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Newsletter by Email If you signed up to receive the newsletter by email, I hope to begin sending them next week. We have a new school email system that I am still learning to navigate. Check your in boxes next Friday! Curriculum Night Our first grade Curriculum Night will be on Monday, September 28th. We will begin at 6:00 in the cafeteria. Please plan on attending, as we will be covering what your child will be learning in first grade. This meeting is for parents only, please. October volunteer schedules are coming home today. If the day/time I have you scheduled for does not work, please let me know. Volunteer sheets will also be posted at Curriculum Night. If you weren’t able to sign up at Open House, you will again have the opportunity on the 28th. Math Home Links will begin coming home next week. They are math homework activities that need to be completed and returned. Each Home Link activity reinforces concepts we have been working on at school. You will receive a more detailed letter next week about Home Links. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. We began handwriting by practicing numbers 1 and 2 this week. A practice sheet is coming home, but it does not need to be returned. It’s just an extra sheet for you to have your child do for practice as time allows. I am also sending home copies of some Math Games that we played this week: Bunny Hop and The Penny Dice Game. The children enjoyed participating in these games! Pumpkin Sitters If you signed up to be a Pumpkin Sitter, there is a paper stapled to this newsletter indicating your date. Thanks! Our Week in Review We have had a great first full week! Our schedule is coming together nicely, and we will soon be running like a well oiled machine. We begin our day with a Morning Meeting, which includes greeting one another and singing our Good Morning song. We also read a Morning Message and hear a story. After our Morning Meeting, we move into what will eventually be Self-Selected Reading. Right now, the children are enjoying perusing through the books in our classroom library. They select 2 books to take to their seat to read for about 10 minutes. Our focus right now is getting into the routine of choosing books we are interested in, reading quietly and showing proper care for our books. We then turn our attention to the Working With Words portion of the morning. Currently, we are having fun finding out who’s name is in the Mystery Name envelope. That person gets to be the Star of the Day. We do various word activities with the Star’s name, interview him/her, write 3 sentences about the Star and then illustrate a picture and write a page in a book for the Star to take home at the end of the day. Each child will eventually have his/her turn at being our Star of the Day! Guided Reading is next on our agenda. This week, we enjoyed reading Mrs. Wishy-Washy and Rosie’s Walk. We focused on taking a picture walk through the book and using the pictures as clues for what was happening in the story. The children enjoyed cutting out pictures of the characters and practicing retelling each story. Each child also received a copy of “Oh No!” – an extension of Mrs. Wishy-Washy. We read this book together in class and each child took his/her copy home. We will eventually round out the morning with Writing Workshop. Right now, we are completing a book entitled “I Can Follow Room 8’s Rules!” We are discussing our classroom rules, why each is important to follow, and what each rule looks like in action. I hope your child will share his/her book with you when s/he brings it home next week! I encourage you to discuss our classroom rules and why these rules are important. After lunch, we hear a story, complete Calendar and then have a math lesson. We learned how to play Monster Squeeze (a number-sense game) last week, as well as the Penny-Dice game, Top-It and Bunny Hop this week. Social Studies and Science lessons will also be taught in the afternoon at least twice a week, once our schedule becomes more routine. We had each of our 4 specials this week, and we will begin going to computer lab every other week beginning on the 28th. Whew!!! As you can see, we are staying VERY busy in first grade. It really is amazing when I think of all we do during the day, and how well the children are performing! I hope your child is coming home with fun stories to tell. I am looking forward to another week. Have a great weekend. See you Monday! Sincerely, Kelly Campbell P.S. Thanks for reading all of that! My newsletter will typically contain just the highlights of our week, but I wanted to give you a sense of a day in the life of a first grader!
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