We are “moo-ving” right along in First Grade!

We had a wonderful learning experience last week, the Mobile Dairy Farm came to our school and talked to us about the importance of milk, all the nutrients that come from milk, and actually showed us how to milk a cow!  They showed us the old fashioned way when farmer used to milk cows by hand, then she showed us the machines they use to milk cows.  We learned many amazing facts and even wrote a class book.  Be on the look out for it to come home, I must say it is absolutely precious!

 

Language

We are moving right along with our Language rules.  We will continue reviewing rules 1-9.  I'll introduce rule 10 tomorrow-nouns. However, nouns will not be part of the Daily Oral Language morning work this week. We will simply be reviewing rules 1-9 on our DOL.  We will be doing many activities with nouns and I want the children to have a solid foundation of what a noun is before I incorporate it in their DOL.

Whole Group Reading Sound

This week our sound is /h/ as in hippo.  One of our read alouds for this week is a favorite of mine, Owen and Mzee.  I hope you will hear lots about this amazing story from your child!

Don't forget to read word wall words every night until mastered upon site.  Mastered means they read them as soon as they see them.  Word Wall words are not meant to be decoded, they are to be memorized! Words for this week are: had, him, he. Please make sure to have your child read Read Well homework stories each night to increase fluency and accuracy.  I describe fluency as the ease of the reading rate, as if in conversation, not robotic.  Repetitive reading of familiar text will help build fluency.  Accuracy is the reading without mispronouncing words in the passage.

Math

We are continuing to work on subtraction. We will begin on Chapter 8 Monday as well as various activities to help with this skill. Please remember to watch for the Review page to come home the night before our test.

PUMPKIN TIME

We are going to be investigating, carving, cooking, and having lots of fun with pumpkins the next two weeks.  If you would like to donate a pumpkin for us to carve please let me know!

Alabama Shakespeare Festival

Our Field Trip to the ASF will be Wednesday, October 20th.  We are looking forward to seeing The House at Pooh Corner. If you are attending this field trip with us, please meet us at ASF at 10:50.  We will be eating lunch a little early before we leave.  Please pack an extra yummy and satisfying snack for when we return because I know we will have some “rumbly tumbly’s”.  I will give them extra time since our schedule will be off.  Please let your child wear their blue first grade friends shirt with khaki bottoms.  (They may also wear their blue shirts on Tuesday with blue jeans, I think we all wash every night anyway! :))

PTA Happenings

THANK YOU to the PTA who provided us with a wonderful surprise popsicle party on Friday afternoon.  Each class who reached 100% PTA membership go a popsicle party.  What a fun way to end a wonderful week!

Please turn in all order forms for the Chicken Fundraiser by this Tuesday, October 19th.  I hope you all are stocking up your freezers! I sure am!

Spirit Night at Chick Fil A is this Wednesday, October 20th.  Please support our school and have dinner at Chick Fil A, what a wonderful reason not to cook! Be sure and tell the cashier you are from Blount!

UNITED WAY

Tomorrow is the last day to collect for United Way.  I am sorry I haven’t posted about this earlier.  If you would like to send in money I will get it to the office.  Every little bit helps! Thanks!!

STI HOME

If you are not aware, you can access your child’s grades daily by getting a password from the office and going to our STI at home website.  This is a great way to stay up to date on your child’s grades without having to wait until signed papers come home.  When you stop by the office to get your password be sure to have a picture ID.  I hope you will take advantage of this fabulous program!

REN PLACE

About a week ago I sent home an orange paper that contained information that would allow you to set up an account to access your child’s AR progress.  It will notify you by email each time your child takes a test and tell you their score.  You can also log in to see their yearly progress.  This too, is an excellent tool I hope you all are using.  If you need me to send you another information sheet on this at home program with your user name and password please let me know.

Thank You!

A big thank you to Amanda Smith for putting together our class directory.  I have talked to the children about telephone etiquette, and that the directory is mainly for parents to use to communicate with one another. I also emphasized that they should never make a telephone call to another friend without asking mom or dad.  Please make sure your sweet first grader doesn’t have access to use the directory in an annoying way.  Thank you for your help with this.

Looking forward to another “BOO-tiful” week!

Hugs!