Hello Parents,
It was great to see you at parent-teacher conferences this week! I am so happy to be working with such a dedicated, supportive group of parents. I am so grateful to be working with your children every day. BOOK REPORTS: Biography/Autobiography book reports are due on WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28. (Reading Calendars will be due that day as well.) Please don't wait to begin these reports. The students will need time to type up their summary, find a photo, and print everything out. FREE BOOKS: Thank you to all who participated in the Reach for the Stars Reading Challenge. Our class raised enough money to earn several very nice new books for our classroom. HOORAY! PARENTS & PASTRIES Please join us next Friday, March 2nd at 7:45 AM for our Read Across America celebration, in honor of the great author Theodor Geisel (AKA Dr. Seuss). Bring some books and bring your kids and have a great time as we all gather in the gym to enjoy some reading time together. I hope you can make it. BOOK WISH LIST: And speaking of Dr. Seuss... Walmart has the Seuss books on sale right now for $6 each. If you would like to buy any for our classroom, I would love to have them. I would love to have multiple copies (for reading groups) of these: Ten Apples Up On Top (Theo LeSieg), Go, Dog, Go! (Seuss) Hop on Pop (Seuss) Are You My Mother? (PD Eastman) Some of my other favorites for first graders are: Great Day for Up, Green Eggs & Ham, the Foot Book, the Tooth Book, and I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today! Have a wonderful weekend. Enjoy the snow - we have been waiting quite awhile for it to show up!
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IN CLASS THIS WEEK - It has been such a busy, exciting week. We have been learning about geology and a variety of rocks. We have also learned about fossils and the work of paleontologists. I sent home a dinosaur packet that your child can work on at home. You can connect the dinosaur bones with brads (for moveable dinosaurs) or with glue (for stationary dinosaurs).
In honor of Valentine’s Day, we wrote friendship letters to our classmates during our Writer’s Workshop, and we had a nice time together on Valentine’s Day. The sight words that we learned this week are: as, some, has, them. NO SCHOOL MONDAY - There will be no school on Monday, February 19th, in honor of President’s Day. Enjoy your long weekend. DIGITAL BOOK REPORTS - Parents, please be sure that your child has begun reading a book for the February book report. Students need to choose a biography or autobiography about a real person. Book reports are due on WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 28TH. This month’s book reports must be typed on the computer and printed out, so please help your child to give plenty of time to this project. The book report details are included in the PDF with this email. february_book_report__1_.pdf REACH FOR THE STARS AWARDS - I have received the book vouchers for students who participated in the Reach for the Stars Reading Challenge. I will pass the vouchers out to students on Tuesday next week. Please be sure that the vouchers do not get lost - they are like cash that can be used to purchase books at the book fair next week. PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES & EARLY OUT - I look forward to meeting with you for parent-teacher conferences next week. You can sign up through the link on the school email that you received, or you can schedule through the front office. Please remember that both Wednesday AND Thursday will be early out days next week. The book fair will be going on all week. Feel free to stop by and check out the great books that are available for your kids. VALENTINE THANKS - Thank you to all of you for the lovely Valentine notes and gifts that were given to me and Ms. Dastrup. We felt very loved and pampered, and are grateful to be working with a group of such kind families. VOLUNTEER THANKS - Thanks to Margie Brummett for coming to help with our Valentine’s Day activities. It was so nice to have you in our class. Thanks also to Lars and Rochelle Lambertsen for making and baking salt dough “fossils” for the class. The students enjoyed creating their own dinosaur fossils. This week we also had the treat of seeing a lunar model, and seeing some close up geographical images of the moon, as well as some lunar landing videos, presented by Chuck Wood. Thank you so much, Mr. Wood, for taking the time to be with us. Thanks also to all who volunteered for the Dance Festival and for our aquarium field trip. I am so amazed by your generosity. I have sent emails out to those volunteers who will be joining us for the field trip. Hello Parents,
We have had a very busy week in our 1st grade classroom. I am so grateful to be teaching such a great group of children. We have been learning all about the world around us: from the planets far out in our solar system to the layers deep within our earth. We have finished our astronomy unit, and have begun learning about geology and the history of the earth. In our writer’s workshop, we have been using the sight words: get, long, then, to in our reading and writing. We have also been learning the parts of a friendly letter, and have written letters to Farmer Brown (from the cows in Doreen Cronin’s book Click, Clack, Moo - Cows That Type). VALENTINE’S DAY: Next Wednesday is Valentine’s Day, and though we are not going to have an official “party,” we will be having some fun in our classroom celebrating friendship. Your child is welcome to bring valentine cards for his/her classmates. We will decorate paper bags in class, so you do NOT need to decorate a box to hold your child’s valentines. We have 23 students in our class, plus myself (Ms. Novotne) and our instructor, Ms. Dastrup. PLEASE HAVE YOUR CHILD SIGN HIS/HER NAME ON THE VALENTINE CARDS, BUT PLEASE DO NOT WRITE THE NAMES OF CLASSMATES ON THE “to” SECTION. This will save much time and confusion as we pass out valentines. (If you want to fill in the “to” section, you can write “to: My friend.”) We do our best to honor the OCS wellness policy in our classroom, and so I ask that any valentine card “gifts” be either healthy or non-food treats. However, I will not disallow students to give out sweet (store-bought/packaged) gifts. We will be sending the valentine cards/gifts home, so I trust you to manage what you would like your own child to eat. We will play a game with candy conversation hearts in class; if this is a problem for your child, please let me know. There are some ideas on my website for alternatives to sugary treats: https://novotnenews.weebly.com/birthdays--parties.html As always, you are welcome to come and take part in our fun. If you would like to join our Valentine’s Day activities, please let me know, and I will plan for your help. FEBRUARY BOOK REPORTS: The genre for our February book report is biography/autobiography. Please choose a book that is written about (or by) a real person. This book report is different than previous reports, in that we are asking your child to TYPE AND PRINT the report using a computer. Please begin planning early for this report, as it may take a little extra time. If you do not have access to a printer, please let me know. FIRST GRADE FIELD TRIP: The first grade field trip to the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium is scheduled for March 14th. I will send an email out early next week asking for volunteers. Have a wonderful weekend. Enjoy this spring-like winter weather. |
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