Weekly News

IMPORTANT DATES
•    Thursday, June 7th: Family Breakfast 8 -8:45 am.
•    Monday, June 11th: Devotion Carnival, after school.
•    Monday, June 18th: Last Day of School.  School ends at 12 pm, Lunch will be not be served.

WORD WALL WORDS
We are spending time these last few weeks reviewing all of the Word Wall Words we have learned all year. We are also taking a look at homophones, words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. For example: I am going to school. And I have two hands.

FAMILY BREAKFAST   
Thank you in advance for signing up to bring food and items for our family breakfast. We are so excited to welcome important parents, siblings, family members and friends into our classroom to share all of our learning. If you are unable to attend our breakfast, please let Stephanie or I know; we will make sure to have a sibling or special teacher attend the breakfast with your child.

END OF SCHOOL YEAR
Please let us know if your family will be traveling or if your child will be missing any of the last days of school. We want to send home all of your child’s supplies and work, and ensure that everyone gets a chance to say goodbye to friends.

MATH
We have wrapped up Chapter 9 which focused on Fact Families and Input/ output (noticing patterns in numbers and operations). We will continue to integrate and apply these skills for the remainder of the year. We will also reinforce concepts of addition, subtraction and equality. Specifically, we will practice thinking about equal signs as a balance to solve non traditional math equations ( for example:
1 + 4 = 2 + 3, or  10 = 9 -1).

SCIENCE
After a week and a half of observation, we let our Painted Lady butterflies go on Wednesday afternoon. They were ready for the great outdoors and real flowers. We let them out in the Devotion Garden, so they would have ample plants to land on and minimal people running around. It was lovely to watch the butterflies emerge from our net. Many of them landed on our students and others opted to fly high and out of the garden. Luckily, the weather was great for the butterflies to adjust to their new homes. Unfortunately, some students noticed after school that a few butterflies died. We talked about possible reasons: the playground got crowded, their wings might not have been strong enough, they weren’t used to the environment, or some butterflies had a short lifespan. 

All of our mealworms have now turned into beetles, so we still have many beetles to observe in our classroom. We will also spend the next two weeks exploring attributes and adaptations of various insects.

COMMUNITY
These past week and through the end of the school year, we will be focusing on our many great accomplishments and the strong community and friendships we have built this year. We are reflecting on the many things that we have learned and the great qualities of our friends.

SUMMER READING AND SUMMER MATH
During the next two weeks, Ms. McDonnell and Ms. Boss will be talking with our class about summer reading and summer math, respectively.  These activities are highly encouraged, but not mandatory.  They are created to be easy to transport on vacations and fun. These activities are meant to continue the momentum of first grade, keep students thinking and engaged over the summer, and ensure that students are ready to roll in second grade. Both activities are flexible in terms of the activities and time involved. There are small prize incentives for returning completed work in September. If you have questions, please contact Ms. McDonnell, Ms. Boss, or myself. The documents will also be posted on the Devotion PTO website.

ASK YOUR CHILD…
These questions can be conversation starters to discuss the week in school.
•    What happened when we let our butterflies go?
•    What was your favorite part of our concert?
•    What is a homophone? Can you name some homophone pairs?