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!  :)