Happy May to all! We hope you’ve had a
chance to enjoy some of the lovely weather we’ve had lately! The children have
been soaking up the warmer weather on the playground, free of coats and
boots…snow pants are but a distant memory for us all!
We Love Whales In Room 2!
Big whales, small whales, you name it!
We’ve been learning about these graceful, gentle creatures for several weeks in
class. We’ve read a wonderful array of fiction and nonfiction books, as well as
some new poems and songs. Our favorites include “Blue Whale” and “A Whale Is
Not A Fish.” We also really enjoyed The Snail and the Whale, Ibis,
Humphrey: The Lost Whale, and I’m the Biggest Thing in the Ocean.
We’ve had our hands on some artifacts from the New England Aquarium, including
real whale teeth and baleen. We also played an echolocation game that helped us
to learn how several types of whales find their food. We measured the lengths
of a number of whales and recorded each length with masking tape on the floor
in the cafeteria hallway. We’ve learned about common traits of all whales and
have focused on a few specific whales, such as the humpback whale, the blue whale,
the beluga whale, the narwhal, the orca, and the sperm whale. Some are known
for singing songs and frequent breaching (humpbacks), some are known for being
deep divers (sperm whales), some are fierce predators (orcas), and some are
playful and smart (bottlenose dolphins). We also discovered that many whales
migrate hundreds of miles each year to find food and have their young. Children
found it interesting that toothed whales have one blowhole while baleen whales
have two blowholes!
Children wrote “All About…” books in
Writer’s Workshop. Each child chose his/her favorite whale and used a graphic
organizer to collect information about that whale from our classroom library.
They used a variety of nonfiction books to research the following questions from
the graphic organizer:
- Is it a toothed whale or a baleen whale?
- How long is the whale?
- What does the whale look like?
- What does the whale eat?
- What are some interesting facts that you learned about
this whale?
Each student
filled in the graphic organizer with the information he/she found and then
created sentences using the information from each section of the organizer.
We’re sure you’ll learn a lot about whales from the fabulous book that your
child has brought home! We even made a whale mural with our fifth grade
buddies! Each team created a construction paper whale to add to our watercolor
ocean background that students painted. We’ve sure had a whale of a good time studying these amazing animals!
If you’re looking for an extension to our
whale unit, I’d strongly recommend the IMAX movie at the Museum of Science
called “Humpback Whales.” It’s a wonderful journey through the ocean with these
magnificent creatures~my first grade sons LOVED it!
The Life Cycle Of The Chicken
We hope you’ve heard about our unit on the Life Cycle of the Chicken. Our eggs have
arrived from the farm and have been put into the incubator. Today is Day 6 of the 21-day incubation period.
We’re sure you’ll hear a great deal about the life cycle of the chicken over
the next several weeks! Former first graders have been asking since October WHEN the eggs will arrive, so you can
imagine how exciting this unit of study has been for others and will be for
these first graders as well!
We’re
also learning about another animal’s life cycle. Mrs. O’Brien’s and Ms.
Bergeron’s classes study the life cycle of the frog and they offered to share
some of their tadpoles that hatched so that we could observe them as they grew
into froglets and then frogs. It feels
like we’re running a zoo in our classroom and the kids couldn’t be happier! Our
class fish, Strawberry, also seems to be enjoying his new pals!
Literacy
We encourage everyone to continue the
valuable practice of reading with your child for at least 20 minutes every day.
It’s so wonderful to curl up and enjoy a
good book together! We hope you are as proud of the progress your child is
making as we are. All of the students in our class are making important gains
this year, and encouraging your child to read both independently and with you
shows him/her that you know how hard he/she has been working. We’ve been
enjoying the “Piggie and Elephant” books by Mo Willems, using them to practice
attending to print and punctuation while we read aloud. Children worked with
partners to read several different books in the series; the smiles and giggles
were endless as they flipped through the pages and experimented with tone,
fluency, and pausing.
Math
As their work in mathematics progresses,
children are beginning to use larger numbers.
We have explored the system we use for writing larger numbers by
focusing on the concept of place value.
For example, in the number 72, 7 is in the tens place, so there are “7
groups of 10” and 2 is in the ones place so there are “2 groups of one” or “two
extras.” Children have used Unifix Cubes to represent numbers and to find the
sums of two numbers. They also used place value to determine “greater than” and
“less than” relationships. We have also
continued our work with addition and subtraction facts. Knowing basic math facts
(with the sum of up to 10, or with 10 as the greatest minuend, i.e. 10-7=3) is
as important to mathematics as knowing words by sight is to reading. Your child
should begin to master many of the addition and subtraction facts by the end of
the school year. Learning the facts takes practice. It’s not necessary to
practice for a long time, but it is important to practice often as we do in
class.
We’ve also been working on telling time on
the hour and the half hour, both with digital clocks and analog clocks. In
addition to telling time, we’ve been focusing on identifying coins and counting
the value of coins, including combinations of pennies, nickels, and dimes. We
will introduce the quarter next week. We
encourage everyone to practice counting small amounts of money with your child;
transitioning from counting by 25’s to counting by 10’s, to 5’s to 1’s when
counting quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies can be tricky, so consistent
practice is important.
Later in May, we will focus on geometry. We’ll work with both
2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes. Children will practice classifying
blocks by their shape and size and will practice recognizing attributes such as
number of sides and angles. We’ll explore 3-D shapes including rectangular
prisms, pyramids, spheres, cylinders, cones, and triangular prisms. We will
continue our work with place value, addition, subtraction, telling time, money
as well. We will also be learning about fractions in June. Children will
explore the ideas that fractional parts of a whole must be equal. We’ll introduce
fraction notation and will label fractional parts of figures. We’ll also
practice counting equal parts of wholes, and will identify shapes divided into
halves and fourths.
Save The Date!
Please
mark your calendar!
Room 2’s First Grade
Celebration
Friday,
June 12, 2015
8:15
a.m. to 9:15 a.m.
We hope you’ll be able to attend! Calendars fill up
quickly this time of year so we hope this helps to give you some advance
notice. We’ll be in touch with further details in the weeks to come.
Other important dates for your
calendar…
Wednesday,
May 20th:
Chicks (hopefully!!) Hatch
Monday, May
25th:
Memorial Day: No School
Thursday,
May 28th:
Fifth Grade Play
(First Graders to attend)
Tuesday,
June 2nd:
Happy Hollow Concert
(First Graders to attend)
Monday, June
8th and Tuesday, June 9th: Book Fair
Monday, June
8th:
Happy Hollow Picnic
Wednesday,
June 10th:
Rain Date for Happy Hollow Picnic
Wednesday,
June 10th:
Field Day
Friday, June
12th:
Room 2 First Grade Celebration:
8:15 am-9:15 am
Monday, June
15th:
Field Day Rain Date
Monday, June
22nd:
Last Day of School
One final note: We’ve posted our Iditarod
and Maple Sugaring newsletters on our new classroom website. You can check it
out by going to the Happy Hollow Home Page, clicking on
·
For
Students
·
Happy
Hollow Classrooms
·
Grade
1
·
Ms.
Weig’s Website
It’s DEFINITELY a work in progress, but a
major milestone for a non-techie like myself! I will try to update it every few
weeks or so and will continue to send home paper copies of the newsletter for
the time being until I’m super comfortable updating without our trusty computer
specialist Mrs. Crozier by my side!
As always, please let us know if you have
any questions about your child’s day or about our curriculum.
Enjoy the week!
Take care,
Lise Weig :) and Mary
Ann O’Loughlin :)
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