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Questions to ask your first grader that will reinforce what we have been doing at school… * How is Christmas celebrated in the United States and in Germany? * Describe to me your visualization of your perfect Christmas tree. * What are some -am words you know? * What are the 3 numbers on a domino?
Earlier this week I sent home a note detailing a book exchange that will take place on December 18th. It’s one of my favorite activities to do with the children. Let me know if you have questions or if this presents a difficulty for you. I would love for every child to be able to participate. Thank you! Thank you for sending in a $2 donation to cover the cost of the materials needed for the many projects we will do over the next 2 weeks as we learn about holiday traditions around the world and make a family gift.
It’s that time of year! Please be sure to teach your first grader how to organize their belongings and check themselves for the following each morning: Boots, hat, scarf, gloves, extra pair of socks, shoes and snow pants. To make it easier on your first grader, send them with a plastic bag to store their wet shoes in when packing up to go home. Most importantly, please write your child’s initials on their winter wear! Thank you!
Our weekly WOW words: am, do, we, are & him. Our chunk this week was –am.
During our Guided Reading Block we began learning about holiday traditions around the world. This week, we learned about Christmas celebrations in the United States and Germany. * Many of the Christmas customs we observe in the United States originated in other countries. * St. Nicholas Day is celebrated in Germany on December 6th. On this night. St. Nicholas leaves candy in the shoes of boys and girls. * Gingerbread houses and decorating Christmas trees began in Germany. We continued visualizing this week. We read the poem “The Christmas Tree” and the children drew what they visualized. Later in the week, the children drew their “perfect” Christmas tree and painted it with watercolors. They also wrote a description of their tree. Your child’s tree and writing is displayed on our hallway bulletin board. I am quite impressed with what great work each child did!
We are beginning a new unit called Small Moments. Small moments are personal narrative stories in which the writer stretches out an event and includes the tiny details to aid the reader in “seeing” the story. We compare it to a watermelon and a seed. A watermelon story is a trip to Cedar Point. A seed story (small moment) is an experience you had on one of the rides. We will continue to work on writing small moments next week.
The children explored and learned about the dime this week. We practiced exchanging pennies and nickels with dimes, as well as counting combinations of pennies, nickels and dimes. We explored the 3 numbers on a domino this week: the number of dots on each of the 2 parts and the total number of dots. This is helps children “see” the numbers as we begin writing number sentences. Today the children took the Unit 3 Assessment. I will check them over the weekend and send them home on Monday. A few of next week’s Home Links will require that children count coin combinations. It is perfectly normal at this time of year for your child to have some difficulty counting combinations of dimes, nickels and pennies. If your child is having trouble, I encourage you to model the problems for them using real coins and then let your child count it back to you. It’s okay to help them out! Have a great weekend! |
