Weekly Update, November 15 - 19

Hello Smart First Graders and Super First Grade Families!


I hope everyone had a nice weekend!  The kids are still talking about our Awesome America week!  They really enjoyed this unit and they LOVED meeting Sergeant First Class Miller!  The kids loved asking questions, learning about his uniform and learning how to do the army crawl.  They did an excellent job of writing thank you notes to him.  They thanked him for his service, for visiting our class and for the presents.  They asked a lot of good questions in their notes too!  It was a fun day!

Today we had a special visit from the Oro Valley Library.  The children received their very own library cards!  To activate the cards, please take your child to a Pima County Library to fill out a short form.  Your child also received a bag, a bookmark and some information about the library.  The kids loved this!


Today we began our social studies unit on Thanksgiving; we are learning about the Pilgrims and Indians.  There are several fun projects planned and the kids will come home with a lot of cute Thanksgiving decorations.  Today we read a neat story called "The Tale of the Bear's Tipi."  The kids learned about tipis and learned that there are two ways to spell it: tipi and tepee.  After the story, the kids made their own tipis.  This was so much fun!  On Tuesday we will read "The North Wind and the South Wind" to learn about pueblos and the kids will make their own pueblos.  On Wednesday we will learn about the history of The First Thanksgiving and the kids will create their own cornucopia.  Our studies on Thursday and Friday will focus on Pilgrims.  On Thursday the kids will learn about how Pilgrims had a very different life than we do.  The kids will compare and contrast elements of our lives to those of the Pilgrims.  On Friday the kids will learn about what it was like to be a Pilgrim kid.  They will decorate their own pilgrim kids to bring home.


The kids had a great time with the Thanksgiving centers today.  The centers for the week include:
1.  Listening - The kids listened to a story about Native Americans.  They created a traditional Native American story sack.  They decorated the bag with symbols and then filled it with found objects.  To use the story sack, the kids pull an object from the bag and tell a story about it.  They had so much fun gathering objects and sharing their stories!
2.  Art/Science - The kids used the inside of a paper grocery bag to write an Indian symbol story.  The kids received a page of symbols and then they used them to tell a story.  They could only use the symbols (no words).
3.  Writing - The kids did a neat color poem.  They colored a picture of pottery and then used the colors they chose to write a poem about it.
4.  Math - Pottery geometry and Indian Symbol addition.  The kids created patterns with pottery and they used symbols to write number sentences.
5. Reading - The kids read 1:1 with me.

The kids have new spelling words this week.  In addition to our spelling words, we have Thanksgiving theme words.  The kids came home with Rainbow Words and they are due tomorrow.  The kids have a new spelling challenge this week!  If the whole class spells Thanksgiving and turkey (another alliteration test!) correctly, the class will get a prize.

We began chapter 9 in math today.  This chapter focuses on groups of 10 and place value.  Your child came home with a parent letter that provides information about the chapter.  The kids practiced counting in 10s and adding on by 1s, writing number sentences and identifying numbers by looking at pictures of groups of 10s and 1s.

The kids enjoyed computers today.  If you'd like to see what they did in computers today, click on the post directly below this one, "Computers, 11/15."

Have an A+ week!
Mrs. Johnston