Weekly Update, March 26 - 30

Hello Super First Graders and Stupendous First Grade Families!

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a wonderful time during spring break. The kids were very excited to see their friends and talk about their spring break adventures.

The 3rd quarter report cards go home in the homework folders this Wednesday, March 28.  Parents - please sign the report card envelope and return ONLY the envelope by this Friday, March 30.  Kids - if you return your envelope on time, you will get three bee bucks!  Thank you!

There is a field trip to The Desert Museum coming up on Friday, April 13. Please let me know if you would like to chaperone.

This week in science, guided reading and writing we are learning all about creepy, crawly spiders! Today we learned the characteristics of spiders. The kids made a paper plate spider, complete with 8 googly eyes! Tomorrow the kids will learn how a spider web is made and they will even get to see a short video clip of a spider spinning its web! On Wednesday we will learn about the life cycle of a spider. On Thursday we will read about spiders to learn if they are helpful or harmful. On Friday we will learn about tarantulas.

The kids are doing SO well in writing! I have seen so much progress over the last few weeks and it makes writers' workshop so much fun! The kids are able to accomplish so much and they love sharing at the end of writers' workshop. This week in writers' workshop we are working on fact writing, using a picture to guide writing and story writing. Today the kids wrote 8 spider facts. Tomorrow they will write an acrostic poem about a spider web. On Wednesday they will look at pictures of the stages of a spider's life cycle and describe each stage. On Thursday they will use their thumb prints to make a spider picture and then write about how they would be helpful spiders. On Friday they will make their page to our class book about what they like best about spiders.

The kids came home with Rainbow Words and they are due tomorrow. This week in making words we are working more on writing words with the "are" contraction. We will focus on "you're" and "we're." Parents - you can look for this in your child's writing and see if your child can point it out in his/her reading.

The kids enjoyed their spider centers today! The centers for the week include:
1. Listening - The kids listened to "I Love Spiders" and they wrote 10 things they love/facts about spiders.
2. Science - The kids read "The Very Busy Spider" and they make their own spider web with glue and glitter on black paper. They colored and cut spiders to go with the web.
3. Writing - The kids read "Spider Names." They received a picture of a spider and they named it and wrote a story about it.
4. Math - The kids put a spider puzzle together and compared and identified spider and ant body parts.
5. Reading - The kids read books from the Bee Quiet Corner played sight word bingo.

This week in math we are working on measuring weight and capacity. The kids are having a lot of fun using the balance and traditional scales.

We have a fun activity planned for computers. If you’d like to see what we’ll do, please check the blog on Friday for the posting called “Computers, 3/30.”

Have an A+ week!
Mrs. Johnston