December 15th Highlights

Hello families,

On Friday we earned a record breaking 144 hearts! This filled our heart jar and we celebrated with more time to do Kodable on the iPads on Monday.

We've begun to focus on features of Non-Fiction books during our readers workshop. Learning about the text features associated with non-fiction helps us as readers to gain as much information as we can from this type of book. Next month we'll use what we've learned and apply it to non-fiction writing as well.

This week we continued to read on our topic of light and daylight patterns. We read: Sun Up, Sun Down, Sun: Our Nearest Star, Light Up the Night, and Earth Cycles. We began talking about the daylight cycle throughout the year as we lead up to the shortest day and longest night--Winter Solstice! Next Friday we will have a Winter Solstice Celebration as a fun way to wrap up this short science unit.

We also did another light exploration, experimenting with different materials to see which things reflect light. We tested many objects and looked to see if we could see the light waves bouncing off and reflecting onto the ceiling or ourselves!

In math we continue to use patterns to help us problem solve and do many kinds of math: story problems, combination problems, skip counting, fact power, and equality exploration. We had great conversation and modeling this week to prove if some equations were true or false. Here are some examples of how we showed our thinking when determining if an equation is true or false:

Now that winter weather is here to stay please make sure that your child comes to school each day with: boots, snow pants, coats, mittens/gloves, hats, and indoor shoes. We go outside each day unless it is below 10 degrees. If you need assistance in getting winter gear for your child please let me know ASAP.

Thanks to all who came out to the Winter Concert last night. I was so proud of our first grade fox kits--they were great performers and showed a lot of HEART as a respectful audience for others as well. I hope you enjoyed the show!

Dates to Remember:
Monday December 18 - Library 11-11:30 am
Friday December 22 - Winter Solstice Celebration 10:00-11:00
December 25 - January 2 - Winter Break -- No School
Wednesday January 3 - School resumes
Wednesday January 10 - Early Dismissal 12:15 -- Teacher In-Service
Monday January 15 - NO SCHOOL - Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Monday January 22 - Library 11 - 11:30

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox