Happy Friday to all!

Sorry it has been awhile since I have posted.  Last week we jumped back into the swing of first grade and we have not slowed down since!  It feels so great to be back at school with my 20 friends. After spending 80+ days with them I seemed strange to be away from them for so long!  I hope you all enjoy the Holiday season and spent some quality time with your families.  

Are you curious as to what we have been up to? Well here is a quick overview...

Jolly Phonics- Can you believe we are almost done with student book #3?!  I can't!  Each day we continue to review our tricky words and sounds.  We are continuing to focus on blending words together and deciding which sound we should make. For example when a student sees the letters ow in a word they know that it could make the sound /ou/ like in the word crowd OR that it could say /O/ like in the word yellow.  This process can be tricky and frustrating for everyone involved. The best advice I can give them or you is to just keep trying. Whenever we are working on these types of words we try it with one sound and then the other and pick which one sounds the best. The same philosophy goes with spelling the words.  Does it look right? If not try it the other way. Eventually their brains will start to remember which word uses which combination. It will get easier in time!

Writing Homework: You may have noticed that your child is bringing home writing homework that they already have done. The reason for this is that you can never have too much practice.  Look for repeats to continue to come home in the coming weeks. Some of you may have also had a sticky note come home with your child saying to write 10 tricky words for his/her homework. This is something else that we will be doing in coming weeks. It is SO important that students can read these tricky words as well as write them. In the classroom students are responsible for using these tricky words in their daily work and spelling them correctly. 

Sound Bags: sound bags will continue to come home for a few more weeks. Once your child has taken home each bag they will no longer bring them home.  

Literacy Centers: After coming back from Christmas both first grade classrooms started to run Literacy Centers a little bit different. Instead of having a structured movement of activities each day students are having more free choice of what order they wan to complete their tasks.  Prior to being "let loose" students start this time with a writing assignment. Students have to complete this assignment before they can move onto the centers. For example we did a writing about our winter vacation on Monday. Before students can play any games they have to finish their writing. Once Tuesday rolled around we wrote about our favorite game and why we like to play it. Students had to complete this writing as well as have their writing from the day before done to play at centers. We have the same pattern of events Monday -Thursday and on Friday we have a "catch-up" day. This day is spent finishing all incomplete work and enjoying center activities. 

Math: We have taken a new direction with Math since being back at school. We have begun talking about place value and greater than/less than signs.  To help with place value we use Base 10 blocks. They are broken down into 3 different sizes of blocks. Cubes are the smallest and they represent the ones place, longs are in the middle and they represent the tens place, flats represent the hundreds place. These blocks and lesson are to help students learn about place value as well as improve on writing 3 digit numbers.  

Science: We will be starting a new science unit next week. It is called Balls and Ramps. This is one of my favorite units to teach!

Social Studies:  In the past 7 days we have been focusing on 3 vocabulary words: alike, different and neighborhoods.  We have looked at multiple texts and pictures and discussed their similarities and differences.  We also have talked about what a neighborhood is and what each of our neighborhoods look like. This ties in perfectly with our Health lessons on families.  We have been discussing what a family is and how each of our families are alike and different. It was so fun to hear all of the different "definitions" of what the word family means.

That is a quick look at what your son/daughter has been up to lately. I have a few pictures from before winter break that I will try and post this weekend. 

Here are a few items that our classroom is in need of:
SNACK (Our bucket is almost empty)
New or gently used 2 pocket folders
School appropriate magazines
School appropriate pictures from old calendars
Napkins
Paper plates (The cheap/flimsy ones)

Thank you for all you do to support our classroom and help your child learn! Have a great weekend!