for the USA program- Thursday, February 5th @ 9:15 a.m. in the north MPR.

*Scholastic book orders are due Friday, January 16^th.

Have a wonderful weekend! 

-Maeve and Melissa-