Parent Teacher Conferences

Please check you child's folder for the upcoming parent teacher conferences.  I will be holding conferences the week of November 5th.  If you are unable to make the times that are offered please let me know, and we can try to set up a different time on a different week.  I am looking forward to meeting you and discussing your child's progress so far in 1st grade.

Important Upcoming Events

Picture Retake

Friday, October 26th is our picture retake day.  If you would like to have your child's picture redone please send the old one in on Friday to have a new one taken!

Field Trip

On November 2nd we will be going to Pearson's Farm at St. Joseph's college.  We were blessed to receive a grant that allows the 1st grade to go and experience a working farm.  We will be picking different types of root vegetables.  This will go perfectly with our plant unit that we just completed.  On top of this, we will be bringing back the vegetables that we pick so that the ladies in the cafeteria can cook it up for the schools lunch!  This is a great opportunity for students to learn about how plants are grown and used for food.  Please make sure your child is dressed in appropriate fall clothes.  The link below tells a little bit about Pearson's farm.

http://www.sjcme.edu/mercy-center/farm

Harvest Party Celebration

This year Halloween falls on a Wednesday.  As we all know this day is a very exciting for kids.  Because of how much that is going on for them that day, and it being in the middle of the week, we are going to have a small celebration at school.  I am planning on having it be a popcorn movie time in the afternoon.  If you would like to either donate popcorn, another healthy snack, or juice boxes to the celebration please let me know.

Fire Safety

Friday was our Fire Safety day.  We were fortunately enough to have our local fire department come in and share about the importance of fire safety.  They talked about Stop, Drop, Roll, 911, and how to have a plan in place at your home in case there is a fire.  We also got to practice a fire drill with a real fire truck there.  I've attached a great website for kids about fire safety.  It has games and great family things to discuss concerning fire alarms and a fire escape plan.  

http://www.usfa.fema.gov/kids/flash.shtm

Spelling City

Spelling City

Dear Parents,

This year, we will be using VocabularySpellingCity.com in our classroom.
VocabularySpellingCity is a website that helps students learn their weekly spelling and vocabulary words while having fun at the same time.

As a teacher, I will put up my weekly spelling lists on VocabularySpellingCity and your children
can review the words, and play spelling and vocabulary games with their words to reinforce the
learning process.

Here’s how to help your child master his or her spelling and vocabulary words:  Simply go to www.spellingcity.com to see how the site works.  To get started, click on “Sample Lists” and choose any list you like.  Then try the Teach Me, Test Me, or Play A Game link.  You can find our class’ spelling lists by using the Find A List feature and searching for my name, Kristen Saunders, or you can go directly to my VocabularySpellingCity homepage at http://www.spellingcity.com/krissaunders1/.  You can bookmark this URL on your computer to make it easy for your child to access the class’ word lists!

Many kids enjoy building their spelling skills with Spelling City. Please encourage your children to spend about twenty minutes, two nights in a row before their weekly test. Let’s work together as a team to ensure that your child becomes an independent, lifelong learner.

Yours truly,
Mrs. Saunders

Busy Start

This has been a very busy start to the school year, as I'm sure all of you are feeling the business also.  I will try to write a blog once a week or at least every other week to keep you up to date with what is going on in the classroom.  Here are a few highlights from the different subject areas.

Reading:  We have been working on short vowel sounds /a/ and /i/, we've started our small group guided reading groups (some students meet with Mrs. Scorza), we've learned some new vocabulary, and talked about retelling a story using a beginning, middle and end.

Math:  We did some review of number writing 0-9, tally marks, and telling time on the hour.  We have also had the opportunity to use the classroom calculators and we received our own math tool kits.  Ask your child what we have in them so far.

Writing:  We have worked on sentences containing a telling and a naming part.  Our goal now is to try to write 2-3 sentences about ourself or something.  Another goal for writing right now is to remember spaces between words, capital at the beginning of sentences, and punctuation at the end of the sentence.

Science:  Mrs. Scorza has just completed the plant unit.  We have learned about the parts of plants, what the function of the different parts are, and the life cycle of a plant.

Social Studies:  Next week Mrs. Scorza will be moving us on to social studies with a few lessons about Columbus Day