Happy Holidays!

I can't believe the end of the first semester is here!  It has been a fun-filled, very busy first semester.  Here is a quick rundown of the many things they have learned this semester:

WRITING
*We have been working hard on complete sentences, capitalization, punctuation, topic sentences, closing sentences.
*Mrs. Larkin has been coming in once a week to do some written expression with 1st grade as part of a grant she wrote in the spring.  The kids are learning to add more details to their writing.  You may have heard them sing this song:

Green group,
Blue do,
What does it look like?
What is it made of?
Pink Parts,
White Where,
What else do I know?

*We have learned about nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES
*We learned about different types of soil:  sand, clay, humus
*This month we talked about different traditions we have in our families for holidays, birthdays, tooth fairy etc.

READING
*We have learned how good readers:  ask questions, make connections, infer, use context clues to figure out the meaning of unknown words.
*We have been working on becoming more fluent readers and reading with expression.
*We have read fiction, nonfiction, articles, poems, etc.
*This past week we did an author study on Jan Brett.  We read:  The Hat, The Mitten, and The Gingerbread Baby.  We also read another version of the mitten and did a venn diagram to compare the two stories.

1st GRADE MATH
If your child is in  my math class, here are some things we have been working on that they can continue to practice at home:
*Counting by 1's, 2's, 5's, 10's to 120
*Counting back by 1's starting with any number between 1-00.
*Telling Time to the hour and half hour
*Solving number stories
*Counting and exchanging coins

That is a A LOT of stuff and it is not even everything.  Next semester will be filled with more fun and learning.  Some things to look forward to:  science unit on solids and liquids, animal research project, map unit and more!!

I hope you all have a wonderful Winter Break!  I will see you all back at school on Tuesday, January 5th (Monday, January 4th is a teacher work day).

Happy Holidays!
Mrs. Selm

Lights Out!

Well we had some excitement yesterday as the power went out around 12:25 and came back on around 1:30. They did a great job!