IMPORTANT DATES
Thursday. November 17th: Early Release Day, School ends at 12:30, Lunch is served.
Wednesday, November 23rd: Early Dismissal, 12 noon. No lunch today.
Thursday and Friday, November 24th and 25th: No School. Thanksgiving break.
Wednesday. November 30th: Early Release Day, School ends at 12:30, Lunch is served.
CONFERENCE SIGN-UP is posted outside the classroom. Please sign up for a time slot. This will be a half-hour meeting to receive and discuss the fall conference reports. If the times on the sign-up do not work for your family, please contact me and we can find a time to meet.
WEATHER
We will go outside for recess every day, unless it is raining. As the weather gets colder, please be sure to send appropriate outdoor clothing. This currently includes sweatshirts, jackets, and sometimes rain boots. In the winter, this will include heavy winter coats, hats, gloves, scarves, boots and snow pants.
These days, it can be chilly in the morning and warmer in the afternoon, so children often take jackets off at recess. Please label your child’s jacket/ sweatshirt. If your child is missing a jacket or sweatshirt, please check the school Lost and Found, across the hall from the Main office.
MATH
This week, we began chapter 3 of the Think Math curriculum. This chapter, we will focus on skip counting by 2’s and 5. We are beginning to study money, starting with pennies and nickels. We practiced making tallies, focusing on counting the bundles of fives then counting on the extras. In a similar way, we will practice counting nickels, then counting on the pennies.
LIBRARY
Since we had off school on Friday, we can keep our Library books for one more week. We will exchange our books this coming Friday, November 18th. In order to check out a new book on Fridays, students will need to bring their library books back to school on Fridays (or earlier). Please enjoy your child’s library book together at home, and help your child remember to bring the book back to school every Friday.
WORD WALL WORDS: on, stop, not, are, saw
This week, three of our Word Wall Words have a short o sound. We have continued to notice and practice word families.
SCIENCE
This week, we looked at 3 liquids: cooling oil, maple syrup, and water. We observed these liquids in a jar so we could shake it, and in cups so we could pour them. We made observations about the way the liquids moved, the rates they poured, and the way they clung to the sides of the cups or jars. Next week we will use these same 3 liquids, and see what happens when we put them all together in one jar, leading to discuss the weights and density of these liquids.
WRITING
This week, we practiced using sound words in our writing, inspired by the Robert Munsch books that we’ve read. We also focused on the idea that sentences start with a capital letter and end with a period (or other punctuation). As we move further into our Handwriting and Literacy curricula, we will encourage children to write using lower case letters and capital letters at appropriate times. We will talk more specifically about the types of words that begin with capital letters, so that children get more opportunities to practice this. It will take time; in kindergarten children learned and practiced mostly capital letters, so this is a big step for many children.
COMMUNITY
We will be taking a small break from our community unit to work on the Devotion Calendar project. We will work with another first grade class, one kindergarten class, on third grade class and one sixth grade class to create a calendar. Our class will be participating in the project by designing the borders for the months on the calendar. When the calendar is complete, we will sell the calendars for $5 each and all profits will be donated to Heifer International. This week we will focus on the designing aspect, and as we move into the holiday season we will take a much closer look at the idea of needs vs. wants and how different communities in other parts of the world live. Stay tuned for updates!
SNACK
Please pack a nutritious, filling, low-sugar snack for your child each day. We eat lunch at 12:40pm everyday, so our snack is very important to keep us energized during our long days.
*Please do not send Halloween candy as a snack. A small piece of candy may be sent with lunch, but we’d like to keep snack time for healthy, low-sugar snacks.
ASK YOUR CHILD…
These questions can be conversation starters to discuss the week in school.
• What did you notice when you poured the syrup, oil, and water?
• What are you working on in Art Class?
• What new math games did you learn this week?
• What did you notice about the penny that you observed?
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