Weekly Update, December 13 - 16

Hello Stupendous First Graders and Super First Grade Families!

The 1st grade performance at Barnes and Noble was adorable!  The kids looked and sounded great!

THANK YOU to all my students and parents for your wonderful support of my marathon!  The pink runner "Go Mrs. Johnston" pins are SO cute and I was so touched!  A special thank you to Tristan and Jo who came out to cheer for me at mile 22 (with a fabulous bumblebee sign!) when I was SO tired.  I feel so lucky to have such a wonderful and supportive class!  Thank you!

It's hard to believe this is our last week before the break!  The kids are so excited for our party and for the holidays.  We have a lot of fun stuff planned this week!

Reminders:
* If you have not done so already, please send in a shoebox with your child.  We'll use these for a fun activity at our party!
* Please send in a plastic water bottle for our upcomping weather unit.

Pajama Party Information:
* Our party is this Thursday, December 16 from 9:20 - 11:20.  The children will do 4 different holiday centers.
* We are having an all day pajama party!  Your child is invited to wear PJs to school.
* We will make popcorn balls and watch The Polar Express with the other first grade classes in the afternoon.  It will be a fun day!

This is our second week in our Christmas social studies unit and the children are really enjoying it!  Today we learned about the characteristics of reindeer.  We learned the word synonym and that caribou is a synonym for reindeer.  The kids worked collaboratively to write 5 reindeer facts.  After they wrote their facts, they colored and cut a cute reindeer to glue on their paper.  We also learned a little bit about the history of Rudolph and the kids made a darling Rudolph puppet.  Tomorrow we will learn about the history of St. Nicholas.  The kids will make a St. Nicholas puppet and they will write St. Nicholas facts on the back.  On Wednesday we will learn about Christmas around the world!  We will learn about Christmas traditions in the USA, Italy and Mexico.  The kids will identify the three countries on a map, write 1 tradition from each place and write which country they would like to visit for Christmas.

The kids had a lot of fun in centers today!  They visited 2 centers.  The centers for the week include:
1.  Listening - The kids listened to a cute story called "Olive The Other Reindeer," and they worked on sequencing the story by writing what happened in the beginning, middle and end.
2.  Science - The kids wrote a recipe for reindeer food and they made their own special reindeer food!
3.  Writing - The kids wrote a persuasive letter to Santa to convince him to bring presents to them.
4.  Math - The kids made snowman math flash cards.  They picked their own problems to write on the snowman's body and then they wrote the answers on the back.
5.  Card Making - The kids made Christmas cards to send to our US Military to thank them for their service.
6. Art - The kids traced their hands on green paper and then glued them to a paper plate ring to make an adorable hand print wreath. 


There are no new spelling words this week.  Spelling will resume after break!

In writing we are working on adding details to our work.  We call these detailed words "juicy words."  Be sure to ask your child about using juicy words!

In math we practiced addition and subtraction facts.  The kids correctly solved color coded problems to color a penguin.  Tomorrow we will make a Christmas tree glyph and on Wednesday we will play Christmas bingo!

The kids had fun in computers!  If you'd like to see what we did today, click on the blog posting directly below this one, "Computers, 12/13."

Have an A+ week!
Mrs. Johnston