Weekly Update November 18th

We have had another action-packed week in First Grade!!!  We continue to work on our long vowel sounds in reading, and this week we focused on the long i sound using the "sneaky e" that we learned last week!  Along with the long i, we worked on ch and wh words.  We also wrote descriptive paragraphs.  We each wrote about one other friend in the classroom, first making a web of information, then writing a paragraph with the information!

We have been working on subtraction in math and expanded our knowledge of "related facts."  Now we not only know that 2+3=5 and 3+2=5, but 5-3=2, and 5-2=3!  We will soon be putting this together to learn about entire fact families!  We are also practicing deciding whether a problem requires adding or subtracting!

We just finished our unit on Australia, and our books will come home tonight.  We played a game called Down, Down, Down, in which we have to try to catch a ball, and if we don't catch it, we have to put a different body part on the ground until we are on our bottoms.  We also made bullroarers, which are an Australian instrument (although they aren't made with spoons in real life) and we tried ANZAC cookies.

Here we are playing "Sheep Dog Trials."  The balloons were sheep, and we had to "herd" them into their "pens" on the other side and back to their teammates.  They could only use their cardboard paddle to move the ballroom!  They did a great job!

In religion we have been talking about the new mass parts, and we have been reading a few books.  One was "If I Only Had a Green Nose".  This one is about being happy with yourself, without trying to fit in to the newest fad.  God made us the way we are because that's how he WANTED us.  We shouldn't try to change how we look just because others are doing so.

We took our animal test in science, and we have been studying habitats.  We are having a great time making dioramas of habitats!  They are looking fantastic, and I am very excited to display them! 

Ms. Hermus