Hi Everyone! This coming Friday, February 4th is an early dismissal day.  The kids are dismissed at 12:50.   I have been having difficulties with my computer, but it is finally hooked back up to a copier, so on Friday I will be sending home a list of all the kids in our class for Valentine's.  Our Valentine's Day party will be Monday, Feb. 14th at 1:30pm.  We are going to be having ice cream sundaes, but no supplies are needed for it.  Please send in Valentines with your child on Monday, the 14th. Thank you so much for all your help and support!  Have a great rest of the week!

Hi Families!  It's hard to believe we've been in school for almost 100 days!  This Friday, January 28th, we'll be celebrating our 100th day of school.  Please have your child wear 100 of a small item to school.  For example, safety pins, macaroni necklace, stickers, etc.  We will also be doing a project in the afternoon in which your child will need a ziplock bag with 100 items enclosed.  Please make sure the items are all the same.  For example, toothpicks, mini marshmallows, jellybeans, cereal, etc.  Thank you so much, in advance for helping your child prepare for the 100th day.  We've had a wonderful start back to school in 2011.  As always, thank you for your help and support. 

Hi Everyone!  Below are a few pictures of Polar Express Day and our Holiday concert last week.  The kids did such a wonderful job singing.  Thank you so much to all of you who give your time to help out in our classroom this time of year.  :)

Hi Parents!
     I hope everyone is have a wonderful week!  It's been awhile since I've updated the blog.  It's getting to be the "most wonderful time of the year" again, and the kiddos are so excited about their Winter Concert tomorrow.  Polar Express Day will be Tuesday, December 14th, and the kids are welcome to wear their pj's this day.  We will be doing educational activities related to the book, and at the end of the day, we will drink hot cocoa and watch the movie.  Our class's Christmas party will be Friday, December 17th at noon.  We will be having a book exchange, so please send in a book under $10.00, appropriate for a boy or girl.  As always, thank you so much for all your support.  Enjoy this wonderful Christmas season!  :)

Hi Folks!  I hope you all have had a good Monday.  Today, the kids brought home: their packet of reading work and a packet of math Homelinks, which is all due on Friday.  They also brought home an information sheet on the new "Earobics" program found on-line.  The website is:  http://earobics.k12northstar.org.  You can log your child in by typing a lowercase s and then their student number.  For example:  s123456.  Use this for the username AND password, and have fun!
        Our class Harvest Party will be on Wednesday, October 27th.  I am finding out the time this week and will let you know as soon as possible.  Carla's mom, Mrs. Watts, has graciously volunteered to head-up the festivities.  If you would like to help out, and need her contact information, please let me know. Thank you all so much, and have a great rest of the week!

Hi Everyone!  I hope you all are having an enjoyable weekend, even though the temperatures are dropping quickly.  Yesterday morning, we practiced walking to our new reading classes.  Each teacher has a different Alaska animal posted outside his/her door, so the kids can recognize which classroom to go to each day.  It is my understanding that the kids' reading homework will be sent home as a packet on Mondays and is to be returned to school on Fridays.  I will start doing this with math homelinks too and will send home the homelinks that match the lessons we do that week.  As always, thank you so much for your continued support. 

Spelling Words for this week:  Sept. 20th - 24th
- hot
- hop
- pop
- pot
- dot
- not
- back
- pick
- now
- want
Bonus Word:  cloud

          Hi Folks!  I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful weather outside!  Hopefully, it'll stick around for just a little while longer.  In our first grade world this week in reading we were introduced to contractions.  This can be a difficult skill for students to grasp, so any practice at home with contractions would be a big help.  We also discussed diagraph ck and the rules that go with it ending a word or just plain k ending  a word.  We are still working on sentence building and writing complete sentences with a subject and predicate. 
         In math this week, we completed lessons 2-2 through 2-6.  Next week, we will begin lesson 2-7 and go through 2-10.  Please look for the Homelinks to come home with your child.  We use our dry erase boards everyday in math and are running short on black dry erase markers.  If you are ever out and about and think about it, please pick us up some black markers.  Thank you so much, in advance, for helping us out. 
         We have been discussing the elements of fall some more this week and even went on a nature walk outside to write down some of the signs of fall we saw.  We collected leaves and, in art, created creatures from our leaves. 
         If at all possible, please send in the ziplock bag with your child's book and reading log in it.  If we have any time in our day, I call them up one by one and have them read a few pages in their book to me.  They will each get to pick a new book every Monday or get a new one during the week if they are fluently reading the book they already had. 
         I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend, and thank you for your support.  
         

Hi Parents!  Don't forget, tomorrow, 9-14-10 is picture day!  Also, this Friday, 9-17-10, we have an early dismissal.  The students will be dismissed at 12:50.  Your child's "book bag" came home today with a book and reading log in it.  Please have your child read for at least 10 minutes, and sign the reading log.  Also, Math Links 2-2 and 2-3 came home today with your child.  Thank you so much for looking over them and having your child complete them.  I appreciate all your support, and have a great evening!

Hi everyone!  Thank you so much to everybody who came to Open House Wednesday night.  Your support means so much!  Our short week felt like a full one because we had to squeeze in five days of first grade into four.  Yesterday in reading we took our spelling test and reading assessment on our story this week called "Ants".  Thank you so much for studying spelling words with your child at nights.  On Monday, I will send home a list of our spelling words for the week.  In math right now, we are reviewing and building upon skills from last year.  These skills include:  counting forwards and backwards by 1's, skip counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's, finding numbers that come before and after a number, and the usage of tally marks.  In science/art this week, we have been discussing seasons and the differences among them.  We painted beautiful paintings of a fall tree on Friday.  The kids really enjoyed using the water color paints. 

If you would like to volunteer to come in a work with a group of children sometime within the school year, the best times during our day would be:  Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 - 10:10 and Monday-Friday from 1:30 - 1:55.  Please let me know if you would like to volunteer and which day/time would be best for you. 

We use dry erase boards every day in math this year and are in desperate need of some black dry erase markers.  If you are ever out and about and think about it, please pick some up for us.  Thank you so much! 

On Monday, your child will be bringing home a book in a ziplock bag with a reading log.  Please make sure your child reads at least 10 minutes every night, and sign the reading log.  The kids will pick out their book to bring home on Monday.

On Thursday we began Unit 2 in Everyday Math.  I sent home the Everyday Math Home Link for Lesson 2.1 on that day.  Thank you for sending it back to school.  We did lesson 2.2 on Friday, but I didn't send home the Home Link for this lesson because it was the weekend.  When a Home Link comes home, please have your child complete it, and send it in the next day OR when the Home Link for the next lesson comes home with your child.  If you have any more questions about the Home Links, please let me know.

For snack purposes, there are 23 kids in our class.  Thank you so much, again for all your help and support!  Have a great weekend! 

Hi Parents!  It's been another great week of learning in our classroom.  In reading this week, we have been practicing more with short /a/ words.  We were also introduced to four new sight words: and, in, oh and yes.  Our story this week was called "Sam and the Bag", and we took our assessment on that as well as our spelling test yesterday.  We have been adding more math games to our day, and Thursday we had an "exploration" day where the kids got to explore new math manipulatives we will be using this year.  We have also been doing lots of "apple" activities in science this week.  Below are some pictures that were taken yesterday when we tasted some different products made from apples.  We had a good time graphing which type of apple product was our favorite.  Thank you so much for your support, and have a wonderful, long weekend!