Weekly Update, December 12 - 16

Hello Stupendous First Graders and Super First Grade Families!

The 1st grade play and the performance at Barnes and Noble were adorable! The kids looked and sounded great!

It's hard to believe this is our last school week of 2011! The kids are so excited for our party and for Christmas. We have a lot of fun stuff planned this week!

Supplies
* Please send in a shoebox with your child by this Thursday. We'll use these for a fun activity at our party!
* Please send in an empty plastic water bottle with the cap and a plastic hanger for our upcoming weather unit.

Christmas Pajama Party Information
* Our party is this Thursday, December 16 from 9:00 - 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 have popcorn and watch The Polar Express in the afternoon. We will also see the kindergarten Christmas performance. It will be a fun day!

This is our second week in our Christmas social studies, guided reading and writing 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. On Thursday we will learn about needs and wants. The kids will learn the importance and difference of each, and they will sort various items into the correct category.

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. Art - The kids made a darling angel ornament.
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. Reading – The kids did a Christmas word find and sorted Christmas words into word families.
6. Card Making - The kids made Christmas cards to send to our US Military to thank them for their service.
7. 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.
8. Art – The kids made a stand up Santa. It is a darling Christmas decoration!

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! The kids are learning to write so that their writing gives the reader a clear picture in his/her head.

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!

Have an A+ week!
Mrs. Johnston