March Newsletter

Dear Parents,

       Thank you for all your help and for continuing to read at home.  It is SO important to keep up those literacy links.  Just a reminder, that rereading those familiar books helps to build fluency.  Also, remind children of ALL the strategies that they can use when coming to an unfamiliar word!   “Read Across America” was a great success!!!  We began our day with 15 minutes of DEAR time. (Drop Everything And Read) This was a school-wide event.  Then we had several high school students come into our room and read to us.  The afternoon was also filled with adult guest readers, including our own Mrs. Sandoval, Mrs. Boucavalous  and old friends Mr. and Mrs. Hoff.

      All students with the exception of K-1 will be testing the week of 3/7-3/11.  We will be stressing the importance of respecting the other students by being especially quiet in the halls.  Any reminders from home will be greatly appreciated.    

     We have a very exciting month of activities coming up. The themes we will be working on this month are fairy tales and sky, light and shadows and healthy bodies.. The fairy tales that we will be focusing on will be The Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff and Jack and the Beanstalk .  The students will hear different variations of these stories and will be doing lots of retellings.  Each child will need to bring in 1 potato of any size for an activity relating to one of the fairy tales we will be reading.  Please send the potato in by March 7th.  Also if you have any toilet paper tubes at home, we could certainly use them.  We will be going to Harris Farm on March 22 to see how sap is taken from maple trees and turned into maple syrup. Thank you for sending back the permission slips.

      Later in the month, we will be studying light and shadow.  We plan on doing some great experiments with these topics.  We are hoping for some warmer weather to go outside to conduct  these experiments.  March is also Wellness Month.  We will be learning about healthy bodies, how they work, and what we need to do to keep them healthy. Please reinforce these concepts at home by discussing how to stay healthy.

       At this point of the year, our children are finding it easier to read and write and we will work hard at developing writing skills.  Please try writing a sentence with your child each night.  Be sure it starts with a capital and ends with punctuation. If your child already does this independently, please begin writing stories that have a beginning, a middle and an end to them.

       In math, we will continue working on money values and continue learning about addition and subtraction, place value, and measurement with standard and non-standard units.  Please continue working on having your child tell time on the hour, the half hour and the quarter hour..  As always, we work on problem solving.  Please help your child with these concepts by letting them use money to purchase things, discussing concepts and talking in measurement terms. Our math themes for the month will also have us being introduced to geometry and attributes.

       Report cards will be going home on Friday, March 11th.  Conferences will be held the following week on March 21st(evening) &March 23rd (day).  There is no school on March 23rd.  We look forward to seeing you all then. 

                                    The First Grade Team