First Grade Week 15

Language Arts

We had such a fun week, my son was home from college so he came into help out in the classroom and was so impressed by how well behaved and incredibly cute your kiddos are!

The kids did a really good job writing sentences using their new high frequency words. Ask your child to give you an example of the word poco/few. They also learned the word sino/but, which was a little trickier but they still managed to come up with some really good sentences.

The students also finished publishing their raccoon stories which gave them practice using the comprehension strategy of comparing and contrasting.

Math

We had a great time preparing for the Christmas holiday while using math! The kids continued working on their song, “The 12 days of Christmas” in Spanish. They continued working on learning the song by heart and identifying the different ordinals that went along with each day. They even had a chance to perform the song for the kindergarten class and also had an opportunity to sing it in Senior Kits class for friends in Ecuador. We finished our Christmas light bell project associated with the “12 days of Christmas”. Ask your kiddo to show them to you. They are strung over the top of our whiteboard in our classroom.
We had fun making math gingerbread houses. The students used their understanding of number bonds to help make their houses. They rolled dice and used addition to help them choose what number bonds they should use.
Each of the kids received at least three Spanish readers to practice while on break, as well as a math packet.

Have a Merry Christmas and a we’ll see you in the new year!

Social Studies & Science

This week we are in between social studies units. I decided not to start our Early American Civilizations unit due to the fact that we have had several students out ill and on vacation. Instead we are doing a little of this and a little of that. On Monday we spent our social studies time with the kindergartners learning about bears. We talked about how they are mammals and what this means, we looked at how they behave during each season, and what kind of bears live in North America. We read bear books and did a few activities around bears. The rest of the week we have been learning a little more about how different religions and groups celebrate special holidays this time of year and how these holidays often involve lights. We read about Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, and Christmas in several countries.

In science we have begun our unit on the state of matter. So far the classes’ favorite activity was to act out how atoms behave in different states. They especially enjoyed the solid state where they all got to stick together. We are reviewing the water cycle as we learn about matter. We are looking at how the water cycle is an excellent example of all forms of matter. Some of the vocabulary we have been discussing are: solid, gas, liquid, atoms, precipitation, evaporation, condensation, and water vapor.

English Spelling, Writing, and Grammar

The holidays are definitely on every student’s mind this week. I have had multiple requests for funny holiday prompts each day during our journal writing. We have written about Santa getting stuck in chimneys, penguins showing up on our beds eating frozen treats, new Christmas songs that would make Bing Crosby smile, and elves running a muck through out our house (I think someone must have an elf living on a shelf in their home). This class does love to write! I hope you all had a chance to take a look at your child’s journal last weekend. I will continue to send these home once a month so you can get caught up :0)

For grammar this week we did a little more work on pronouns and then moved on to reviewing adjectives. We played a fun holiday adjective game that every one really enjoyed – it was a little bit like the old Telephone game. We also did Zoo Phonics this week and learned both the short vowel and long vowel sounds for our animals. Our sorts were on Short vowels and consonant blends at the end of the word. Students sorted both by the vowel and then again by the blend. Sorting by the blend was much more challenging.

I hope you all have a wonderful relaxing winter break. I will look forward to hearing all about your families’ adventures when we return next year.

Art

In first grade, the students learned how to draw a red Cardinal for a holiday picture. The students outlined their drawing with crayon, and then used watercolor to paint the bird, branches, and a snowy background. They did a beautiful job! Thank you to Emily’s mom and grandmother, and Marisol’s mom for helping out this week!

Music

We discovered that the class and Sr. Kit know different Spanish lyrics for Rodolfo el Reno, and talked about how different versions of a song come to be. We were able to have a Facebook video conversation with Yuliana (11), Génesis (5) and Mati (4) Guerra in Ecuador, and were shown their tree and ornaments made in school.