I’m sending the blog early because I will not be at school tomorrow! Hopefully the storm will not come and we will be open though!

We wrote our topic sentences for our reports today. Ask your child what she/he wrote. Tomorrow we will put our notes onto our drafting paper to begin the rough draft.

In Core we are making a book that tells us all about Northside. We are working in cooperative groups to write about each part of the school. We should have a close to finished book tomorrow!

We will be taking our unit 6 math test on Monday and Tuesday, so there will not be math homework those two nights. We also did not have math homework this evening.

Tomorrow is library day, so please make sure the library books are in the back packs tonight!

Next Tuesday is Dr. Suess’ birthday. To celebrate we will be doing lots of Dr. Suess activities. If you have any Dr. Suess books at home, feel free to send them in that day.

Have a great evening!

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you had a better weekend than I did! It took me 4 days to get over that stomach bug! So sorry to miss Open House. I hope you enjoyed seeing your child’s hard work!

This week in Core we will be creating our own non-fiction class book as a culminating activity to our text feature unit. It should be fun! In writing, we are working on our animal reports. We are doing actual research in non-fiction books! Sometimes I marvel at what we are asking first graders to do!

In word work we are exploring the long vowel sounds. We will be looking at a different vowel every day this week.

We are also learning about some famous African-Americans this week in celebration of Black History Month.

Mrs. Topper will be in tomorrow. Be sure to ask your child what she shared with them! She always has a great lesson!

This week we hit two difficult topics in math: quarters and digital time! Do not expect your child to master digital time at this point!  Remember that Everyday Math introduces children to a concept and then revisits it at a later time!  To help with quarters, please practice counting by 25′s.

Thanks for all your help! Have a good night

It was so nice to have a full day of school today. We got a lot of great learning in today! We continued to work on our published stories. You will get to see them this Thursday evening when you come to Open House!

We also used a checklist today to help us determine the author’s purpose for writing a book. Ask your child what things we looked for to help us figure it out!

We worked on those tricky function machines today! Did you know that sometimes we have to figure out the input number? To do that, we have to do the opposite of the rule! Yikes! Don’t worry-it will make sense to them eventually!

Ask your child one fact they learned about George Washington or Abe Lincoln today. We will continue to learn more about them as the week goes on.

Please note that I sent the same words home this week in the word work booklet. Please do a normal Monday night activity with the words. Also, please note that you do not have to send in two quarters as the math homework states. We have plenty of plastic ones to go around!

Let’s hope for only a dusting of snow tonight!

It was nice to be back in school today! I missed all my first grade friends! Thank you to all of the parents who helped make our Valentine’s Day party a success! It is so much fun watching the children open their valentines and enjoy the party!

We practiced our math facts today and we also started publishing one of our stories. Beyond that, this week was not very productive due to the snow and two-hour delays!

Monday will be a school day! It will be cycle day 2. We are scheduled to walk to the public library on Wednesday, but I believe Mrs. Stoner is going to come to us! Much safer than walking around big piles of snow!

Thursday night is our Open House. The children will be thrilled to share their work with you that night! Plan on coming anytime between 6 and 7.

Have a wonderful weekend!

I hope you all enjoyed the snow this weekend! Because of the 2 hour delay today, our reading group schedule is out of wack for the week. Your child will not be bringing home a book to read on Tuesday. We’ll have to wait and see how the weather pans out to see how our schedule is affected for the rest of the week!

We managed to squeeze in writing today! Today we learned about what materials and resources we can use when writing a report. As the week progresses, your child will choose a report topic and begin taking “notes” about it.

In math we learned how to use the addition and subtraction facts table to help us solve subtraction problems. It was tricky! Keep using the fact triangles that your child brought home to practice the addition and subtraction facts. More will be coming to add to the pile!

This afternoon we packaged up 56 hygiene kits for Haiti! Miss Sior’s class packaged about the same amount! We are still in need of wide-tooth combs, nail clippers, and hand towels. We will be completing the kits by the end of the week! Thanks to everyone for your generous donations!

Our library trip has been postponed until next week due to the predicted snow storm! Stay warm and dry this evening!

We had a wonderful 100th day of school! We worked with 1-S, 2-T, and 2-P today. We all met together to read a story and then we rotated through four fun centers all related to the number 100! We ended with a fun song!

This afternoon we worked on putting together 100 piece puzzles. We didn’t finish-they are tricky! We’ll finish up on Monday.

Skylar was our social skill student of the week! She is such a good listener!

Monday is day 5. Please send in the library books. We will walk to the public library on Wednesday. Our Valentine’s party is on Friday. Don’t forget to send in those Valentine’s!

Thursday, February 18th is our Open House. You may come from 6-7 PM and see all the wonderful work your children are doing! I hope to see you there!

Be safe in the snow! I’m heading home before it gets too bad out there! Have a wonderful weekend!

Only two more days until the 100th day of school! Please remember to send in 100 small items with your child that day. We will be sorting them during math class. Remember that team jersey day is Friday as well. Spirit day has been moved to Monday, the 8th.

We have been busy learning about author’s purpose during Core. We’ve been reading books to determine if they were written to inform us or entertain us.

In writing we are preparing to do reports on animals. We’ve spent this week learning to tell the difference between a fact and a “non-fact” or opinion. Ask your child about the activities we did with the red ball!

In math we learned about fact families and name collection boxes. All of these activities are going to help us master our basic addition and subtraction facts!

Friday is the last day to send in a donation for the hygiene kits for Haiti. The boxes are getting full! Thanks to everyone who has contributed already!

Have a great evening!