November 10-14, 2014

This week, due to a wonderful project (Pilgrim Doll Project) that we will be sending home, there will be no reading homework.  While I will read with kiddos every day during our guided reading group time, I will not send the reading homework home.  I want to make sure you and your child have enough time to complete the project by Wednesday, November 19th.  Please see below for details.

THE PILGRIM DOLL PROJECT

As we are approaching Thanks Giving, this week we will read the story of Molly's Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen. This beautiful story tells us how recent immigrant Molly leads her third-grade class to discover that it takes all kinds of pilgrims to make a Thanksgiving. 

This week, in the Tuesday folders, your child will bring a wooden doll with instructions and a few research questions. Your child will interview you and ask you questions about the first pilgrim/ immigrant in your family that came to this country. Please help your child complete the research questions and have them write the answers with pencil, in complete sentences, in their own handwriting. You may help your child with spelling and sentence structure, but please do not write the answers for them. After that, you and your child will dress the pilgrim doll with the traditional clothing of the country that your pilgrim came from. I will send some photos from previous years so you will have an idea.

This project (the research questions and the pilgrim doll) is due By Wednesday, Nov 19th. Each child will get to present their doll on Nov. 20th and 21st. This project by far is one of our most beloved projects in first grade and every year, we, first grade teachers can't wait to see the final product!  Have fun crafting and creating with your child!

THERE WILL BE NO OTHER HOMEWORK THIS WEEK!  Please just focus on the Pilgrim Doll Project J

 Here is what we will be doing this week:

READING and WRITING
This week as part of our non-fiction reading and writing,  we will start our research on Thanksgiving and spend this week writing facts about Thanksgiving, the Mayflower ship, the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. As we learn facts about thanksgiving, we will record our facts and make a book about Thanksgiving.  

MATH
We will continue counting by tens and ones using dimes and pennies and apply our knowledge in problem solving.  Now that we know the two digit numbers so well and we know what each digit in a two digit number mean and what value each digit has, we will practice making 10 more, or 10 less.  For example, the children will be able to show 57 with manipulatives and pictorial models and then add 10 more, which will be 67 or take off 10, which will be 47.  We will also work on different combinations that make 10, such as 4 and 6, 3 and 7, 2 and 8 and so on.

SCIENCE
This week in science we will learn about different forms of energy such as light, heat and sound.  We will discuss the importance of energy in everyday life and how scientists use energy to invent objects that improve our daily lives. 

Habit #5 Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood:  I listen to others without interrupting.  I try to see things from their viewpoint.  I am confident in voicing my own ideas.

REMINDERS:
*Specials- A Group:  PE on Monday, Wednesday and Friday
                   B Group:  PE on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
**Wear tennis shoes for sure on these days!!!!
*Library- Tuesday 11-11:30
*Send orange folders back every day.
*Send a healthy snack with your child every day.  We will eat snack at 10:30

DATES to REMEMBER:

November 19:  Pilgrim Dolls are due

November 24-28:  Thanksgiving Break

December 3:  Early Release Day dismissal @12:45

December 8-12:  Book Fair

December 19:  Winter Break begins

November 3-7, 2014

FIELD TRIP
We are very excited to take our first graders to Zach Theater for a live play (A Year with Frog and Toad).  This is an opportunity that many of our kids experience for the first time in their lives.  We are thankful to our generous Parent Teacher Association for providing us with the fund to do this for our kids.  Our field trip is on Thursday, November 6th.  We will leave campus at around 10 AM.  Please have your child wear a Caraway shirt (if they have one), and comfortable tennis shoes.  Also, please check the weather to see if any warm clothing is needed.  Please pack a disposable sack lunch and water bottle.  We will eat a picnic lunch outside the theater.

 Here is what we will be doing this week:

READING
We will continue learning about non-fiction and this week we will explore a new genre which is biography/autobiography.  Sometimes writers try to teach us about someone's life and therefore they write about the important events in a person's life and things that they have done.  We call these kind of books biography.  Sometimes,  writers write about the important things about their own life and we call this autobiography.  

WRITING
This week we will be finishing up our Spider books.  We have researched, recorded our data, organized our data, and now we are putting everything together.  The kids have worked hard on this project for 2 weeks now and I am super proud of them.  They will be hanging in the hallway for everyone to see!

MATH
This week in math we will learn about money and particularly the value of pennies and dimes.  We will count the dimes by 10 and count the pennies by one.  In the process, we will review the place value and counting by groups of tens and ones.  We will also learn that one dollar is 100 pennies (100 ones) or 10 dimes which is 10 groups of 10.

SOCIAL STUDIES
This week in social studies we will learn about physical characteristics of places and different landforms such as plains, valleys, mountains and hills.  We will also learn about different bodies of water and the characteristics of each such as river, lake and ocean.

Habit #5 Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood:  I listen to others without interrupting.  I try to see things from their viewpoint.  I am confident in voicing my own ideas.

REMINDERS:
*Specials- A Group:  PE on Monday, Wednesday and Friday
               B Group:  PE on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
**Wear tennis shoes for sure on these days!!!!
*Library- Tuesday 11-11:30
*Send orange folders back every day.
*Send a healthy snack with your child every day.  We will eat snack at 10:30

DATES to REMEMBER:

November 6:  Field Trip to ZACH Scott Theater

November 24-28:  Thanksgiving Break

December 3:  Early Release Day dismissal @12:45

December 8-12:  Book Fair

December 19:  Winter Break begins