Weekly Spelling Lists -
Phonetic List - Vowel-Consonant-e Syllable (Including suffix s)
tape
dime
hope
rule
whale
slide
spoke
tune
grapes
notes

High-Frequency List - Words 121-130
another
came
come
work
three
must
because
does
part
even

Reading - Our word work focus continues to be homophones.  The students are always working hard in daily five - read to self, read to someone, listening, work on writing, and word work!

Religion - We have been reading out of our book.  We have been reading about Jesus showing God's love.  We read the Bible stories of Jesus curing a sick man and Jesus raising the daughter of Jairus.  Every Friday we work with our Promise Paper.  The Promise Paper teaches us about the weekly Gospel.  During Lent we have a "take five" each morning.  Last week one of the take five moments was to take five minutes to do a decade of the rosary.  It was so beautiful!  As a class we did the decade and then we had special intentions that we prayed for.  Another take five our class really enjoyed was thinking about five things that you are grateful for.  Our class has Lent journals that they may write in.  Most of the students chose to not only think about things that they are thankful for, but to add them to their Lent journal too!  The first graders did an amazing job! Here are a few of the journals.  

Math - In math we have been adding two digit numbers with and without regrouping.  We worked on grouping by tens.  We worked on patterns.  We worked on place value.  (ones, tens, and hundreds)  This week we are starting to learn a very tricky game that has a lot of math in it - cribbage!  Today I took a group of six kids and we learned the basics.  Tomorrow the other twelve will have the same lesson.  :)

Miles leading our class in counting milk rings

Phonics - We are learning about the long vowels.  The letter keyword sounds are a - safe, e - Pete, i -pine, o - home, u - mule and rule.  We are learning how to mark long vowels with a macron.  We are learning about another syllable type - the vowel-consonant-e syllable.  We call it v-e.  We're also practicing how to mark v-e syllables vs. closed syllables.  This unit is pretty long - and we just started it today.  Our spelling lists come from our phonics units.  I'm guessing right now that we most likely won't have a spelling list next week as we'll still be working on v-e next week.  

Social Studies - The class is loving this unit!  Each day we have social studies we learn about three states and their capital.  We are learning the states in ABC order.  So far we have learned 9 states - Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, and Florida.  We find the state on our puzzle on the Smart Board and add it, we learn the capital, and we learn facts about each state from a book we have.  We are also learning the song "Fifty Nifty"!  They are doing such a great job!  We also have a few USA puzzles in our room.  They can't get enough of these puzzles!

Flat Stanley - We finished reading Flat Stanley, so then we read Stanley, Flat Again.  Friday we finished that story, so today we started reading Stanley in Space.  And...two of our Stanleys have returned from their adventures!  Miles' Flat Stanley returned from Arizona and Luke's Flat Stanley returned from North Dakota.  We loved reading about their adventures and seeing their pictures!

Our Stanley map.  We keep track of all of our Stanleys as they return.

Today was a special day!  Luke's dad came to school!  He showed us how to make paper!  Thank you Mr. Van Egeren!  We had a blast today!  :)

Nice group picture

 Silly group picture

 And...The Luke Pose!

Field Trip - April 11th we are going to The Building For Kids in Appleton.  We will leave school around 8:30.  At the children's museum we will get to explore the museum AND we will get to take a class called magnificent matter.  I've taken the class multiple times with other first grades and this group is going to love it!  It's all sorts of fun and amazing science experiments!  We will be returning to school around 2:15.  Our class will need three chaperones.  We have one chaperone for sure and one maybe.  If you would be able to chaperone please let me know.  We'd love to have you!

Last week my son Zak was sick.  He was diagnosed with the influenza.  He missed four days of school last week!  Our class did end up having subs on Thursday and Friday.  They had Mrs. Gast, Profe, and Ms. Mac!  They were pretty happy with that!  I can't thank the Holy Cross teachers and the kids in our class enough for helping out so much when Zak was sick!  

Have a great week!  :)

Weekly Spelling Lists -

Phonetic List - Vowel Teams au, aw and Suffixes ed, ing, s
fawn
hawk
sauce
printed
twisted
stinging
spending
plants
brings
blends

High Frequency List - Words 111-120
man
too
any
day
same
right
look
think
also
around

Reading - This week our word work focus is homophones.  Homophones are words that sound alike, but they are spelled different and they have different meanings.  (red, read, pair, pear, etc.)  The kids are working so hard in daily 5 while we are having guided reading groups!

Math - In math this week so far we learned a new word - congruent.  Congruent shapes are the same shape and the same size.  We practiced making congruent shapes on the geoboards.  We also worked on grouping things by ten and counting.  We'll also be practicing place value this week.

Social Studies - While we're waiting for our next Einstein science kit to arrive, we'll be working on some social studies.  We are going to be learning about the 50 states and their capitals.  Today we also learned the difference between a continent, country, state, and city.

Flat Stanley - All of our Stanleys have hopefully arrived at their destinations!  In our letter we told our friends to have Stanley back by April 1st.  We hope Stanley is enjoying himself!  We can't wait to hear his adventures and map his locations!

Today is Mrs. Gast's birthday!  We had fun making a birthday board with her!

Upcoming Field Trip - April 11th kindergarten and first grade are going to The Building For Kids in Appleton.  The field trip will be most of the day.  Our class is going to need 3 chaperones.  Please let me know if you'd be interested in joining us. 

Our class auction project is coming along!  The cross has now been stained.  The tiles are on this, but they haven't been glued down yet.  It's turning out beautiful!

Have a great week!  :)

Flat Stanley - Monday we worked on our Flat Stanley project!  Here we are with our Flat Stanleys before we sent them in the mail.  Kenzy and Michela were not at school, but we included their Stanleys - They are on Owen's knee and Bennett's knee.

We learned how to address an envelope.  It was hard - we had to write smaller than we are used to so that we could make all the words fit on the correct place on the envelope.  We also learned about letter writing.  We learned where the date, the greeting, the body, the closing, and signature need to go.

Here they are!  Flat Stanley and the letters are ready to go!  I gave them to Mrs. Boudwin to put in the outgoing mail.  Now we'll wait!  We can't wait to see where our Stanley's go on their adventures!  We are excited to read our letters and see some pictures!

Spelling - We will not have a list this week.  We will have a new list when we return from spring break.

Reading - We worked on word families in word work.  This coming week we will have Dr. Seuss themed word work centers.  During daily 5 a lot of students enjoy work on writing!  They can work in their journals, work in writer's workshop, make a story, write a friendly letter, make a squiggle, etc.  It's a popular center.  While the students are working in centers, I am meeting with guided reading groups.  We have four different groups in our classroom.

Writing - We continue to work on handwriting and work on our stories in writer's workshop.  The students follow the steps of the writing process.  They love getting books published!

On Friday we did some Dr. Seuss writing.  After reading The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, the students could either write about how they would get the Cat in the Hat to leave or what they would eat instead of green eggs and ham.  The tricky part about the green eggs and ham stories - was that what they would eat had to rhyme.

Science - In our solids and liquids unit, we have been learning about the properties of liquids.  This week we did drop races.  First we made our predictions - which liquid did we think would win.  Then we did our experiment.  We put a drop of two different liquids on our tray.  Then we flipped the tray up so see which liquid would win.  Our order from fastest to slowest ended up being water, oil, glue, shampoo.  Our next lesson was on mixing liquids.  We were trying to find out if the liquids would mix or stay on top of one another.  We predicted first - and then ran our experiments.  We found out that water and shampoo mixed, water and glue mixed, and that water and oil didn't mix.  The oil stayed on top of the water - even after mixing.  We then made a wave bottle in our classroom.  We filled a water bottle with water and food coloring.  Then we added oil.  The students love shaking it - and then watching the liquids separate.

Religion - We worked out of our book a lot this week.  We learned about Jesus' disciples.  We also learned about the story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho.  At church on Friday Abbot Gary's homily was all about kindness and how to be a friend.  The students really got into his homily - as we discuss this often.  After church they continued to talk about the words of his homily in our classroom.  This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and Lent begins.  We will have mass on Wednesday.  Friday at 11:00 we will have Stations of the Cross.

Phonics - This week in phonics we learned about two new vowel teams - ou and oo.  Both of these vowel teams are tricky because they both have two sounds.  ou - trout and -ou soup.  oo school and oo book.  

Math - We continued to work on doubles plus one and doubles minus one this week.  On Friday we did some Dr. Suess graphing in math.  We used colored goldfish and read the story One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

Using wrap-ups to practice doubles plus one facts

On Friday we celebrated Dr. Seuss. His birthday is March 2,  He would be 115 this year!  We learned about Dr. Seuss in our Scholastic News.  We learned some Dr. Seuss facts.  We read all sorts of Dr. Seuss books.  Our reading buddies helped us make Cat in the Hat hats.  We ended the day by watching Horton Hears a Who with our kindergarten friends.

The Holy Cross auction is coming up on April 6th!  This week we worked on our classroom project.  We are making a cross out of tile, alcohol ink, and wood.  Here's a sneak peak of how far we are -

Painting in our classroom

The tiles before being painted

 The tiles after being painted

Mr. Sullivan is working on building the wooden background for us.  Next step - staining the cross.

Flat Stanley - Thank you so much for getting the Flat Stanley information back so quickly!  All of the Stanleys have been made and laminated.  We are hoping that all of the addresses will be back on Monday and then we will be able to address our envelopes and send our Stanleys on their journeys!  This is such a fun project!  

We had a lot of recess fun - sometimes inside and sometimes outside.  Here are a few random recess shots from the week -

 We are currently loving puzzles!

Have a great week!  :)