November 14th-18th

Hello!

There will be a couple announcements this week:

1. Thanksgiving break will be November 23rd-25th. No school those 3 days. School resumes November 28th.

2. We will be having our "Thanksgiving feast" November 22nd at school. This year we are doing a different kind of feast though! We are asking that each child bring their favorite snack to contribute to the feast this year. It can be anything they want! No nuts of course. Cannot wait to see what this year's spread will be. :) This is for the kids only. I promise to send pics.

3. Gingerbread House Decorating: December 15th 11:00-12:00 Parents are invited! This is a blast, You won't want to miss it. We will need candy, icing and graham cracker donations later. We will also need help gluing the crackers to the cartons. Watch for a sign up genius soon. And save some of that Halloween candy to use if you want!

Thematic Centers:

This week we studied Helen Keller. We could not believe that she was deaf and blind and accomplished so much including attending college. We also learned about braille and sign language. We rotated through 4 centers:

1. Cook "braille bites": take a cracker and spread icing on it. Then, using skittles, spell your name with the coordinating braille symbols. Eat and enjoy.
2. Illustrate the Helen Keller informational book and read it to a teacher.
3. Walk down the hall with headphones and a blind fold using a partner for help. Experience what it would be like to walk without sight and hearing.
4. Write your name in glue then dot the coordinating braille dots with glue dots. Let it dry and then feel what your name feels like in braille. Then find braille in our classroom and around the school and experience what it feels like on a real sign (bathroom, classroom etc.).

Last week we also spelled our name in braille using do-a-dot markers to practice for this week. We went over basic sign language words and phrases as well.

Reader's Workshop:

This week we worked on leveled books and sight words. So sorry I missed a couple groups last week with our short week! Hopefully we got all back on track this week.

Writer's Workshop:

We are still focusing on this month's theme of comics and enjoying every minute. The kids are coming up with the funniest stories.

Math Workshop:
We learned 2 new math games:

We played turkey subtraction match: Match the subtraction equation with the answer and the coordinating ten frame showing the answer.

Roll and cover: Roll 2 dice and add one. Cover up that space. The first player to cover up all their spaces wins. Another concept that we focus on in first grade is "plus 1." As part of our learning about numbers we start with the concept of one more and one less. Then we move into 10 more and 10 less as children learn the connections between numbers and patterns in math. We utilize the tool of the hundreds chart and children can begin to start to make connections with even more advanced patterns of addition and subtraction like 9 more, 11 more etc. That's also why we work at helping the children so thoroughly understand addition facts to 10. So that they can then apply these rules to larger addition and subtraction problems.

Science: We cannot wait to see what Ms. Rachel brings today.

Have a nice weekend!
Mrs. Schultz