Weekly News

IMPORTANT DATES
Thursday, February 9th: 100th day of School! We will celebrate 100 days of school on this day. If we have more snow days, this day will get bumped back. 

Tuesday, February 14th: Valentine’s Day.

Friday, February 17th: School Vacation begins at 2:20. School resumes at 8 am on Monday February, 27th. If you will be away for additional dates before or after vacation, please let us know so we can plan accordingly.

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.

MORNINGS
School starts promptly at 8am. The classroom doors open at 7:55 to ensure that students are ready to begin work and learning at 8 am. Students arriving after 8:05 will be marked tardy and should report to the main office to sign in

HUNDREDTH DAY
We will celebrate 100 days of learning on Thursday, February 9th.  We will do a number of centers to work with the amount of 100 and to reflect on the things we have learned these past 100 days. Part of our homework this weekend will be to count and bring in 100 objects. These items can be small and will be returned after our day on Thursday. In the past, children have brought in 100 paperclips, 100 cheerios, 100 Legos, etc. The goal of the homework part of this assignment is to count to 100, or better yet, to find an efficient way to count 100 objects (making groups of 10, counting by 2’s, etc.) During our centers next Thursday, your child will work with his or her objects to make groups of different amounts and make observations about these groupings.

COMMUNITY
Moving into February, we are focusing on Friendship and continuing to build our classroom community. Valentine’s is a great opportunity to think about our friends and the way we treat each other. WE have been talking about many of the qualities that good friends possess. We are also looking at ways people have been good friends to us, and likewise, ways we can be good friends to others. We will talk about how are words and actions might affect our friends and ways we can help to solve problems. We will continue working on these skills all year, but really focus and practice them this month.

VALENTINE’S DAY
We will have a small celebration and the opportunity to share valentine cards with the class. It is not a requirement to bring Valentines, but if your child would like to share valentines, please be sure there is one for each child in the class so no one is left out.

Here is our class list; we have 21 students.
Ada, Audrey, Benedikt, Benjamin, Ben K., DJ, Dor. Ellery, Eve, Joel, Kate, Lior, Lucas, Maya, Mika, Netta, Omri, Shaanti, Vince, Yonatan, Yuval

Early in February, we will decorate bags to collect our Valentines. We would love any donations of stickers, colored papers, doilies, or any other crafty articles to decorate with.

SCIENCE
Continuing our study of light and shadows, we are emphasizing how shadows take the shape of the object that is blocking the light source. To emphasize this, and practice our shadow observing skills, I traced the shadow of every child’s face. Children wrote clues about themselves to hang up with the silhouettes. Watch for these to hang in our hallway soon!

We also spent some time learning about Groundhog Day, groundhogs, and the origins of this holiday. We’ll see if our guesses are right tomorrow morning! We will also see if a groundhog’s shadow can really predict the weather!

WORD WALL WORDS: use, here, make, ride
This week’s Word Wall Words all have a “Sneaky” or “Silent” E. The e at the end of each word makes the vowel say its name or make a long vowel sound. We’ve also observed how a silent e can change a word from a short vowel word to a long vowel word (man to mane, us to use, etc.)

MATH
This week, we are beginning chapter 7 of Think Math. This chapter explores number lines and larger numbers. We’ll look at rules and strategies for adding and subtracting, paying special attention to the place values of tens and ones. We will begin using a “Number Line Hotel” which is a version of a Hundreds Chart. I will send some more information about this tool next week.

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.

FIRST GRADE WISH LIST
We welcome donations of the following items for our classroom:
•    Clorox Wipes, or Cleaning Spray to wash the tables
•    Crafty items to decorate Valentine’s bags
•    Glue Sticks

ASK YOUR CHILD…
These questions can be conversation starters to discuss the week in school.
•    What is a kind thing you could say to a friend?
•    What did you predict would happen when the groundhog comes out of his burrow on February 2nd?
•    What math game did you play this week?