Happy New Year!

Greetings, wonderful 1st/2nd parents! I hope that you have enjoyed your Christmas! I also wish you a Happy New Year! Boy, am I missing our little explorers! It feels like forever since I have seen their sweet smiles! I can't wait to hear about their break! I am also looking forward to January and the important events coming up this month! Please read carefully as some events have been rescheduled. 

Important Dates:

Monday, January 2nd: NO SCHOOL

Friday, January 6th, RESCHEDULED Christmas Around-the-World Sing-a-Long Celebration! 

Parents are welcome to attend!  The singing and some readings will begin at 11:30, then lunch in the classrooms. Many of you volunteered to prepare or purchase food from around the world for this celebration. Please let me know if you are still able to do this, thank you so much! Our BOOK EXCHANGE will be moved to this afternoon as well. You may send your student with a new or used children's book in good condition. They will pick a different one to take home. Picture books are great, but chapter books are really great! Thank you!

Beginning Monday, January 9th: MAP, DIBELS, and Fountas and Pinnell Reading Assessments

Monday, January 16th: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, NO SCHOOL

Tuesday, January 24th: OMSI field trip 

Thursday, January 26th: Half-Day, 6:30 pm: Open House

Friday, January 27th: NO SCHOOL, Teacher Work Day, end of 2nd quarter

In our first week back we will be reviewing our school routines and expectations and focusing on the topic of resolutions and goals, being the very best we can be! We will also learn about schools around the world and finish up our Christmas-Around-the-World studies!

1st Grade Reading:

2nd Grade Reading:

Math: In 1st-grade math, we will study related facts, fact-families, and missing addends. In 2nd-grade math, we will study 2-digit fact families. In writing, we will write about our goals for the new year and share these. We will begin studying the continent of Asia in Social Studies. In science, we will focus on things that move, seasons, and animal hibernation. We will finish our Bible study on Christmas, Mary and Joseph obeying God, and our memory verse will be the one we left off on before all of our snow days:

Recent Fun!:

We loved the chapel presentation! 

We practiced our Christmas songs! 

We did a fun STEM project in which students could only use a specific number of spice drops and toothpicks to construct the tallest Christmas tree. We discussed strategies and found that the base of our structures was important in determining the potential height of our structures.

Have a very Happy New Year!!! See you in 2017! 

Friday, December 9th

Greetings, wonderful 1st/2nd parents! I hope that you have enjoyed the snow and are staying warm today! I have a lot of important dates and events to share with you! I will also be sharing our plans for next week and some pictures! Thanks so much for dropping by!

                We even had a little snowfall during the school day this week. Not sure if you can see the flakes coming down in this picture below, but the kiddos saw them right away! It was quite the event!

Saturday, December 10th: LulaRoe Clothing Fundraiser for Sonshine Christian 10 AM-1 PM at Faith Baptist.

December 12th-16th: Christmas Spirit Week!!! 

Monday: Christmas Socks Day

Tuesday: Holiday Sweater/Shirt Day

Wednesday: Christmas Headwear Day

Thursday: Christmas Colors (red/green)

Friday: Christmas PJ Day!/Book Exchange Party(students bring in an unwrapped new or used book in good condition for a classroom book exchange)

Friday, December 16th: Half-Day/ Christmas Sing-a-Long (families invited!) and

 Christmas-Around-the-World (International Food Sampling) (12:00 dismissal).

10:45: Christmas Carol Singing and Classroom Parties (International Food Sampling)

 ***We need food from different countries to showcase at our Christmas-Around-the-World festivities on Friday the 12th. Food may be purchased or made. Please let me know if you have a food item you can donate, its country of origin, and any known allergens in the ingredients. (We especially need to be mindful of nut-containing products).***

Thank you!!!

Here is a website link that will give you kid-friendly recipes from around-the-world that you may want to bring on Friday the 12th. What a fun project to do at home with your kiddo!:

http://www.easy-kids-recipes.com/international-recipes.html

December 24th, 6:30 pm.: Christmas Eve Candlelight Service.
Students are practicing songs to sing for this service. Hope to see you there!

Monday, December 19th- Monday, January 2nd: Christmas Break.
Students return to school on Tuesday, January 3rd.

 

Tuesday, January 24th: OMSI Field Trip (mark your calendars now, details to come)!

Coming Up in Bible: We will be focusing on Christmastime and working on memorizing this verse:

*Students will be tested on their memory verses on Friday mornings and given a sticker if they are successful. We are including studying the memory verse during the time we study spelling words each day, but working on it at home is very helpful too! Our verse this week is Isaiah 9:6:

In reading, we will continue studying texts that explain Christmas Around the World, do comprehension questions on them, and add them to our "luggage". We will also finish up any testing from this week. We will read from some Christmas Around the World books that Mrs. Johnson supplied our classroom with! In math, both groups will be finishing up lessons in the chapter they are working on and reviewing concepts. They will be taking tests and getting a preview of the next chapter. 

                                                   We had a little visit from St. Nick...

 

 

Saturday, December 3rd

   I hope you are all enjoying your weekend, super-star 1st/2nd parents! I have so much to share with you! We are in that wonderful, magical time of the year in which we are preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus. The kids have had a lot of energy this last week and I only anticipate the excitement will grow over the next few weeks! The explorers have made their luggage for their trip around the world! Don't worry, no flights to book, we will be studying Christmas Around the World in our little classroom. Every time we study a country, the students will get to attach a sticker from that country to their paper-bag "suitcase" and put the information they collect about that country into their suitcase (the paper-bag suitcases in their cubbies won't go home until the 16th of December, when our trip comes to a close).

Important Dates Coming Up:

Saturday, December 10th: LulaRoe Clothing Fundraiser for Sonshine Christian 10 Am-1 PM at Faith Baptist.

December 12th-16th: Christmas Spirit Week!!! 

Monday: Christmas Socks Day

Tuesday: Holiday Sweater/Shirt Day

Wednesday: Christmas Headwear Day

Thursday: Christmas Colors (red/green)

Friday: Christmas PJ Day! 

Friday, December 16th: Half-Day/ Christmas Sing-a-Long (families invited!) and

 Christmas-Around-the-World (International Food Sampling) (12:00 dismissal).

10:45: Christmas Carol Singing and Classroom Parties (International Food Sampling)

 ***We need food from different countries to showcase at our Christmas-Around-the-World festivities on Friday the 12th. Food may be purchased or made. Please let me know if you have a food item you can donate, its country of origin, and any known allergens in the ingredients. (We especially need to be mindful of nut-containing products).***

Thank you!!!

Here is a website link that will give you kid-friendly recipes from around-the-world that you may want to bring on Friday the 12th. What a fun project to do at home with your kiddo!:

http://www.easy-kids-recipes.com/international-recipes.html

December 24th, 6:30 pm.: Christmas Eve Candlelight Service.
Students are practicing songs to sing for this service. Hope to see you there!

Monday, December 19th- Monday, January 2nd: Christmas Break.
Students return to school on Tuesday, January 3rd.

This next week will be fairly routine. We will begin our studies of Christmas around the world, continue reading in our latest Magic Tree House book, "Vikings at Sunrise", and focus on the continent of Europe (especially Christmas traditions in the countries there). In Bible, we will continue studying Elijah. Our verse for this week is 2 Corinthians 3:12.

Coming Up in Reading:

1st Grade: 

2nd Grade:

In math, first-grade will be using doubles to subtract, writing number sentences, making 10 to subtract, using related facts to add and subtract, and focusing on fact-families.

Second-grade will continue to work in double-digit addition, as they add three or four-digit numbers. When this skill is sharp, we will move onto problem-solving strategies and making a model using double-digit addition. These are tricky concepts and these are some steps we use in class that will help you as you are working with your kiddos at home. Let's use 46+46+12 as our example. The steps remain the same for all 3 (or 4) double-digit addition problems. I am capitalizing important steps we emphasize in class.

1. First, ADD THE ONES (so, 6+6+2).
Look for any "doubles" or (numbers that add up to 10) to make it easier. In this case, the doubles-fact is 6+6, so we do that first, then add 2 to it. We end up with 14.

2. Next, REGROUP (if needed). So, if the sum of the ones column is 10 or greater, we need to "regroup" (or "carry" the tens). I say we raise the tens and drop the ones down. With the sum being 14, we will carry one ten over and write the "4" in the ones column.

3. Last, ADD THE TENS So, now we are adding 1 (from 14) to 4, 4, and 1. Do you see a doubles fact? Awesome! Add that up first, just like we did before. So, 4+4=8, then add the 2 "1's", . So, now we have 10. Our whole sum will be (drum roll, please): 104!

I hope that this made it easier to see how these are taught in class, and I am hoping that it will make homework easier at home. This is an area that is taking us longer than usual, so there hasn't been homework every night, but be on the lookout for it this next week as we complete these lessons.It would be great if you could make some double-digit addition problems for your kiddos and work through them with them. If you use the language of our steps: add the ones, regroup (if needed), and add the tens, the consistency will benefit them. We have had some trouble with students skipping one of the steps, or not writing the tens that they are carrying. These are little errors to catch and remedy if you see them. It won't be long, and these smart cookies will be doing 3 and 4-digit addition! They are learning so much and I am proud of them!

Thank you for all you do to support your kiddos and our school! It is so appreciated! Now, enjoy some pictures from this week: