reminders

Tonight is Mark Twain Fiesta Night at Los Tios from 4-6pm. Everyone is invited to join the fun and Mark Twain will receive 20% of the proceeds from the night (excluding adult beverages). Be sure to let them know you are a Twain family when paying your bill in order for our school to benefit! I hope to see everyone there!

We had a visitor from Boy Scout Pack 34 today to tell the boys a bit about scouts. He extended an invitation to meet more in depth tomorrow at St. Mark's School at 6:00pm. The boys seemed like they wanted to learn more...check it out!

What Animals Do

The children proudly finished their "What Animals Do" books and were excited to bring them home today. Be sure to ask your child to read their noun/verb books aloud to you tonight!

collect 20 together

We had fun practicing our addition skills...it's always fun when teddy bear counters are involved!

using our 5 senses

Today we had a small apple snack and at the same time talked about what we could see, smell, hear, taste and feel as we bit into the apple. Tomorrow we will do this again with something salty and crunchy. I challenge you to have this type of conversation at dinner this week. After a few practice runs, I know this will be easy for your child to do all on their own!

first time

Ok, parents. This picture is for you. Y'all seemed OVERLY anxious about a few spelling words...I didn't even tell you I was giving them a small math assessment today. Today was like any other day...full and fun!

Math is Everywhere

Great job! The kids reported having a great time with this family project!

quiet, please!

No reason to post this...other than it just being so darn cute! I was doing reading groups when I happened to look up and see this. I guess they wanted an audience!

writing

I know it's only been 2 weeks...but I have already seen growth in their writing! We have been working so hard on learning about what makes a sentence. We've learned that sentences start with a capital letter and end with a period (we'll learn about other options soon!). We've learned how to space and have even touched upon what makes a noun and what makes a verb using my favorite program, Multi-Sensory Grammar. It is a fun way to teach students the nine parts of speech (of course, we won't be learning all 9 in 1st grade!) involving more than the pencil, paper, and textbook method. It involves using colors to help the students understand the various parts of speech. Play with nouns and verbs at home with your 1st grader...they can do it!

The children chose 6 animals to write simple yellow (noun), orange (verb) sentences to describe each picture. All spelling, spacing, punctuation, capitalization and sentence ideas was done independently. They showed they learned a lot!

today's math games

During reading groups, the children took turns building different number collections.

We played "Rock, Paper, Scissors" 20 times with a partner and tallied who won...and then did it again! We also played "Dice, Roll and Tally." Both gave us more exposure to the tally system and had fun, too!

busy books

We have black/white composition books that we lovingly call "busy books." When the children have finished all assigned work and has a few free moments, they can get their busy books out and do WHATEVER they want with them...as long as they keep busy! Many draw, scribble, doodle, etc. but I am pleased to see that a lot of them like to write!

The Golden Rule

We read a book that the kids LOVED...Kindness is Cooler, Mrs. Ruler! A quote from the book that we really enjoyed was "a slice of nice makes a mile of smile."

Prince tales

Just a heads up...apparently this class LOVES to visit with our good friend, Prince. I've seen a fair amount of tattles, a few stories, a secret or two and even a confession!

patterns

The children will often have "jobs" to complete during our reading group rotation. Many of these follow objectives covered recently in class and are used to reinforce the given concept.

reading groups

I've finished testing the students for their current reading levels. I use these as a baseline to better help me form my weekly reading groups. Be forewarned...they change OFTEN!!!

number line

We made our own numberlines to 55 and told "one more and one less" stories to better understand which way to go on the number line when we add or subtract.

Schoolhouse Partners

We appear to have a new fundraiser this year. Schoolhouse Partners is a locally owned and operated business that has merged its commitment to education with an innovative way of connecting quality-conscious consumers to dependable, pre-screened service providers. This service connects you to pre-screened, dependable service providers, receive exclusive discounts and most important, designate Mark Twain as your choice to receive contributions from SchoolHouse Partners when you use one of their services! An information sheet and handy magnet were sent home in the Tuesday folders. Check out their website...I am eager to try this out!

fundraisers

Sally Foster and Entertainment book fundraisers went home today. Please consider supporting one or both of these opportunities. No sale is too small...ALL help our children and school! More information to come as I find out when everything is due back to school!

Tuesday Folders

Our Tuesday folders have a new look this year...they are brown in an effort to become more environmentally friendly. To lessen the amount of paperwork many of you have signed up to receive most PTO/school information via email (note the green dot on front of the folders). If you somehow you missed the paperwork involved, a green paper was in this week's folder giving you another opportunity to make the switch! I love the change but am finding all our week's work does not fit in the new slim folders. I will bring back the red folders on Tuesday but they will only contain work from my class...everything else will be in the brown folders. Here are a few helpful tidbits about the red Tuesday folders:

• sent home every Tuesday with the brown folders
• contains only work from previous week except assignments that go in their portfolios or on bulletin boards for display
• PLEASE, PLEASE go over all work with your child as part of their homework assignment...great way for you to informed on what is going on in class as well as a sense of accomplishment for your child
• bring both empty folders back on Wednesday...

I hope this is clear. Confused yet?

Bunny Hop

Today we played a fun game called "Bunny Hop" to reinforce counting on a number line.

Trumpet of the Swan

Every day after recess we cool down on the carpet while listening to my read-aloud chapter book I share with the class. Our first novel is a timeless classic, Trumpet of the Swan. It's about a trumpeter swan that lacks a voice in the traditional "Ko-hoh!" sense, and learns to speak to the world with a trumpet stolen from a music store by his father. With the support of a sweet boy named Sam, who helps Louis learn how to read and write, the swan has some rather unswanlike adventures and ultimately wins the love--and the freedom--of a beautiful swan. The kids love the book and I've been able to even sneak in a bit of Geography and new vocabulary...undetected! I plan on showing the movie when we are done...shhh, don't tell!