April 29th-May 3rd

Wow! 

I can't believe it's almost May already. 

Soon enough the kiddos will be leaving me to become big First Graders! 

Reminders

• Scholastic Book orders are due next Monday. This will be the last book order of the school year. 
• Spring photos are Thursday May 2nd. Only students who have an order form and payment will have their photos taken. If you are sending an order form with you child, please send me an email to let me know. That way I know to ask for it/check his/her backpack.

Reading/Writing
This week we are finishing up our unit on Plants. Our story this week is called Sunflower house and we will focus on the vocabulary words senses and garden. Our letter of the week is J and our word of the week is with. On Tuesday the kiddos will learn the /ay/ sound. Later in the week we will start working on a super secret writing project that will be revealed next week ;0)

Math
On Wednesday the kiddos will get to do some graphing and adding with jelly beans for some J week fun. We will continue practicing teen numbers by building ten-groups and extras with stamps. The kiddos will also fill in a blank 100 chart to see how many numbers they know between 1 and 100.

Science
It's that time of year...we have butterflies in our room! Well--not quite yet...we have caterpillars! This is one of the most exciting activities we do all year because the kids get to watch the caterpillars change into butterflies with their very own eyes. We will be documenting the changes by photographing our caterpillars with the Ipads. We've also started using a new app called Book Creator to make a book all about Butterflies. I am amazed at how quickly the kiddos learned how to add text, photos, and sound to their books. They are working on writing scientific descriptions of what they see and how the caterpillars are changing. We have also practiced using QR codes and the scan app to access beautiful photos of butterflies from the internet. QR codes are used to ensure that kids are accessing appropriate photos on the internet rather than running the risk they will encounter something they shouldn't see.

April 22nd-26th

Reading

Students are continuing to learn "first grade sounds" during phonics instruction. Because these sounds are more challenging, I introduce one new sound each week rather than several. This helps give a little more time for it to sink in.

Sound we have covered recently
/oo/ zoom to the moon
/ar/ start the car
/c/ city mice on ice (soft c)

This week our sound is
/ou/ shout it out

Our letter of the week is X and our word of the week is look.

This week we are continuing our reading unit on plants. We are in the second week of this unit and the focus this week is on Seeds and Plants. Last week we focused on How Trees Grow. Today our story talked about many different ways seeds can move from place to place such as getting carried by birds, blowing in the wind, or being carried by water. Later this week, the kiddos will get the chance to dissect a seed and see what it looks like inside.

Writing

Our current writing focus in Opinion writing. In this type of writing, the kiddos are expected to state their opinion relating to a particular topic or prompt and then give reasons to explain their opinion. When I was absent last Friday they wrote a piece in response to the question "Do you like to eat vegetables? Why or why not? As they are becoming more and more proficient in writing, spelling is becoming more accurate and we are now working on making sure to put periods at the end of each sentence and to capitalize the first letter of each new sentence. Writing is looking great!

Math

This week we are focusing on measurement. Today we looked at several different tools used to measure (measuring cups/spoons, a ruler, and two different kinds of measuring tape). We talked about how we use particular tools based on what we need to measure. One example I gave was that if I wanted to measure chocolate chips to add to my cookie recipe, I couldn't use a ruler for that. Throughout the week the kiddos will be doing some hands on measuring during math time and we will be using the math vocabulary words long/longer/longest, short/shorter/shortest, tall/taller/tallest.