Weekly Update, January 31 - February 4

Hello Super First Graders and Stupendous First Grade Families!

The kids are now 103 days smarter!!!  We had such a fun celebration last week.  Thank you to all the parents who donated their time and supplies to help make our day special!

Reading Information
* The reading homework is changing!  The children now have a written assignment to go with their reading homework on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  The kids and I discussed the new homework in class today.  Please be sure to sign (and have your child sign) the homework and return the signed form tomorrow.
* February is Love of Reading Month at Harelson!  Your child will bring home a paper with information about Love of Reading tomorrow.

This week we are studying the scientific method to prepare a class science project for the science fair!  Katrina's dad, a scientist, visited our class to talk about science, the scientific method and help the kids with a science experiment.  He did a great experiment with the kids about M and M colors.  They loved this!  Today we began our own study of science and the kids were already so excited.  Today in guided reading we learned about the steps in the scientific method and we watched two short Brain Pop videos about it.  We brainstormed ideas for our class science project and the kids decided on a variation of the M and M experiment we did in class.  The experiment involves making predictions about the M and M color that occurs most frequently.  For the rest of the week we will work on our project by completing a different part of the scientific method.  Parents - be sure to ask your kids about this neat process!

On Wednesday, February 2, we will take a break from the scientific method and learn about Groundhog's Day!  The kids will read a story to sequence it and they will also make a cute groundhog hat and bookmark.

In writing we are learning about scientific writing.  Our six traits focus is fluency.  The kids are practicing re-reading their writing to make sure it makes sense.  I have seen dramatic improvements in the kids' writing just since we returned from Winter Break.  It is SO exciting!

The kids came home with Rainbow Words and they are due tomorrow.  In making words we are working on the "tricky c" (when the "s" sound is heard, but the letter c is written, like in race).  We will also find rhymes for various spelling words.

The kids enjoyed their science theme centers!  The centers for the week include:
1.  Listening - The kids took turns reading different joke, riddle and science jokes to each other (they are really into jokes right now!) and then they practiced writing their own jokes.
2.  Science - The kids made bubbles!  A table was lined with black garbage bags and then a water/dish soap mixture was poured on the table.  The kids used straws to blow bubbles.  This was a lot of fun!
3.  Writing - The kids pretended they were mad scientists and they wrote about building their own monsters.  They came up with some very funny stuff!
4.  Math - The kids practiced subtraction patterns with 0 and 1.  The also practiced ordering numbers through 100 on a daisy picture.
5.  Reading - The kids played a new Spill and Spell game.  They dump out a cup with different letters and see how many sight words they can spell before the timer runs out.

We completed chapter 14 in math last week and now we are working on chapter 15, a chapter about data and graphing.  This chapter ties in nicely with our work about the scientific method.

The kids enjoyed computers today.  If you'd like to see what we did in computers, please click on the blog posting directly below this one, "Computers, 1/31."

Have an A+ week!
Mrs. Johnston