Friday Flyer

 

Dear Families,

         

We are closing in on our final month as the 2015-2016 First Grade Family.  The children have made tremendous academic and social growth this year; their second grade teachers are going to love them! 

Our final unit during writing workshop is “Realistic Fiction”.  This is always an enjoyable unit to teach…children’s minds are FULL of stories and they tend to be natural storytellers.  We have studied the experts, as well as learn how to create a story map containing characters, setting, problem, and solution in order to write our story. The children have written several stories each and enjoy sharing t hem with their peers.

During Readers workshop, we are reviewing the strategies that were taught this year and “fine tuning” them with the more difficult text we are reading.

In science this week we continued to focus on the painted lady butterfly’s life cycle, we are studying these creatures up close and personal in our classroom!  We started with painted lady caterpillars (larva stage) eating and growing over the past 2 weeks and we then watched as they formed chrysalises (which is the pupa stage of the life cycle).  We actually had several caterpillars emerge from the pupa stage right during class and we observed them becoming adult butterflies right before our eyes- WOW!!  Students also constructed the life cycle while doing an art project, using different types of noodles.  These creations will come home soon!

In math, we focused on money and 2-digit addition and subtraction over the past few weeks.  Your child should be able to identify the penny, nickel, dime, and quarter and should know what each coin is worth.  We learned fun facts about these coins and read many math books about this topic as well.  Check in with your first grade mathematicians to see what fun information they can tell you about coins (who’s on the heads/tails side, etc.)

In social studies we will soon begin our unit on families.  Next week Friday, an at-home project on family trees and interviewing a family member will come home.  More details to come!  

Upcoming Dates:

All Library books are due- 5/27/16

No School: Memorial Day- 5/30/16

Field Day- 6/3/16 (in the afternoon)

Field Day Rain Date- 6/6/16

½ day of school- 6/8/15 (dismissal 11:25)

½ day of school- 6/9/15 (dismissal 11:25)

½ day and last day of school- 6/10/15 (dismissal 11:25)

Sincerely,  Jennifer Mason & Kelly Putnam