Welcome Back!

Welcome back! We've had another eventful week in first grade!

We planted our seeds! Thank you very much for the generous seed donations! Each student was able to plant 11 plants - pumpkin, squash, peas, mustard, grass, blankets of snow, royal blankets, columbines, daisies, tomatoes, and carrots. We took the plants outside today to expose them to some natural sunlight and water them. We were also able to spend some time in the Great Heron Wetlands - which look FABULOUS in full bloom! Some of the students observed frogs, toads - even a snake in the water! We also saw daffodils, forsythia, and hyacinth.

Division has been great! The students have been using manipulatives to help solve problems they were given in class. We discussed about what items could be used at home, and we came up with: paper clips, Cheerios, pennies, pieces of paper (cut into small pieces), Legos, toothpicks, straws and dried pasta. Another strategy the students have used to solve division is "inverse operations" which in this case, is multiplication! The students used what they knew about fact families from addition and subtraction and applied it to fact families with multiplication and division. Great job kiddos!

This week in writing we have been practicing writing ordered steps. Students were assigned index cards with simple tasks written on them. For example, brushing your teeth, making a PBJ, braiding hair, eating a banana, and so on. The students were able to use what they knew about the writing process to create a rough draft of the steps, and then transfer their draft onto sentence strips for their final copies. They're almost finished - looking good!!!

I've been hearing great feedback from the students about Frindle! I thought it was a great book, and the plot of the story coincides VERY well with our Language Arts curriculum! I hope you have been able to enjoy the book along with your child - it's a great story!

The "ch" word list was challenging, but a lot of fun! The students did really well with the various sounds of "ch" as well as with the spelling of some pretty complicated words. We have another batch of 30 for next week as well! The "SSSSHHH!!!" list is now available on SpellingCity.com - enjoy!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Enjoy the WONDERFUL weather!