Letters From Mrs. Wolf and Mrs. Grieves
St. Anne's Parish School, a nonpublic accredited school, believes Catholic values empower our students to live out their faith guided by the Holy Spirit. St. Anne's community is committed to fulfilling the needs of each child by providing a safe nurturing environment to equip students for life-long learning.
January 29, 2010
Catholic Schools Week
Dividends for life:
Discipline, Faith, knowledge
First Grade Highlights
Religion
We spent our religion time in January sharing about Dr. Martin Luther King and what he stood for, and on how we can show fairness to those around us. First graders will be reading the intentions at our All-School Mass tomorrow. We will also be the leaders for our school mass next Tuesday, February 9.
Reading
We tested on Theme 4, which displayed how we are getting stronger and more confident in our reading and writing skills. We’ll be sharing your child’s skills test with you at conferences. We have begun Theme 5, entitled “Home Sweet Home”, with enjoyable stories about different kinds of homes.
Your February reading calendar for recording minutes will be the one sent home with your child last week for our school’s “I Love to Read Month” activities. If you are unable to locate your calendar, let us know and we can send another. The goal for first graders is to read 100 minutes and week. This can include minutes from an adult reading to them as well as your child reading to an adult or older sibling. Let’s work together to achieve our classroom goal of 720 minutes a week!
Phonics
We learned about “digraphs” and how they sound at both the beginning and ending of words. Digraphs are “whisper” sounds made by sh, ch, wh, and th!
Math
We have tested on Chapter 6 and will share those with you also at conferences. We are just beginning Chapter 7 on telling time. Any practical experience you can provide at home with telling time would be most helpful!
Spelling
We continue to practice with spelling tests, and this past week learned how to play the spelling game “Sparkle”. We have had a practice spelling bee in our classroom, and we are looking forward to our school spelling bee Tuesday afternoon (1:20-1:50) This week there will be no spelling list of words to study!
Health/Science
We discussed what we can do to promote overall health, and have been concentrating on nutrition and the food pyramid. We’ve learned about nutrients, the 5 healthy food groups, and the importance of eating a variety of foods. We’ve talked about calories and have been reading calorie amounts from food labels, including the ones from our morning snacks! Students worked with a partner to be a wise “shopper”, locating and cutting good food choices from grocery ads.
Art
We enjoyed a more formal art lesson, learning about the art form of still lifes and viewing some examples by real artists. Using our nutrition theme, students were asked to make a still life of fruit, using some real life forms to inspire them. Students were excited to add color with pastel chalks. You can enjoy our “masterpieces” on the wall outside our classroom!
Looking Ahead. . .
Kicking things off with our school Winter Olympics today (Monday), we will be incorporating various winter activites into our curriculum. This week we will take a break from our usual reading books to enjoy winter stories and to write a winter poem. We will be learning about temperature and will go outside to practice with real thermometers. We will discuss what mammals are and find out how Minnesota mammals adapt to our cold weather. And, we will begin studying our winter birds and try our hand at home with some bird watching (more on this soon!)
We hope to see you sometime this week for some of our Catholic School activities! Thank you for all the support you offer that helps make our school such a great place to be!
Sincerely,
Karen Wolf Mary Grieves