1MC WEEKLY NEWS ~ May 11th, 2012

IMPORTANT DATES
•    Thursday, May 31st: Big Book Bazaar, Book Fair. Stay tuned for information. Our class will go at 11am.
•    Friday, June 1st: First Grade Concert. 8:30 am, Devotion auditorium, Stay tuned for details.
•    Monday, June 4th: ALL LIBRARY BOOKS MUST BE RETURNED BY THIS DAY. No more books may be checked out, Library Inventory.
•    Thursday, June 7th: 1MC Family Breakfast. 7:55- 8:45 am. More details to follow.
•    Monday, June 18th: Last day of school. School ends at 12 noon, no lunch to be served.

WORD WALL WORDS
our               out            house            down     
This week we are focusing on the combinations of letters that make the “ow” sound. OU and OW make the “ow” sound.  OW can also make a long O sounds like in snow.

END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR/ NEXT SCHOOL YEAR
If you know that you will be moving or leaving Devotion School (either before the last day of school on June 18th, or before the start of next school year), please let the office and the classroom teacher know. This can be done verbally or through writing with me. The office will need more information including your ending date and forwarding address. Please stop into the office to complete this paperwork.

WRITING
We are currently working on a class Writing Unit writing How To Guides. We thought about something we know how to do that we could teach someone else through writing and illustrating instructions. We have been working to think of all of the steps needed so the instructions make sense to our readers.

MATH
We have moved into Chapter 9. We began by exploring Cuisenaire Rods, 10 colored , mutli-length blocks.  We used these rods to make patterns and number sentences. (Red + Green = Yellow). This led us to learning the term fact Family. We continue to use these fact families to strengthen our math facts skills and reinforce the our general knowledge about addition and subtraction. (For example, “If I know that 3+4=7, then I also know that 4+3=7 and 7-3=4 and 7-4=3)

SCIENCE
We continue to observe our mealworms move through their life cycle stages and. Our caterpillars have grown so large and many of them are in the chrysalis stage. We will transfer these pupae into a butterfly net so when they emerge as butterflies, they have lots of space to spread their wings. We continue to read and discuss many other insects and characteristics of insects.

COMMUNITY
We continued learning about Mexico this week. We read a book called Family Pictures. This books contains paintings depicting the childhood events of the author, Carmen Lomas Garza. She grew up in Texas near the border of Mexico and her family is from Mexico. She described the events that she painted. We were able to compare and contrast her life to ours. Some things she did we different that things we do, and some were the same. We also noticed different foods, plants and architecture in her paintings. We will learn more about Mexico and Mexican culture.  

1MC WISH LIST…
We would greatly appreciate the following donations”
Glue Sticks 
Old T-Shirts (any size and color)-  We will be cutting them up to use for a project, so they will not be returned.
Paper shopping bags (like Trader Joe’s, etc. ~ We will use these to send supplies home at the end of the year.)

ASK YOUR CHILD…
These questions can be conversation starters to discuss the week in school.
•    How have our caterpillars changed?
•    What are you writing about for our “How To” book for Writing?
•    What is a Cuisenaire Rod? How can we use them to help with Math?
•    What is a fact family?