February
Dear Parents,
February is a busy month! President’s Day and Valentine’s Day give us an opportunity to strengthen our social and academic skills. Friendship, responsibility and decision making will be in the forefront of our morning and integrated into our reading and writing. We continue to strive for a strong community where we learn to care for others our school and ourselves. Please continue to encourage your child to perform community service and send a note to the office with your child’s service and name.
Our themes for the month are mammals, presidents, sky, light and shadows and the winter Maine forest. Our focus in language arts will be story writing and friendly letters. Skills will focus on capitalization, punctuation, contractions, suffixes and compound words. Reading will continue with our balanced approached to instruction. Please reread books with your child focusing on fluency and expecting their reading to sound like talking. The blizzard of snowballs seems to have slowed! We keep our extra snowballs in the mail center. Keep those snowballs coming until the 100th day of school when we will be counting them. The parent/community volunteer program has been very successful and beneficial to the children and teachers alike! Thank you for your faithful support.
Math will center around counting by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s, 10’s (up and back from any given #), addition and subtraction beyond sums or differences of 10, doubles plus one (3+3, 3+4) or two (3+3, 3+5), and problem solving. We will review greater than and less than. Please help your child learn word problems by giving them one orally each day. You might say, “If you eat all four ravioli’s and ask for second helpings and I give you three more, how many will you have eaten?” Have your child write an equation for your work problem and be able to explain how he/she got the answer. The 100th Day of School will be on February 14 th! In honor of this event, please have your child bring in 100 things that will fit into a sandwich baggy (pennies, Cheerios, macaroni, etc.)
Valentines Day is an exciting day for first graders. We do exchange cards to everyone in the class and would like you to make addressing these cards using their very best penmanship. This is to be an enjoyable activity so please only do a few each night. Attached is a class list for your use. We have talked about alphabetical order in school and would appreciate your time in practicing this skill by alphabetizing the cards with your child each evening. If they are sent in this order it facilitates distribution and makes your child’s task simpler. February 14th is Valentine's Day as well as an early release day. We will share our valentines and celebrate friendship that morning.
We have been lucky to have Mrs. Kingston for cooking class. The children love it and it is great application of our skills in reading and math. We also have been practicing our Spanish! Mr. Briggs, our volunteer Spanish teacher presents a lesson every Friday. We are so fortunate in this community to have such generous people.
Attached please find our latest book order form. All orders should be in by Friday, February 9 th.
We hope the mammal reports reports are coming along fine. If you have any questions or concerns about the projects please contact us. Feel free to send them in as they are completed. We hope to have them all presented and filmed by the end of February or the first week in March.
We hope you have a wonderful February vacation with your children. Please continue to read and write with your students - Every little bit helps!!
The First Grade Team
Research Project
(Science)
I selected a topic.
Terrific OK Needs Work
I decided what I wanted to learn and I developed at least threes questions.
Terrific OK Needs Work
I used at least two resources to gather information.
Terrific OK Needs Work
I wrote my report and included answers to my questions.
Terrific OK Needs Work
I included a picture or a model.
Terrific OK Needs Work
I shared my report.
Terrific OK Needs Work