Weekly News

IMPORTANT DATES
•    Thursday, January 19th: Caldecott Night, Devotion Library

WEATHER
We will go outside for recess every afternoon unless it is raining, extremely icy, or below 18 degrees F. Please send your child to school with adequate winter gear. Extra layers, boots, snow pants, mittens, hats, scarves, and gloves make a world of difference on these chilly days. Also, this is the season for chapped lips and dry skin. Feel free to send your child with chapstick or lotion in their backpack to apply during the day.

FAMILY BREAKFAST
Thank you so much for a wonderful family breakfast! Thank you for the delicious food and party staples. Your children were so proud to show you their classroom, activities and great work. It was so great to come together as our 1MC community. Afterwards, we shared our favorite parts of the breakfast. Many students wished families could stay longer, so thank you for joining us and being part of our school day.

We will do another breakfast in the spring, near the end of the school year. In the meantime, you are welcome to take portfolios home for a weekend to look more carefully, or to share with someone that wasn’t able to join us at our breakfast. Just let me know.

WORD WALL WORDS: last week: off, tell, all, call, for
                    This week: thank, drink, me, we

CALDECOTT NIGHT
Every year, Devotion School hosts an event to celebrate the Caldecott book awards. This national award is given out yearly to exceptional childrens’ books. In preparation for this competition, our librarian, Ms. McDonnell, makes all of the nominated books available to teachers. She coordinates the event in which Devotion families come to school, eat pizza, read the books, and vote for their favorites. We’ll tally the results and announce the Devotion winner around the same time that the National winner is announced. The event will be held on Thursday evening, January 19th (Details on the attached orange paper). Ms. McDonnell is also planning to make voting available to students that are not able to attend Caldecott night. We’ll keep you posted of that process. We have already read over 20 of the books up to win this award. Students have some favorites and are eager to read more!

COMMUNITY
Last week, we read many books about and discussed the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We learned about some of the ways life was different for Americans during MLK’s life. We read about Ruby Bridges, one of the first Black children to go to an all-white school. We talked about how things how things have changed, as well as ways that we can continue to help work towards Martin Luther King, Jr’s dream come true. We defined the words include and exclude, and we thought about ways that we can include peers instead of excluding.

This week we will begin our unit on China and Chinese New Year. We will start by finding China on maps and learning a bit about China and Chinese culture. Chinese New Year and the Year of the Dragon begin on January 23rd. As we move closer to the 23rd, we will read many stories and do projects related to this holiday.

SCIENCE
This week, we will begin our Shadows unit. Throughout the unit, we will work with the following big ideas:
•    Light can come from different sources.
•    Light can cause shadows.
•    Light an other things (like movement and time) can cause shadows to change.

LITERACY
We continued using our new Centers this week, including Buddy Reading and Listening Center. In our Reading groups, we are beginning to read non-fiction books and discuss some of the characteristics of these types of books.

MATH
We wrapped up Chapter 5 last week. This week, we will begin Chapter 6 which will focus on data, graphing and probability. We will observe and make a number of graphs including bar graphs, picture graphs, picto-graphs, and tally charts. We will collect data from classmates to create our own graphs. We will also describe events using the terms “certain, likely, unlikely, and impossible.”

SNACK
Please check in with your child about lunch and snack. Maybe it’s a growth spurt, or the weather, but many children are still feeling hungry after they have eaten their entire snack and/ or lunch. We are thrilled that the children are taking time to eat all of their food, rather than talking so much they forget to eat.

HEAD LICE
There have been a few cases of lice reported across the first grade classes. Please check your child’s head regularly, especially during hat and scarf season. While lice will not make us sick, it can be time consuming to treat and it spreads easily and to other students and family members. We will do our best in school to keep hats and jackets in cubbies and avoid close contact of heads. If you need additional resources or information, please check in with Ms. Campbell, our school nurse.

ASK YOUR CHILD…
These questions can be conversation starters to discuss the week in school.
•    What was your favorite part of our family breakfast
•    What new math game did you learn this week?
•    What did you enjoy about the Martin Luther King, Jr. play we saw in 2L?
•    What new book did you read with your reading group this week?