Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I hope all of you have been having a wonderful winter break. Stay warm tomorrow and I hope to see everyone on Tuesday! Everyone had a great time at our classroom holiday party. Thank you Mrs. Taitler, Mrs. Knapp, and Mrs. Adelman for organizing and helping at the party!

December was a busy month with Children's Book Week. We celebrated Children's Book Week in many special ways. We had a great time visiting the Book Fair. We read with our buddies and had an all school Read-In in the gym. I know many of you also attended Family Reading Night.

Reading
The children are working on mastering the short vowel sounds, using consonant blends, building words from word families, looking for little words inside bigger words, using a variety of word endings and forming contractions. We are also learning about long vowels and short vowels and how words change when a "silent e" is added to the end of the word (ex: hop vs. hope). We are learning about story elements:  main characters, setting, problem and solution. We are continuing to discuss what happens in the beginning, middle, and ending of stories.

Math
The students are doing a fantastic job recognizing the fixers and filling in the missing numbers. They are able to recognize the fixer pattern when solving an addition problem. We learned that addition fact fixers can also be subtraction fact fixers! In addition to learning fact fixers, we are practicing subtraction. The students learned how to "count back" using a number line and practiced their subtraction facts by playing several different math games. One way to practice subtraction at home is to play Subtraction War using a deck of cards. The students really enjoyed this.

Science and Social Studies
In science, we finished up our unit on land and water. Next, we will be learning about weather. We will discuss temperature and learn about the different types of clouds in the sky. In social studies, we are discussing family traditions and celebrations.  Please send in a family picture and email me a family tradition. This will be used in the family books we will be making. We will begin to learn about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Chinese New Year.

Winter Weather
Just a reminder that the children are not permitted to play in the snow at recess without snow pants and boots. Please make sure to send a pair of shoes with your child so they are not wearing boots all day. Also, please send a pair of extra clothes with your child. Many of the kids are coming back from recess snowy and wet from outside!


Happy 2014!  Stay warm!