Tuesday, September 30

It is the last day of September and boy is it chilly! We are working hard here in first grade though so our brains are not taking a rest! This week we are doing our NWEA testing. We go to the computer lab and work on reading and math tests. I will send the results home with an explanation in the near future. Daily 5 is going great and I was able to pull two small groups to work with today! I was so excited to see everyone stay on task while I was able to do this! Very impressive for day 19! Rest up for two more days of testing! Have a great night!

Friday, September 26

We had a busy Friday today! We started with our morning meeting and for our activity we did 4 corners. Then it was off to tiger time. When we got back, we worked on finding a group of 5 and the extra ones in the numbers 6-10. 

Mrs. Turmes came in this morning to talk to us about the right way to wash our hands and how to wash our hands. I got to wash my hands and show them how it washes away all of the germs.

Then we headed down to the Kindergarten wing. We met with our reading buddies from Mrs. Volek's class. This is a great time for your child to show off his/her reading skills!

This afternoon we created some amazing butterflies for Emma German and her family. We took some time to talk about why we were wearing gold today.

At the end of the day we went out for a little extra recess time. It was a beautiful day and the kids loved the extra time outside in this weather. Have a great weekend!

Wednesday, September 24

Today was a great day! We started out with our morning meeting and we were able to do coseeki for our activity. Then we were off to Tiger Time to do some math. Everyone is LOVING Tiger Time. When we came back we worked on the break-aparts of 9 and the switched partners as well. This is a tricky concept but we are getting the hang of it. We also had a lockdown drill this morning. Everyone was so quiet I hardly knew we had 20 first graders in here!

This afternoon we came back and worked hard on our HF words and the spelling sound. Then we introduced choice for Daily 5. The three areas of Daily 5 we have introduced so far are Read to Self, Work on Writing, and Read to Someone. Up until today, we have done each one as a whole group. Today, everyone was able to choose what he/she wanted to do. It is so fun to see each child having a choice in their learning and to look around the room and see workers doing so many different things. Have a great night!

Monday, September 22

Today your child will be coming home with many things in his/her backpack. There is a brown bag with a note attached and some words as well. This bag will stay at home all year and you just add the vocabulary words for each week to the bag. Continue to review ALL words until you feel your child has mastered reading them by sight. There is a sheet that talks about the spelling sound for the week. We will be working on this sound for two weeks. We are starting our curriculum slowly so that we can continue to build our stamina during Daily 5 and begin to make choices and work in small groups with me. The next sheet is a letter talking about all of the fun things that our reading story will be covering the next two weeks. Please contact me about any of these things. Also, our school store fundraiser is starting and there is a math homework sheet that is coming home tonight! Enjoy your evening!

Friday, September 19

Today we were busy creating partners of 7 and we started some more artwork to add to our hallway. We are working really hard! The dogs came in yesterday to listen to us read and we also learned how to play bump, an addition game. Have a great weekend and remember to check the pages to see what we will be doing next week!

Tuesday, September 16

Today we had bus safety with the AMAZING bus drivers from Stier Bus Company. We talked about how to be safe on the bus and how to make sure we are making safe choices on the bus.

Monday, September 15

Welcome back to our second full week of school! We are crazy busy learning all about the Daily 5 and reviewing all important skills from last year! Take a peek below to see us working on writing in action!

I am sorry for being a little scattered but back to school is crazy in our house too! It is the first year for us to have someone actually attending too. Getting everyone on the same schedule is a little tricky but we are getting into the swing of things! Each Friday I will update the math and reading pages to help keep you up to date with all of the things we will be working on during the upcoming week. We also started Tiger Time today. Chat with your child about what he/she did during this time!

Wednesday, September 10

We were busy the last two days working on the numbers 0-3. We are writing the numbers and working with shapes as well. Patterns are also something that we are focusing on right now. I was so impressed today that we were able to build our stamina to 11 minutes for Read to Self time! We are trucking right along. The last two days we have been working on being bucket fillers and bucket dippers. We created some posters to hang in the classroom and we also did a project to reinforce these ideas.

Monday, September 8

Today we started our math curriculum! It was great to get started on math and see how much these kiddos know about math already. The first math homework sheet is coming home today! We reviewed our classroom rules and added the last two. You can ask your child what the five classroom rules are. We had our annual fundraising kickoff this afternoon so look for the Chip Shoppe packet in your child's folder today. We also worked on Read to Self again today. We are building our stamina and made it to our goal of 5 minutes one time today. I know that we will be able to make our goal of 8 minutes tomorrow. Have a great night and enjoy the pictures. Also, I just wanted to let you know that on Mondays I need to get my daughter to physical therapy so there will be another teacher walking your child out on Mondays. If you have a change of plans for the end of the day, please let me know as soon as possible so I can let that teacher know! Thank you so much!