Happy Halloween!

Tomorrow is Halloween!  Reminder - The students may dress in their Halloween costumes. :)

A few happenings -

First Grade Math - Today we finished up our 3rd unit.  We have been working on adding and subtracting story problems like crazy!  The focus of our next unit is place value.

First Grade Phonics - This week we also finished up our phonics unit.  (Unit 4)  This week we worked on trick words, the glued sound -all, quotation marks, handwriting, and dictation.

Religion - Our Promise paper this week taught us about All Saints Day and All Souls Day.  We learned about a few saints.  We have also been going over how to pray the Rosary.  We have prayed starting from the beginning all the way through the first decade.  We will continue until we have prayed the entire Rosary.

Science - We are finishing up our pumpkin unit.  We finally got to cut our pumpkins and investigate the seeds.  It was so interesting!  We found out that we couldn't cut through the tiny pumpkins.  We had to drop them on the ground to open them up.  Then we found out the tiny ones had tiny seeds - and a lot of them!  We counted the seeds in each pumpkin.  Some pumpkins had seeds in the 100's.  One pumpkin had seeds in the 400's!  And...one of our pumpkins ended up rotting.  Boy did that stink!  In the end, our class counted over 1, 500 seeds!  Then I took them home and roasted them.  They were a big hit for snack!

Spelling - Today I introduced the website Spelling City.  The students may use this website to practice their spelling words.  Each list will be uploaded to the website.  When you get to the website, you can get to my page by searching for Resurrection School or by putting in Jodi Sullivan.  Then the students need to find the list they are working on.  Spelling City is also a free app that you can download.

Mrs. Ihlenfeldt has a few things to say about art:


 Grades 1/2 are starting a unit on the art element, color. We all love color and want to use it, but we realized in our last painting that some colors can get muddy looking when mixed together. So we need to learn more about color. Color is very complex, therefore, I teach a little more about color each year. We are making a color wheel and learning the primary colors, and how they mix to make secondary colors. Their placement on the color wheel is important and helps explain color. For some this is a review, but we are also learning new concepts about color, like warm and cool colors, color complements, and their placement on the color wheel. We will be combining ideas about color, lines and shapes in our next project.Have a great week.Happy Halloween! 


Have a great night!  :)

FYI - The first graders have math homework tonight.

Also - Practice the spelling words at home.  This Friday will be our first test.

Have a great night!  :)

Today we had our first spelling lists.  Each week the students will have a pretest on Monday.  (The lists are from our spelling book.  The lists are phonetic and follow a pattern.  If the students get 9 or 10 words correct on Monday, I will give them a different list of high-frequency words.  (sight words)  The high frequency words come from the Rebecca Sitton spelling program.  For the first graders, I'm starting with the third list.  For the second graders, I'm starting where we left off at the end of first grade.)

The spelling test will always be on Friday.  If there is a week where we don't have all five days, we won't have a spelling list.

Each week I'll post the spelling lists on the blog.

First Grade - Phonetic List - Short a Words
an
can
man
ran
had
dad
ant
lap
tag
pants

First Grade - High Frequency List - Words 21-30
be
this
from
I
have
or
by
one
had
not

Second Grade - Phonetic List - Short e Words
send
bell
well
help
fell
went
spell
next
best
sketch

Second Grade - High Frequency List - Words 191-200
world
going
want
school
important
until
form
food
keep
children

A Few Classroom Happenings -

Religion - We have been learning about the rosary and praying the rosary.  This week's Promise Paper talks about the greatest commandment.  It is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind."

Reading - This week in word work we have been doing Halloween centers.  The students are making words out of the letters in Halloween, putting Halloween poems in the correct order, and doing cloze activities with Halloween poems.  Work on writing continues to be a class favorite.  If anyone has any extra blank cards, we are out of those.  They love to write cards to friends and family. :)  In our reading groups, 4 of our 6 groups are working on short plays.

Math - 1st grade - We have been working on subtraction story problems and using math mountains, circle drawings, number lines, and equations to prove them.  We have also been using addition to prove the subtraction problems.

Phonics - 1st grade - We have just starting learning about glued sounds and how to tap them out.  Our first glued sound is -all.  (a-l-l  ball  all)

Spelling - Next week we will finally start spelling.  :)

PBIS - Our class completed their first PBIS challenge!  The challenge was to collect 200 faith shields.  They did it!  Their reward = movie and popcorn!  Yesterday we watched The Emperor's New Groove and Mrs. Petrick popped us some popcorn.  Our next challenge is to collect 300 faith shields.  The class hasn't decided on their incentive yet.

Halloween - Next Friday is Halloween.  The students may dress in their Halloween costumes.  We are also going to have a little Halloween party in the afternoon at 2:00.  Kay Handrick has been very kindly organizing our celebration.  Thank you Kay!

Have a great long weekend!  :)

Monday is picture retake day.  If your child is having pictures on Monday, they may have a dress up day.  They will be able to stay in their picture clothes all day.

Monday is also class picture day.  It is a uniform day.

Have a great weekend!

Last week they were cutting trees in the back of school.  After the students were done eating their snack in the morning, many of them headed to the window to check on the job.  :)