Can you believe it is May 2nd already?! Where does the time go? We are nearing the end of first grade. :-(  I am going to be so sad to see this class go. We have come a long way both socially and academically.  It has been so fun getting to know all of the kiddos and going through the Jolly Phonics/Grammar series together has made the year even more fun.  With it being so close to the end of the year I have been reminding the kiddos that they are almost 2nd graders!  This means our handwriting, stories and listening skills should be getting stronger and stronger each day.  

Jolly Grammar Update:  I am continually amazed at what Jolly Grammar asks us to teach and how quickly the kiddos catch onto what is being introduced. In first grade we are now able to differentiate between common nouns and proper nouns, recognize pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and antonyms! Not only can they do all that they are able to write all kinds of words, sentences and stories.  Their confidences seems to be growing each and every day.  

Writing: The most recent project we have worked on is writing autobiographies.  Almost everyone is finished typing. They will be printed with a picture and laminated to go in our class book.  A copy will also be coming home for you to keep.  They did a really nice job with this project.  

Science: We have LOVED our new science unit!  The kiddos beg me to do investigations each day. We usually dig out the materials 3 times a week. We started the unit by learning about different volcanic rocks: tuff, scoria and basalt.  Next we moved towards river rocks and looked at and compared large pebbles.  The following few days seemed to be their favorite. We used three different sized screens to sort through the river rock mixture.  The first screen "caught" our large and small pebbles, the middle screen "caught" the large gravel. The smallest screen "caught" the small gravel and allowed the sand to go through. Sand leads us to our next few days.  Students were able to use their hand lenses to look at sand. Some things they discovered were when you hold a few small pieces of sand it is rough/sharp but when you rub your hand through a lot of sand it is very smooth.  The also observed that sand is different colors and very dusty.  We put our sand into small vials and added water to them and shook them. They realized just how dirty the sand really was once they shook their vial. The water was no longer clear, it was a dirty brown.  We let our vials settle for 24 hours and looked at them again.  The kids were amazed to see clear water at the top and sand at the bottom but were quite curious about what the light brown "stuff" was in the middle. We learned that it was called silt and it is the smallest river rock particle.  After each science investigation we right about our findings.  

Math: In your child's Friday folder you will find their Unit 8 Math test.  We reviewed and took the test on Tuesday and on Wednesday we looked at our tests and made corrections where needed. If you look closely you will see both pencil markings and colored pencil markings. We fixed the mistakes we made with a different color.  I am so pleased with how well the kiddos have understood and worked with fractions. It is such a hard concept but they have been doing and AWESOME job!