Our First Fabulous Full Week in First!

We are having a BLAST!

Your children are wonderful!

This week the kids have finished up telling us their favorite activities from the summer. "Our Cool Slices of Summer" bulletin board is now complete. Please come in to take a look. Your children are quite the artists.

Please take a look at the pictures below. They include our mornings of literacy learning. Your children have completed a Time Capsule which lists some of their favorite things, what they are excited to learn in first grade and 3 goals they have for themselves this year. We will collect their time capsules and hide them away until the end of the year. They have also illustrated their very own classroom book! After reading The Night Before First Grade, the students shared how they felt the night before coming to first grade and illustrated their sentence.  They have participated in a Handwriting Without Tears (for those of you who are new, this is the program we use to teach handwriting) lesson and are now familiar with the first grade level workbook. They have also completed a guided lesson and become familiar with their new phonics book! We have been very busy and your children are moving right along.

Jas and Jasmine show their time capsules.

We brainstormed adjectives about how we felt the night before.  Brainstorming helps us before we write.

Carl is practicing his handwriting skills.

Chloe and Manny are working in their phonics workbooks.

Mrs. Sansale's class worked on writing sentences using capital letters at the beginning.

In social studies Ms. Lorfing's class read Sean Covey's Seven Habits of Happy Children.  We will incorporate the seven habits throughout the year. Habit #1: Be Proactive/You're In Charge. Both classes read The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown (author of Good Night Moon).  We will use this book to talk about the importance of each and everyone of us as individuals.  The students made a classroom IMPORTANT book. Each child wrote and illustrated a page that talks about all the reasons they are important. ........

 

We started working in our "Theme Notebook" this week.  Our theme is "Myself, Others and a Caring Community" so the activities in our notebook revolve around our theme. 

Mrs. Sansale's class built community by getting to know each other with a web building activity.

Both classes played a community game involving a hula hoop.  The hula hoop must travel around the circle and cannot be broken.  TEAMWORK!!

TNT (Try new things!)
We have time on Wednesdays dedicated to try new things.  This week, we took time to things about all of our favorite things and other important things that we think, as individuals, make us a special person.  Parents will get to look at these at curriculum night on Thursday.

In math this week, we completed a review of repeating patterns and have also introduced growing patterns. The were given manipulatives to create many different patterns this week. Ms. Lorfing's class read Stuart J. Murphy's book, BEEP BEEP, VROOM VROOM! for a review of this concept.  Mrs. Sansale's class used Fruit Loops as their review.  These activities were also used to help children understand the concept of a growing pattern.  We will use literature and fun manipulatives in math and social studies often. This helps the children make connections to their own world and help cement future connections as well.

  We also introduced NUMBER CORNER to the children. Every day we use the date to create equations. For example, if the date is the 20th...then all equations must equal 20. We also used the number 20 to explore place value, tallies, ten frames, odd/even, skip counting, etc....it is  great way to enhance your child's number sense.

Laure is making a repeating pattern.

We went on a pattern hunt around the room.  Anna is identifying whether this card is an repeating or a growing pattern.

We used the smartboard to practice growing and repeating patterns.

Building patterns with manipulatives!

Mrs. Sansale's class made patterns using fruit loops.

FUN 1st GRADE MATH!

The children visited the computer lab for the first time today.  Ms. Lorfing and Miss Ahrens introduced the kids to starfall.com in Computer Lab is tool we use to reinforce concepts that are being taught in our classroom. 

Hands-On Science was explosive!  What happens when gas builds up inside a small space? Ask your children all about it! We had a BLAST!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PARKER!!!

REMINDERS

• Lower School curriculum night is Thursday, September 3rd at 6:30pm.
• No school Monday, September 7th-LABOR DAY
• Please continue to help your child remember to wear the appropriate shoes for P.E. days.
• Also continue to help encourage your child to bring a snack every day. We appreciate it!

Thank you for returning your questionnaires about your children so promptly. This really helps us as we get to know your child.

We have had a great week! We hope you have a great weekend and enjoy your time with these AMAZING children. See you back here on Monday!

Love,

Carey, Melissa, Matt and Mary