Hey guys! Hope everyone had a great long weekend with family and friends. It sure has been a great start to our First Grade year. I am so in love with these kiddos and their amazing personalities!!! I will post every two weeks what our goals and objectives are in each subject. I will also post pictures of your kids in action throughout the day. Please always feel free to e-mail me with any questions or concerns you may have.
Spelling and Phonics: Our spelling words for two weeks are: the, of, and, a, to, in, is, you, that,it Please practice these words in a fun way each week with your sweeties. It is so important for them to know these words. A few suggestions might be: write them with shaving cream, create them with rocks-in sand-or salt, create a hide-and-seek game with them, do a sight word chart with stickers and small rewards when they master them, etc… We will have a spelling test every two weeks and you will see a spelling preview come home the night before a test so you can see words you may need to focus on. We are working on vowel sounds which is also soooo important for these kiddos. Please talk to them about long and short vowel sounds. Again, make it fun like McDonalds, what vowel sound do you hear, how many vowels does your name have in it and is it long or short-what about my name-favorite color, etc…
Math: We are working on just basic number sense right now. Counting, picturing word problems in our heads, and just joining two sets of numbers (addition). I am introducing them to different ways to solve problems. This week we worked on drawing a picture, next week we will work on using the number path. I flash dots to them and we talk about what they see and how they saw it. We also worked on greater than and less than with number cards this week. They played “war” with dot cards to see who had the greater number.
Writing: We are really just starting writers workshop, talking about what a great writer does, what makes a sentence, what makes a story, why we write, etc…
Science/Social Studies: We are focusing on being good friends and what that looks like. I haven’t started our actual Science/STEM station yet until we can really listen to directions and follow them closely. We will talk in detail next week about what makes a great Scientist.
Guided Reading will not start for a short while so I can finish assessing. Please understand that your student is bringing home a self-choice book right now. It may be too easy/hard for them so bear with me until I can get their correct level and begin sending home a great book that they can read for sure! If it’s too difficult please read it to them and sign their reading log to let me know you read it to them. I will do my best to be double checking their choice but it’s just not always possible right now.