Hello Charming First Graders and Cheerful First Grade Parents!
The kids are really enjoying our holidays social studies and guided reading/writing unit! Today we began our study of the Christmas holiday. Today we learned about the history of Christmas. We also learned about one symbol of Christmas, the Christmas tree. The kids began a very neat Christmas writing/art project today. They each received a large Christmas tree that they cut out and colored a stem on. They wrote 3 facts on red ball ornaments and they glued them on the tree. Each day this week we will learn about a different Christmas symbol and there will be an ornament to match. The symbols we will learn about this week are: lights, presents, candy canes and stars. The kids will write facts on each ornament and, by the time the week is over, they will have a fully decorated tree filled with ornaments with great Christmas facts! They really enjoyed working on this today. The trees are hanging up all around the room and they are wonderful! This week in social studies we will also learn about needs and wants, a very timely subject!
In reading we are working on reading about common subjects, such as Christmas, to learn new information and make connections.
The children had a great time in our centers today. The centers for the week include:
1. Listening - The children listened to Santa's Adventure, a story about Santa and how bad weather affected his Christmas Eve travels. The children made a Somebody - Wanted - But - So graphic organizer. They wrote a Somebody - Wanted - But - So to organize the events of the story.
2. Art - Shhh! It's a surprise! The kids are working on a gift for YOU!
3. Writing - The children wrote friendly letters to Santa on a Santa beard. They told Santa about themselves and asked him questions. After they wrote, they colored a picture of Santa and they attached it to the beard.
4. Math - The children made advent bells. They used a template to trace and cut a bell. Then the children numbered red and green strips of paper to make advent chains. They made the odd numbers green and the even numbers red to form an a-b pattern with the red and green paper loops.
5. Reading - The children read 1:1 with me. We focused on assessments for reading level and sight words.
This week in writing we are working on fact writing and acrostic poetry. The children have had a lot of practice writing facts and they are getting quite good at this skill! The kids had a bit of practice with acrostic poetry last week and they are enjoying poetry writing.
We have new spelling words this week. The kids came home with Rainbow Words and they are due tomorrow. This week in working with words we will practice alphabetizing to the 1st letter. In making words we are working on words with long o and long u sounds.
Today in math we reviewed concepts from chapter ten (greater and less than, one more and one less, counting up and down by ten) and we will take the test later this week. We will also complete a lot of review and complete testing to get ready for the 2nd quarter report cards.
We have a fun activity planned for computers on Friday! If you'd like to see what the kids will do, please check back at the end of the week for the blog posting called “Computers, 12/9.”
Have an A+ week!
Mrs. Johnston
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