Happy New Year

A hard copy of this blog was sent home on January 2nd, 2014 Happy New Year! 2014 is here and First Grade will be learning lots of new and exciting things this year. It is really hard to believe that we are heading into the last part of the school year. The children will learn and grow so much during this time. They will become more fluent readers, they will be able to think of new ways to problem solve in math and their writing will get more detailed. Here is just a few of the things that we will be covering in Room 15 this month. In Phonics we will focus on word families and the different ways that vowel sounds can be written. We will get into the tricks that words can play! I hope that you read a little during vacation!! If not, start a new resolution with your child. Maybe if they read one book to you each night, they can pick out the family meal for dinner over the weekend or have a special dessert. Make it a game and they will begin to read more and more. Have you thought of reading a chapter book together? This is a great way to get in extra reading time on those nights when your first grader is too tired to read to you. In Writing, we are focusing on writing how-to books. The children are very successful in this type of writing. I am encouraging them to add details in pictures, labels and words in these how –to books. We will also be doing some more descriptive writing at the end of the month. The Gingerbread people that they brought in were amazing. The details really helped them write some great descriptive pieces. They will be asked to decorate a mitten at the end of the month for a take home project. We will be writing about them in class. In Math we continue to work on problem solving each day. The children are beginning to see which strategies work best for them and which are the most efficient. Play a game to work on fact families. Pick any number from 2 to 10. Tell your child the number. This is your target number. Then give them another number and see if they can tell you how many more to the target number. In Science we will be working on measurement. The children will be measuring in centimeters. They will also keep a weather journal in January in which they measure the temperature for a week. This month we will also learn about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a great way to bring up respect, tolerance and equality with our youngest learners. They get Dr. King’s message very quickly. This is why I love spending my days with first graders! I hope that your break was filled with a ton of family time and you really got to enjoy the magic of the season.