Update February 25th

*We will celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday all week at school.  Please join us in these fun spirit days!

Green Eggs and Ham Lunch Day   Monday, February 26, 2018

 Students are invited to wear something green!

Fox in Socks Day   Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Today, students are invited to wear their craziest and silliest socks.  

Wacky Wednesday  Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Get wacky!  Students are invited to wear their clothes backwards, inside out, or mismatched.  

Pajama Day Thursday, March 1, 2018

What is better than snuggling up with a favorite book while wearing your comfortable PJs?  For today's festivities, students are invited to wear their pajamas to school.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!   Friday, March 2, 2018

We are closing out our weeklong celebration, and honoring Dr. Seuss on his birthday, by inviting students to do one of the following:

• Dress up as one of their favorite Dr. Seuss characters, or wear Dr. Seuss-inspired hat or hair style, 
• Dress in red and white, or
• Dress up as a favorite book character from ANY beloved book (i.e., does not have to be a book by Dr. Seuss).  

*We will welcome a new student to our classroom this week.  Anaaya will join us in class on Monday.  I'm confident that once again, my students will do a fabulous job welcoming a new student to our class.  

*In Math, we will finish up Unit 6.  Our focus will be on place value, pennies/dimes, and 2 digit numbers.

*In Social Studies, we'll learn about Amelia Earhart and Neil Armstrong.

*As part of our Opinion writing unit, we will learn how to write letters.  Students will begin to write opinion letters about something they want to change.  

Looking Ahead:

Thursday, March 15th- 12:20pm Early Release

Update February 11th

*We will celebrate our 100th day of school on Tuesday. We'll do fun 100th day activities during math and create a class book. As a school community, we will have a pajama day to celebrate the 100th day!

*Tuesday is also school store for first graders!

*On Wednesday, we'll celebrate Valentine's Day with a party in the afternoon. Thank you to everyone for donating or volunteering for the party! Please remember to send Valentine's into school by Wednesday (no candy included.) 

*Last week the class filled up their great behavior jar with pompoms for the 2nd time. They voted to watch a movie. Last Friday, we watched an episode of the new Magic School Bus series.  I'm very proud of the great behavior I've been seeing. I'm especially proud when other adults in the building give us compliments, especially on the cleanliness of our class' section of the coatroom. 

*In Math, our focus will be on near doubles facts (5+6, 5+7.)  We will also focus on making 10 to solve harder number sentences.

*In Social Studies, our focus is on Clara Barton and the Wright Brothers. Last week, the class came up with following character traits to describe Washington and Lincoln: brave, leader, kind.

*Wish List:

We would appreciate donations of:

*spoons

*forks

*tacky glue

*empty egg cartons

Thank you for all of the donations of paper towel rolls. We are all set for this year!

Looking Ahead:

*No School, February 19-23

Update February 2nd

*Wednesday, February 7th is a 12:15pm Early Release.  We will not have lunch at school.  Please send students to school with a snack.

*Just a reminder we have wellness every other Monday (not this week) and every Wednesday.  Please send students to school with sneakers these days.

*We will begin our study of Famous Americans (one of my personal favorite units!)  We will begin with famous Americans that lived long ago and create a timeline in our classroom.  Our focus will be on finding common character traits that connect all of the famous people.  This week we'll learn about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

*In Math, we will begin Unit 6.  Our focus will be on telling time to the hour and 2-digit number stories.  We continue to work on place value, including the value of numbers.  We've been working on answering the following questions..."what's the value of the 2 in 24?" "What's the value of the 9 in 39."

*This past week we began our writing unit, Opinion Writing.  Students learned the differences between facts and opinions.  We will continue our writing about our favorite fruits.

Looking Ahead:

February Vacation-No School- February 19th-February 23rd

Update January 12th

*As a reminder there is no school Monday, January 15th or Tuesday, January 16th.  I hope you enjoy this long weekend with family and friends.

*On Wednesday, we will welcome a new student to our class.  The kids are very excited to meet Anna.  I know they will welcome Anna and help her learn about Robinson School.

*In Math, we are working on number scrolls.  The students will work to write numbers throughout the year.  We are in need of empty paper towel rolls to house our scrolls.  Please send any in as your family finishes up paper towel rolls.

*Also in math, we are working on measuring with non-standard unit of measure such as paperclips and base-10 block cubes.  We will continue to work with base-10 blocks to learn about the 10s and 1s place and compare numbers using greater than, less than and equal.

*We will not having spelling this week.  This past week, every student spelled our most difficult word "SAID" correctly.  As a reward, I did a cartwheel for the whole class to see!

*In Science, we will explore with sound this week.  Students will use many materials to create instruments!

Donations:

We are looking for donations of the following materials:

*Empty Paper Towel Rolls

*Tacky Glue or Elmers Glue Bottles

Update January 8th

We will continue much of the same work that we started last week, this week.  With the warmer temperatures this week, we hope to get out to recess each day this week.  Students will need to have snow boots, snow pants, coats, gloves and hats in order to play in the snow.  Otherwise, they will play on the hardtop during recess time.

*In Math, we continue to focus on place value. Students are doing well with making exchanges when the ones place is 10 or higher.  A simple game that you can play at home is Dollar Exchange.  I will teach this game tomorrow during math.

One-Dollar Exchange: Players roll the dice and put the number of pennies on their Place-Value mats. Whenever possible, they exchange 10 pennies for 1 dime. The first player to make an exchange for $1 wins! 

*In Spelling, we are working on words that have digraphs.  Digraphs are when two consonants work together to produce a new sound, such as -ch, -sh and -th.

Looking Ahead:

No School, Monday, January 15th for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

No School, Tuesday, January 16th for Professional Development

We will have no spelling list the week of January 15th.

Update January 1st

Happy New Year! I hope you had time to rest and relax with family and friends over the holidays.  We will start back at school tomorrow (Tuesday.)  

*Students can continue to leave snow clothes at school throughout the week and take them home on the weekends if that works for you and your family.  However, as a reminder if the wind chill is not over 20 degrees, we won't go out for recess.  Fingers crossed that we may get out later on this week!

*Throughout the Winter, we will not visit our 4th grade Book Buddies at Crisafulli because of the weather.  Over the past several years, we've found it too difficult to travel during the winter months due to snow on the trail and cold weather.  Therefore, we will begin writing letters to our book buddies over the course of the next few weeks.   First graders will begin a new writing unit, Opinion Writing shortly.  Part of this unit is to learn to write a letter.  We will tie this into our correspondence with our Book Buddies.

*There will be no spelling list this week.  Spelling will start back up next week.

*In Math, we will begin the 5th unit of Everyday Math 2.  Our focus this week will be on place value.  We will use base 10 blocks and coins to study the ones and tens places.

*In Science, we will continue our study of Light and Sound.  This week, we'll how light is blocked, goes through or is reflected using different materials.

*In Writing, we continue to edit stories for punctuation, spelling and adding details.  We will transition to Opinion Writing mid-month.

Looking Ahead:

Monday, January 15th- No School MLK Jr. Day

Tuesday, January 16th- No School- Professional Development

Update December 18th

Our Family & Friends celebrated my daughter, Arya's 3rd birthday this weekend at The Maker Farm in Westford.  We had a fabulous time!

*This Thursday, Winter Party!  Looking forward to celebrating with the class.  Thank you to everyone that is volunteering or donating items!

*Friday P.M.- All school holiday sing-a-long.

No School December 25-January 1st.  We will return to school on Tuesday, January 2nd.

*Last week, we spent most of the week indoors due to the temperature.  Just for reference, we do not send kids out to recess if the temperature/wind chill is below 20 degrees.  I hope we can get out and enjoy some fresh air this week! If you would like your child to leave their snow clothes at school each day during the week, please discuss this with your child and let them know it's okay to do so!  It can be a lot of work for them to carry snow clothes in big bags back and forth to school each day.  I'm happy to have kiddos leave their snow clothes at school and make sure they go home every Friday.  If this is something you want your child to do, just let them know.  Otherwise I'll continue to have them bring them back and forth.

*Thank you for sending water bottles in each day!  It's really helpful for the kids to have water bottles at their tables throughout the day for our frequent water breaks!

*Last week, we finished up Unit 4 in Math.  This week, we will catch up with math journal pages we've missed, play games to increase our fact fluency and combinations of 10.  I will also meet with students individually to quickly assess their fact fluency to better group them in math groups for our math rounds.

*There will be a spelling list this week but no spelling the week we get back from vacation.

*In Science, we will continue to talk about instruments or natural objects that make light.  Students will work to write their own light book during Science this week.

*We will continue learning about holidays this week.  Our focus this week will be on:

*Las Posadas

*Kwanzaa

*Diwali
*Hanukkah

*Christmas

*I want to wish you and your families a happy winter break.  Thank you for all you to do to support your child at school.  They are all excelling and showing great growth.  Thank you!