Weekly Update

Hi Parents,
Today we studied the art of Rosina Wachtmeister and made cats just like she does.

In math, we began our unit on comparing and ordering numbers by playing a greater than/less than game.

In Science, we are watching our plants grow and learning all about different seeds.

Our class blogger:

I will be in to teach for Sheri tomorrow, Tuesday, and we will be making our covers for our mother's day art books.

I've added some important upcoming dates to the side bar so you can mark your calendars for these events.   Have a great evening.

Mother's Day Tea and Art Show

Mary Cassatt Tea

It's time to celebrate all you wonderful 1st grade moms!   Our class would like to invite you in for tea and an art showing on:

 Monday, May 9th (the Monday after Mother's Day)

from 2:45-3:30.  

The first graders don't know about this yet...I will let them know on Monday, but I wanted to let you know as soon as possible so that you can all try to be there.
I hope you can make it!

Tuesday Extras

Here is our class blogger for this week and two more finished Cassatt-style portraits.

Weekly Update

Hi Parents,
Today we started our day learning about the art of Mary Cassatt.  She was famous for painting pictures of families (especially mothers with their children).  

Inspired by Mary, we drew our own portraits of our mothers next to us.   I bet you moms will recognize yourselves in these adorable portraits.  I think they did a lovely job and they look so sweet.

In science we are learning all about plants and we are growing our own.  It is exciting to come to school in the morning and see how much they grew. 

Remember that our field trip to the Botanical Gardens is on Thursday, May 5th.

We had a terrific assembly today called Rosie the Riveter.   It was a musical about how women worked in factories making planes during WWII.    The students really enjoyed it.

Have a wonderful evening.   I will be in teaching for Mrs. Morissey tomorrow morning.  

Weekly Update

Happy Monday!   Take a look at these gorgeous Chinese vases.   Today we learned all about Henri Matisse and that he often used the same props in many different pictures.  One of those props was a Chinese vase.
We had fun visiting this website about Matisse.   Your children may enjoy exploring it some more at home as well.

As you already heard, we had to cancel our field tirp to the UW botanical gardens due to bus issues.  We are working hard at rescheduling this fun field trip.  We will let you know as soon as we can set a date.

During MATH we are working on Tens and Ones as well as our Morissey Market.  During the market, students earn money throughout the day and then have a chance to work with money and buy things on Fridays.  

Since April is National Poetry Month, we will be studying poems on Mondays.  Today we read a poem titled Cures for a Boring School Day which we all thought was pretty funny since every day in first grade is fun and fast paced.  Then we wrote our own silly class poem.  Here it is:

Cures for a Boring School Day

Weigh chickens

Do ART all day

Eat bacon until you're fat

Blow a gumball until you fly away

Make a book without words

Do nothing at recess

Play math games

Do a little bit of everything!

Our class blogger:

Also, from a previous email...

We no longer have a ‘spelling’ grade on our district report cards for first grade. It is an applied spelling grade- which means, the spelling that students use in their daily writing, journals, writing prompts, etc (not tests).

Our 1^st grade team feels that it is still important to grade students on the weekly words that they are practicing and being tested on, as they are important 1^st grade words to know and the idea is that they will practice and remember these words so that they will use them correctly in their daily writing.

So, the plan is give an ‘applied spelling test’ after every three lists. After lists 1, 2 & 3 and then 4, 5, 6, etc. The ‘applied spelling test’ consists of three sentences that we read to the class. The sentences include words, and spelling rules rules, that have been practiced in their weekly spelling lists. These grades will be entered into the Skyward grading system, under the applied spelling section. The weekly test scores are just for your information, and also to give the kids immediate feedback about how they have done- these weekly grades are NOT entered into Skyward.

The applied spelling test for Lists 1-3 will be coming home tomorrow.  =). We will be doing another applied spelling test for Lists 4-6 sometime in the next week or two.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Welcome Back!

We had a marvelous first day back from vacation.

 
During art we learned all about surrealism and painted dream-like images on giant sheets of newspaper. 

Even the paint palettes are artistic

Our class blogger:

On Mondays, we write all about our weekends, so today we had a chance to write all about our vacations.   We had fun learning about what people did during Spring Break.

We also started Topic 10 in math:  Counting and Number Patterns

Our emergency snack supply has run out, so please remember to send your child to school with a snack.  They definitely get hungry before lunchtime.