Still No Snow....

I can't believe it is January 15th and we haven't had any snow yet. I am actually prepared this year - my kids have a couple of pairs of snow pants, boots, snow boards, sleds and now it probably won't snow at all. Just my luck...

Last week in phonics, we talked all about sh words. We made sharks and discussed words that have sh at the beginning and at the end. Our story in our anthology was King Midas. We discussed what a myth is the setting of the story. We learned that the setting tells us not only where a story takes place but also when. We used the pictures in our story to help us figure out that King Midas happened a long time ago. We also began talking about Martin Luther King Jr. We read The Crayon Box that Talked which is a great story for kids to discuss how things are better if we all work together and get along. We also read Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King. We will continue our discussion this week.

In math, we learned about fractions. We learned how to divide a whole into halves or fourths. We made paper plate pizzas where we had to add certain toppings to a particular fraction of a pizza.

In science, we began our unit on Air and Weather. We learned that air can move items. We used straws to blow items around our table and up in the air. We also learned how a paper towel in vial can stay dry when submerged under water. Air is all around us and takes up space. Ask your child how our experiments went.

A look at the week ahead:

In ELA: Assessments. Writing assessments and the beginning of DRA's. We will learn about King Ed (silent e) and review proper sentence structure.

In Math: Introduction to base ten and place value.

In Science: Continuing on with Air and Weather - Parachutes and Pushing on Air.

We have introduced our iPads into our first grade classroom last week. We will be working the iPads into our ELA and Math times as an iPad center where we can use educational apps and we can also use websites like Starfall.com for reading. We'll keep you posted as we go. If you know of any good reading, phonics or math apps, please forward them along. We are always looking for new things :)

Enjoy our short week!

Mrs. M

Mrs. Cataldo

Mrs. Fiore