Thank you!!

Thank you all for coming out to our musical informance!  I thought the children did a wonderful job and they were SO excited for you to see it!

We had a wonderful week in first grade!  We learned about Groundhog Day (which is tomorrow, February 2nd) and made predictions about whether or not Punxatawney Phil will see his shadow.  If he sees his shadow, we will have 6 more weeks of winter.  If he does not see his shadow, we will have an early spring.  Make sure to watch the weather report tomorrow morning (or check online) to see if your child's prediction was correct!  We will discuss this on Monday morning.

We just finished up topic 8 in math and have moved on to topic 10, which covers learning to add digit numbers.  We will also cover regrouping in this topic.  This can be a challenging topic for some students, so make sure to go over their math page with them at home to reinforce this skill (when we get to it... it's not until our 5th lesson).

We just finished our last story in our 3rd reading unit!  This means that we will have a reading assessment week so there will be no new spelling words.  Please make sure to practice READING the story words that were sent home on the blue page.  Try reading them in a different order than what is listed on the page so that your child doesn't just memorize the list.  This helps them to actually read each sight word.  We will get new spelling words next week when we start our 4th reading unit.

In writing we are focusing on sentence fluency to make sure our writing flows and sounds smooth when we read it out loud.  We want to make sure all of our sentences are in order and stay on topic with our main idea.  We are writing 6 sentences now!  Most of us are doing this very well and even coming up with our own wrap up sentences!  I am very impressed with the writing I am seeing so far!  Keep up the good work!

We just finished our unit on matter in science.  We learned about the different properties of matter and how matter changes.  We also can tell the difference between a solid, a liquid and a gas.  We learned how solids can change into liquids by adding heat and how liquids can change into gases by adding heat and evaporating.

Next week we will start learning about one of our most famous presidents, Abraham Lincoln.  After that, we will learn about our first president, George Washington.  The students love learning about these presidents and doing the projects that go along with this unit.

I hope you all have a SUPER (bowl) weekend!  I hope your favorite team wins!
Ms. Petrucci