IMPORTANT DATES:
• December 4~ Breakfast with Santa! 8:30-11:00 am
• December 10~ Polar Express Day in first grade: Wear your pajamas!• December 16~ First Grade White Christmas program at 9 am
• December 17~ Half-Day
FROM THE LIBRARY: Our class will no longer go as a “whole class” to library on Wednesdays. The children will be allowed to check out books individually before school, during snack time, and WITH A PARENT until 3:30.
Please check out the media center's webpage at
http://www.oconee.k12.sc.us/webpages/mfarmer/forms.cfm?myform=1493 to find information about a new program Mrs. Farmer would like to begin. Fill out the brief questionnaire to help support a special emphasis for boys as readers. You can also find the information at the Media Center's page under "Media Center Forms".
SNACKS: Thank you for remembering to send a snack each day. These should be healthy snacks, not cookies or brownies or candy. Also, please try to send finger foods only. We often work through shack, and foods that need spoons or need cutting and peeling can be messy.
TAKE HOME READERS: Please begin setting a timer as your child reads. I realize that one Take Home Reader doesn’t take 15 minutes to read, so please begin to set up an area with library books and personal books that your child can read after reading the THR. You may also use this time to review the first grade high frequency words.
THANKSGIVING: Thank you to everyone who shared their Thanksgiving memories and traditions with us! It was interesting seeing how many people share some of the same traditions!
Language Arts: We will be reading books by Mercer Mayer throughout the next couple of weeks. We’ll use these books to study the “story elements” of Characters, Setting, Problem and Solution.
We’re learning about vowel “teams,” such as ea, ai, and oa. We are also beginning to learn more about reading and spelling BLENDS, such as sn, sl, pr, cl, st, etc. We will learn more about contractions, such as can’t, I’ll, I’m, isn’t, etc.
In writing, we are focusing on getting good ideas for writing. We’re continuing to work on spelling basic high frequency words correctly, and stretching out other words. Today we received our very own DICTIONARIES to use in our Writing Workshop. We reviewed alphabetical order. We’re going to be working harder on including finger spaces in between the words as we write. We are working on writing complete sentences, with capital letters at the beginning and a period or question mark at the end.
M&M Math Masters: Have you noticed how your child is zooming through the addition facts?! Thank you for reviewing addition at home. M&M Math is a wonderful way to get the children comfortable with the adding practice, and to learn their doubles facts and other “tricks” to help with addition. We will begin “Rocket Math” during the next few weeks, which focuses on memorization of addition facts.
We’re adding and subtracting on the number line, the number grid, and with number stories. We’ll continue to practice with frames and arrows and other patterns. We’ll be telling time to the HALF-HOUR and counting dimes.
