First grade friends have been enjoying talking about the election and voting.  They are filled with a lot of knowledge on the latest election and who was running.  They surprise me with comments and stories everyday!  It just so happened that this week we were working on a persuasive writing piece.  As a class they came up with the idea to try and persuade me to get a classroom pet.  Before we even began working on this writing we all agreed that this was for pretend and we were NOT getting a class pet! They were full of some great ideas such as it would help us learn to take turns, teach responsibility and have someone/something to read to.  It was a very cute and fun lesson.  To tie this into Social Studies and the election I decided to a class vote on which classroom pet we should "get."  Before we could vote we talked about how as an adult you have to be registered to vote first and fill out some important information.  Each student had a voter registration card that they had to fill out. Once we had that taken care of everyone had their own ballot and selected their vote. They put their ballot into a secret bag until everyone had voted. Very carefully we counted/tallied all the votes as a class and discovered that a parrot was the pet of choice.  It was such a fun experience for them and they did a great job keeping their "vote" a secret.

Math is continuing to get harder and harder.  This week we introduced dimes. We have been working hard at counting dimes, nickles and pennies together.  We have also introduced how to trade in two nickels for a dime.  This is a hard concept to grasp and we will continue to work at it each day. You can help your child continue to excel at this skill by having them count coins at home.  

We have finished up our Weather unit and are anxiously awaiting our next Science kit to arrive. Our next experiments will be balls and ramps. This is always voted on to be a favorite in first grade! 

Please continue to work with your child at home on their writing homework, tricky words and sound bags that come home each night.  If you do not get to it please feel free to keep it at home for another night. It is however important to try and send things back every two days so that other students can use the word list or sound bag that you have at home.  Thank you for all the hard work you do with your child at home. 

Keep reading for Book-It each night!

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