Hey guys!!!  We are off to such a great start.  I hope the kiddos came home talking about baking soda and vinegar!!!  Just a few things to let you know what has been going on in Firstie land.  TESTING, TESTING, TESTING  The first few weeks is all about learning where your sweet babies are and where we need to start this school year.  I know some of the books they are bringing home may be too hard/easy but at least we are getting them in the habit of reading every night again.  Hopefully after this next week we will get to start actual guided reading and they will come home with a book on their level of learning.  I will add to their Reading Adventure as we go along.  I will be sending their first little set of graded papers home tomorrow so you can get a glimpse of where they are.

Spelling:  This is a big week for our Firsties!  They will be taking their first spelling test on Tuesday.  It is a “story line” test and then a dictation on the back.  We will do a spelling preview tomorrow so you can see what your sweetie needs to work on.  The words are a review from K so hopefully they will do great on them.  The words should be in their planner and they are the first 10 words in their spelling word list in their Reading Adventure.  the, of, and, a, to, in, is, you, that, it  After the test, these words will be highlighted and I will hold the kiddos responsible for spelling these words correctly in all areas!

Math:  I will be sending home their first homework on Tuesday.  I TRY to send math homework home on Tuesdays just so you can see what we are doing in math.  I will be totally honest, in a perfect world you will see homework every Tuesday, otherwise, I do have them write in their planner when they have math homework.  We are working on addition strategies (using your finger, number path, counting on) and we will begin number order and patterns in numbers.

Phonics:  We have focused on short vowel and short vowel families.  The next two weeks we will focus on long vowels and long vowel families.  I want the kiddos to remember word “chunks” or families as they read.  (at, and, ake, ug, etc…)

Writing:  We are learning what good writers do and look for.  Punctuation being a stop sign when you write.  What gets a capital letter.  What a good writer does and looks for.  We have started building our “writing stamina”.

Science/Social Studies:  We will wrap up our Author Study on Kevin Henkes and we will begin learning about primary colors and what happens when you mix them.  Yay a cool science experiment will be waiting on those babies almost everyday this week and for sure next week in research.

Please feel free to contact me any time!!!!!!!!!