With this week being the Week of Respect, there are different things to wear each day to go along with each day's theme. Monday is sweats day, Tuesday is team day, Thursday is silly sock day, and Friday is community pride day. (There's no school Wednesday, so nothing for that day.) Please see the email from the school for more information about each day if you want it.
Here's what we did during our short week last week :
Reading : We added partner reading to the students' repertoires! After independent reading, the students partner read. Last week, the students got their reading partners for the first portion of the year. Ask your child who his/her reading partner is!
Writing : Last week, we went over making sure the pictures match the words on the page and making sure that the students have a beginning, middle, and end to their stories. The students also officially got their writing folders that you helped decorate at home. The students learned how to keep their writing organized between pieces that are done and pieces that they are still working along, as well as how to generate writing ideas from their folders.
Phonics : The students learned their first 'trick words' of the year last week. Ask your child why we do air quotes with our fingers when we say 'trick words.' (We do it because we don't think the words are really all that tricky! Most of them follow phonics rules, we just don't know the rules yet.) In kindergarten, your child may have called them popcorn words.
Math : We finished up our first math unit last week. The students started to investigate how numbers are organized on number grids and learned how to play Rolling for 50 to practice hopping on number grids.
Science : We learned all about the sun last week, and the patterns that we notice about the sun. 1-Bu is quite familiar with which direction the sun rises each morning because it comes right in our classroom windows when we're having our morning meetings. Ask you child which direction the sun rises/sets in, he/she should be able to say 'the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.'
Social Studies : Last week, we talked about how different places in a community have different rules. We also spoke about how sometimes, for special occasions, it's okay to break the rules. Ask your child to tell you about the book Library Lion, and why it was okay when the lion roared in the library (even though roaring in the library was technically against the rules).
Technology : The students learned one of the hardest trackpad skills yet last week, dragging and dropping. We used a number grid math game to practice this tricky skill.
Here are some pictures of 1-Bu in action :