Leverett School Grade 1 Joyful Learning For Young Children 

To honor Martin Luther King this week, our 4th grade buddies came in and helped us make a book about him.  We read books and talked a lot about words we would use to describe this American Hero.  Our buddies helped us come up with some good details.  We also practiced new ways to greet our friends in the morning.  

Sight word notebooks were sent home today.  When sight word sheets come home, encourage your child to add it to this notebook and practice these words at home.  Sight words are words we can not sound out and they are common words we use a lot so we have to memorize them!

We also started our unit on Bears and Habitats.  The children gathered in small groups and told stories of bear sightings.  Then we looked through some interesting bear books and drew pictures of their habitats.

We are writing and reading a lot of non fiction stories these days.  Ask your child about the things he/she is an “expert” about.  We are writing these stories at school now just like real authors of “expert” books.

Happy long weekend!

We eased back into our New Year in first grade by sitting down to paint snow friends.  It was a lot of fun to get out the paint and be creative.  They are now hanging in our classroom and look very pretty.

We also started a unit on reading Jan Brett books for Read Aloud time.  She has so many beautiful winter stories.  This week we read The Mitten.  Children worked with partners to create the characters in the story.  Then we painted, cut them out, labeled them, and created a winter scene for the bulletin board outside our classroom.  Come take a look at it!  It is based on the story.

We have some new math games in the classroom.  They are all reinforcing the math concepts we are working on everyday, adding and subtracting within 10.  By the end of first grade, we hope all first graders know combinations of 10, doubles facts, and +0 and +1 facts.  Here are some kids at work learning our new games.

We started a new unit in writing.  We are now writing non-fiction stories.  Today the kids spent a long time just reading non-fiction texts to become familiar with how they are different from fiction.

We also had a student teacher join our classroom this week.  Harper will be with us from Antioch University on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  We are happy to have her join our class for the next several months.

Have a great weekend!