Monday, February 14th

Spelling Words: low, slow, grow, road, soap, boat, little, handle, carry, would

Challenge Words: swallow, scarecrow, stagecoach, oatmeal, approach

Sight Words: our, pretty, surprise, over, three, mouse

Reading: This week we are working on the long /o/ sound. We are learning all of the different ways that long /o/ can show up in words that we read and write. The four ways we recognize long /o/ are:

o _ e (o with a magic e) -- words like bone, nose, chose...

ow -- words like snow, shadow, know...

oa -- words like boat, goat, road...

o (standing alone) -- words like go, no, so...

Math: This week we are working again on counting back using a number line and related facts. We call our related facts, "fact families." Help your child relate addition and subtraction facts using fact families. If we look at 3 numbers, we know that we can make 2 addition and 2 subtraction facts using only the numbers in the fact family.

4, 8, 12

4 + 8 = 12 8 + 4 = 12

12 - 4 = 8 12 - 8 = 4

Thank you to all the volunteers for a wonderful Valentine Party! We made some fantastic candy necklaces, played bingo, decorated yummy cookies and made fabulous bookmarks. Congratulations to Gabrielle for having the closest estimate of candy kisses in the jar. Gabrielle guessed there were 113 kisses and actually there were 112. Wow! Way to go! That is GREAT estimating!

The 100th day of school is on Thursday. Please send in your 100 pieces of food for our classroom snack. We realized today that if everyone brings in 100 pieces, we will have 2400 goodies in our trail mix. Pretty impressive! We will also be writing about being 100 years old and what we would do if someone gave us a $100 bill. I can't wait to see the ideas we have. There are some pretty creative first graders in 1-4.

Please check your email for conference times and dates. I look forward to meeting with everyone to share the wonderful progress we have made this year. If your time or date does not work, please let me know as soon as possible. We will work together to find a time that works best for everyone. Thanks!

Gym: We will be skating again in gym. Please send in helmets and skates on Thursday (as long as the ice is still there)!