First Grade News

What a busy two weeks we’ve had in first grade! Our take home book bags went home this week! These book bags go home every Monday and come back every Friday. In contrast, the red or blue plastic folder that your child brings home should come back to school every day. In this folder we may put work we are sending home, important information, or homework sheets. Checked homework (with a smiley face or star on it) can stay home.

First grade writers have been working on bringing their stories to life! They’ve learned to unfreeze people by having their characters move and talk, tell a story in small steps, and put feelings into their books! We’ve also practiced sharing our stories with a partner. Sometimes questions from a classmate can help us add more details into our writing.

We continue to review short vowels, digraphs, and blends. First graders practiced these skills with sorting activities, using letter tiles, and by playing phonics games. They reviewed snap words and learned a new game.

In Math, we learned about how to put numbers together and break them apart by using number bonds. Number bonds are visual models that show the parts the form the whole. Number bonds are used to find all the possible sets of two numbers that make a given number. First graders made their own number bonds which are on display on the bulletin board outside the classroom.

In Science, we reviewed what scientists do. First graders noted that scientists study plants, do research, ask questions, use magnifying glasses, and much more! First graders shared what they want to learn about in science this year and decorated their science journals.

In Social Studies, we read the book “Madlenka” by Peter Sis. It’s about a girl who walks around her block but feels like she’s travels the world because of all the different people she meets. We took a walk around our school’s block and noticed everything we saw. We noticed trees, houses, restaurants, food trucks, police officers, and much more. We then discussed that some of the things in our neighborhood are needs, things we need to stay alive, and some things are wants, things we’d like to have but don’t need. We sorted everything we saw in the neighborhood into needs and wants. This led to some interesting discussions! We couldn’t agree on many of the things we saw. For example, are trash cans a need or a want? We could just throw our trash on the street, but then maybe people would get sick.

In Hebrew, we learned the letters reish,bet,vet and kuf and what sound they makes when we add the vowels, kamatz and patach. Then we practiced our reading and we were able to read and write lots of word with the letters that we have learned so far like; mar (bitter), tamar (date), bat (girl) and ram (high).

In Yahadut, We learned about the V’ahavta prayer. We worked on learning the words of the prayer and what they mean, and that the prayer can be found inside of the mezuzah and inside of tefilin. We also had the opportunity to see the inside of a mezuzah.

In parasha (the weekly torah portion), we learned about the story of bereshit (creation), focusing on what God created on each day of the week.  We did a special project where we each made our own books about Beriat Haolam (the creation of the world) – it was so exciting! We also read the story about Noah’s Ark. We learned the Hebrew names for a bunch of the animals that Noah took with him on the ark. We also spoke about how God sent a rainbow to show that he promised to Noah never to destroy the world again and we made our own rainbows and wrote our own promises. Feel free to check out our bulletin boards to see the first graders beautiful work!