Weekly News
10/20/24-10/24/25
We started a new Choice Time Theme this week - Geography and traveling Around the World! Our Choice Time Centers mostly focused on geography by doing activities with continents, bodies of water, and maps. We also celebrated the Hindu holiday Diwali by coloring and cutting out candles to celebrate the Festival of Light! If your family has any history or traditions from around the world that you would like to share with us, please reach out to your contact teacher so we can get something scheduled! And if you would like to be a Choice Time volunteer, please sign up here.
We are working on scheduling our next field trip, so stay tuned for details!
In Literacy, first graders started their second unit for skills. They have started learning long e (spelled ee) and long a (with the “magic” e at the end). You can practice at home turning words from short vowel sounds to long vowel sounds by adding a magic e! Have them write something like “tap” and read it; then add the e at the end and read the new word. In Knowledge, we had a special guest speaker on Monday who shared cool facts about the human body! Then we started reading stories that share something in common. This week we read stories that share similarities with Cinderella including “The Girl with the Red Slippers” from Egypt and “Billy Beg” from Ireland.
Second graders kicked off this week by reading more of our reader, Bedtime Stories and learning about “The Frog Race.” We also reviewed the process of writing and brainstorming about a butterfly named Rosie who loves tacos and turns into a super hero! We have great imaginations in Rainbow! Students finished planning and are now drafting their first fictional narrative pieces. Next steps will be editing and writing the final piece. We also reviewed some tricky words (are, were, and some) as well as tricky words containing the /oo/ and /ou/ sounds.
In Knowledge, we continued our study of Early Asian Civilizations and learned about Siddhartha and Buddhism. Ask your student to tell you the story of Siddhartha and how he discovered Buddhism. A good leading question would be to ask your student how long Siddhartha sat underneath that fig tree. Ouch!
In math, first graders started learning subtraction! It’s a tough switch from always adding to sometimes subtracting. We are focusing a lot on paying close attention to our minus sign and the order our numbers are in. If you want to practice at home, subtraction word problems can be fun to do (If I have 5 cupcakes and I eat 3, how many will be left? What would my number sentence be?). Second graders wrapped up Topic F and have moved on to Topic G where we are learning the relationship of place value of 1, 10, and 100 with MONEY!!! The kids were super excited to learn and get to play with “money.” We talked about how to COUNT and EXCHANGE money. We practiced exchanging $10 for 10 $1 bills, 10 $10 bills for $100, and so on. We also learned how to make $320 using one hundred and ten dollar bills. Students were then challenged to show different ways to show this. This is a fun activity to practice at home!
Critter Corner Update!
Shadow and Mr. Fuzzy Cheeks are so appreciative of the supplies and treats they have received, and we (the teachers) appreciate it too! It is soooo helpful. If you would like to donate, here are the links for paper bedding and the hay they like to snack on. Thank you so, so much!