First Grade News
Mrs. Blanchard and Mrs. Malahias
Week of Feb. 23-27
Literacy News:
This week we worked with the concept of the long a sound as in –ai and –ay.
We had fun playing a jeopardy game with these sounds too! It really helped us
to see just how many different words have the long a sound in those different
patterns! We also found out about long a words that have the weird –ei sound
in them like weight and vein! We worked more with compound words as well.
Our book talk this week was with a funny story by David Shannon called Alice
the Fairy. It was a very sweet and funny story! We talked about the various
parts of the story like setting, characters, problem and solution. We
discovered that with this story the solution was very unclear!! This tricked
us a bit, but we finally decided that it was okay to infer one on our own…so
we did!
Math Minute:
This week we continued with the concept of subtraction through fact families
and also started a new concept called fair shares. We read a book called The
Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins that illustrated the concept of sharing objects
is a fair and equal way with various numbers of friends. We used this idea
to practice a little fair sharing of our own with paper cookies. We
discovered a very simple yet important strategy to help us though. It is the
process of passing the items out like…one for me, one for you, another for me
and so on. This helps us to see and monitor our sharing. Then we double
checked to make sure it was a fair share. We also discussed what we might do
if the amount was not equal. We had fun at our math game time using play doh
to create “cookies” to share. We made a certain number with our partner and
then followed the numbers on the board to “share” with. This was another fun
hands-on way to practice this concept!
Science/Social Studies Spot:
We finished up with our famous Americans this week and will be
bringing home our booklets soon to share! We started working with our new
science kit about living organisms. We are first focusing on the seed
portion of the kit until our critters arrive!
Technology tidbit: We had fun in the lab this week creating famous
American pictures! They are so cute! We saved them all and will be creating
a class slide show of them. I hope to be able to put them on our new website
soon for you to view as well! Speaking of the new website…you will soon
notice that when you go to the Parsley site and select our class, that our
class site looks a little different. Our county is transitioning from one
website to another. Our site may look different but will have all of the
same information. If you happen to have it bookmarked, you will need to redo
that for the new site. I am still in the learning process of how to use and
create things for the site so bare with me on that!
First Grade News
1. March 6th is a half day. We will dismiss at noon. This is our make
up day for the snow day back in January.
2. Dr. Seuss week is next week. As part of the celebration, we will be
dressing up as our favorite Seuss character on Friday. Your child can choose
a favorite Dr. Seuss story character and create an outfit that looks like
that character. Please be reminded that our dress code does not allow hats,
so no hats please
3. Thank you coming to our First grade student led conference night on
Monday! It was a great success and you all gave such detailed comments! My
favorites were all of the “how proud I felt” comments about your child!!!
That makes it all worth it
Wish List
1. Tacky craft glue
2. prizes for the treat box
3. goodies for the school store
