I hope you are all enjoying the holiday break and making some fun family memories. I am embarrassed to say that when I went in our classroom over the break I noticed that I did not send the paper home explaining  the packet of work which went home on Friday. This is extra credit that the students can earn comet cash for completing. Please don’t feel the need to complete it all ( unless of course, your kiddo wants to:) !

Happy New Year! See you soon!

Tomorrow is our Reader’s Theater, The Gingerbread Girl. Our performance is about 10 -15 minutes long. I am hoping to have chairs for everyone but wer are expecting a large turnout so luckily the performance is not too long….

Here is some info for tomorrow.

• If your child has a school appropriate outfit that he or she would like to wear to match his or her character, go for it! Narrators may dress up if they would like. This is completely optional, I have signs they will be wearing to show the audience what each role is.
• Please remember to park on the side lot, as 1:00 is when the afternoon kindergarten arrives.
• After the performance, we will be making ornaments in our classroom, and Gingerbread Trees in the cafeteria. Please remember although you are welcome to stay until we finish trees, students will not be dismissed until regular dismissal at 3:30.
• We are so excited to share our performance with you tomorrow! I am beyond proud of theses kiddos!

Thank you to all those who donated for the Lancaster Humane League! We presented our gift to Mr. Mayberry and Hobbs on Thursday. He was delighted that we will be donating to dogs in need in honor of Calvin and Hobbs!

If you are able to send in a bag of candy or stickers by Wednesday it would be appreciated for us to use as prizes on Grinch Day!

Here are a few important reminders for this week.

12/18 Monday– Library ( book exchange)

12/19 Tuesday– Math Test , Phys. Ed

12/20 Wednesday – Art … Our Gingerbread Performance and Holiday cookie decorating

• Our performance starts at 1 pm. Please remember to park on the side lot, as this is also PM kindergarten drop off. 
• Please email me asap and let me know if you are planning to attend the short show ( approx 15 minutes performance). I will try to have chairs available for everyone. 
• After the performance we will be creating cinnamon ornaments to give as holiday gifts and then going to the cafeteria to decorate cookies and ice cream cone trees. This activity will take until we get ready for Art at 2:30. Please do not plan on dismissing children with you at 2:30.

12/21 Thursday – Music – Grinch Day, Wear Green!!!

• We will be taking part in Grinch day fun all day! We appreciate all the donations we received for Wednesday, and we are not in need for parent volunteers on Grinch Day.

12/22 Friday – Library ( no book exchange) 1:30 dismissal. Happy Holidays! See you in 2018.

Tomorrow, Friday 12-15, will be hat day at Central Manor! Students can wear a favorite hat for a 25 cent donation.

Gingerbread man Plays: Our class will be performing The Gingerbread Man play on Wednesday, December 20. You are invited to come and watch their performance.   We will start at 1:00.  Every child will be performing in the play. After the play, families are invited to help your child decorate a special treat together. We will be with all of first grade for the special treat. The afternoon will last until about 2:30 so we are able to get to our special class by 2:40. If you are planning on attending please let me know! You do not need your clearances to come in for the play/special treat! The students will be very excited to share with you the fun of the season!

Gingerbread man Plays: Our class will be performing The Gingerbread Man play on Wednesday, December 20. You are invited to come and watch their performance. Grandparents and young siblings are invited as well- this has been a grandparent favorite in the past!  We will start at 1:00.  We have three different versions of the play to perform for you. Every child will have a part in one of the plays. After the play, families are invited to help your child decorate a special treat together. We will be with all of first grade for the special treat. The afternoon will last until about 2:30 so we are able to get to music by 2:40. If you are planning on attending please let me know! You do not need your clearances to come in for the play/special treat! The students are already excited to starting practicing their parts!

Grinch Day: First grade is celebrating Grinchmas on Thursday, December 21. It is a special celebration for all 4 classes, and we would appreciate your help with some of the supplies. If you are interested in donating any items, please click on the link below. Thank you so much for your support.

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0d4aada829a75-grinch1

Please wear green!

Lots and lots of important dates and events are coming up!

First let’s talk about spelling, vocab, and sight words…

We will have our spelling test on the words below on Friday, December 15. We will not be starting a new lesson next week so NO new spelling words for the week before break.

Math- We are continuing to work on subtraction strategies. This week we are focusing on fact families and related facts.

Social Studies- We are touring Christmas’ Around the World! Last week we traveled to: Canada, Mexico, and France! This week we are taking off for: Australia, Africa, Sweden, Italy, and Japan!

Lots more to come involving Grinch Day in first grade and our reader’s theater presentation.

Reader’s Theater- Wednesday, December 20, 2017 at 1:00 pm ( Parents Welcome)

Grinch Day – Thursday, December 21, 2017

Hello all! Tonight in your child’s folder on the “return to school” side you found two sets of flashcards on rings ( orange and red). These cards are for the students to practice at home and return. I also sent copies of the flashcards home on paper for you to keep at home and use as you would like. The cards on rings will come back and forth the school until your kiddo is able to answer the entire set ( +1, +2…) without using his or her fingers.  Memorizing our facts is becoming more and more important as we move past simple addition and subtraction. When the students master one set of cards, they will get to fill in their names on our Math Shooting Star in the classroom and get a new set. Remember, flashcards on rings travel back and forth to school, the paper ones on copier paper are for you to keep!

We are continuing to take donations for the Humane League until this Tuesday. The following items are greatly appreciated: towels, bones, dog food, blankets, chew toys…

Thank you  to those who have already donated!

Happy (almost) Friday!

Wow! Can you believe it’s the holidays already? We are excited to celebrate a month full of learning about our communities and how we can be good citizens to those around us. Here are our upcoming lessons and events for the week.

Social Studies – In social studies, we are continuing to learn about communities. As part of our unit we will be doing some “good deeds” for our own community. The students and I are working together to come up with some ways to help those around us, who might need a little extra this season. As many of you know, Mr. Mayberry brings his dogs, Calvin and Hobbes to our school as reading buddies for the students every week. We are very appreciative of the time the Mayberry’s give us, so this season we would like to give back to those animals are not as lucky as Calvin and Hobbes. This week we will be collecting dog items for the Humane League of Lancaster County. This is an optional gift that can be sent in with your child any day this week. We are looking for : food, bones, treats, toys, and blankets. The donation will be given as a surprise in honor of Calvin and Hobbes. Thank you in advance for your support!

Math- Last week we completed our third chapter in math. Now we will move on from addition strategies to subtraction strategies to 20. We will continue to throw in some addition along the way to make sure we are checking the sign in the problems, and also reading word problems carefully. During the month of December, we will start an incentive program to learn and memorize our basic facts. You will find flash cards in your first grader’s folder close to the end of the week. Please practice these cards and keep in you kiddo’s folder. On nights when we have a homework page I recommend practicing for 5 minutes or so and spending more time on them when a homework sheet is not due.

Writing- In writing we are working on our December Journals and using a web to guide our writing topics. We are also beginning to conference and edit our work. We are especially looking for proper nouns to be capitalized, and punctuation to be used correctly. Last week, we began to use quotation marks in our writing.

Reading