February 13th-17th

Thanks to the parents who helped out with our Valentine parties today and provided snacks. I really appreciate your help! The kiddos were very excited to open their Valentine cards and take home all their candy and loot! Thanks also for all of the wonderful volunteers who have been helping with bears. We are ahead of the game in both classes, but that works for me because I am totally okay with getting them done early. Usually the project takes 6 weeks, but we may finish by the end of February. I am so very happy to have so many helpful volunteers because it makes a world of difference in being able to manage the Teddy Bear project. I couldn't do it without all the help and the kids are LOVING it.

Reading

We have started working on "First Grade Sounds" in reading, which is very sophisticated and grown up :0) Last week we covered a_e and the kids really enjoyed learning about "super e" who helps the letter a say its name in words like game, tape, and name. We watched a video about super e and they just can't stop singing about it! This week we are working on /ee/. Now that we are starting to cover some of these more challenging sound spelling combinations, the kids will be able to read more and more words and refine their spelling as well.

Our letter of the week this week is B and our sight word is "what." Our country of the week is Brazil so we have been doing our good morning greeting in Portuguese. Olá!

Writing

We are beginning to write in journals twice a week. On Mondays we do weekend news. Each child gets a chance to share one thing they did over the weekend. I write in my journal to model sounding out words and to remind them of their goals for writing which are:

• write the date at the top of the page
• start the sentence with an uppercase letter
• use spaces in between words
• end the sentence with a period
• draw a picture to go with the sentence

After I write, they get a chance to write their sentence about what they did over the weekend. We start with the words This weekend I... and then they complete the sentence. At this point, I am asking for one sentence, but many kiddos will soon be ready to write more than one sentence on their topic or idea. When they write I ask that they sound out the words they want to say. They may not spell words correctly at this point and that is okay. I do, however, expect sight words to be spelled correctly. The sight words we have learned so far are all posted in the classroom and we find ourselves singing many of our sight word songs as we write because they are a great way to remember how the words are spelled.

Math

We are continuing to focus on teen numbers and recognizing that each teen number contains a group of ten plus some ones. We have added a second verse to our teen number song that goes like this:

Come on everybody let's sing it again
Numbers in the teens have a group of ten

Then we go through the teen numbers and sing..

11 is a 10 and a 1
12 is a 10 and a 2
13 is a 10 and a 3

and so on.

Coming up

Next week we will celebrate the 100th day of school. We haven't really been counting down to it, so the kiddos probably don't even really know it's coming up. We'll do some fun 100 activities and the kids will get to make a 100 snack consisting of 10 pieces each of 10 different kind of snacks like jelly beans, chocolate chips and Goldfish. The 100th day is not exactly the halfway mark because we're already beyond that point, but it's hard to believe that the school year is already more than halfway over!
  
Maternity Leave
I am still planning to be in the classroom until spring break. My last *planned* day is March 23rd, which is the last day prior to spring break. If for any reason the baby comes earlier, then Ms. Solheim will take over as soon as I need her, but I am hopeful that I will make it to the 23rd. My official due date is March 31st, but one never knows when babies will make their appearance, especially for the first one. I am trying to arrange for Ms. Solheim to be with me for the next round of parent teacher conferences in March, so that you can all have a chance to meet her. She and I taught together in Germany. I actually started out as her Third Grade classroom assistant and then I took a different position in the Special Education department. I spent a good amount of time supporting some of her students in her classroom, so I know first hand what a fabulous teacher she is. She and I will be in close contact for the remainder of the school year once I leave and I hope to visit the classroom with the baby so the kids can see her.