Week 2 and Moving Forward!

We learned a lot last week!  Besides covering many of our usual procedures and routines we had continual practice keeping masks up and face shields down.  Children often surprise us in how quickly they can adjust to new situations and our class is showing us their resiliency.  

This week we can sit at desks and use our pencil boxes full of new tools!  We are thankful for this transition.  We will move through the basic strokes of good handwriting and practice our fine motor skills.  Students will receive their second reader and we will continue to stress the importance of reading at home and keeping their reading log up to date. Daily we will practice phonemic awareness with quick, oral group sound and word games.  Practice identifying rhyming words often at home. Say three letter words slowly and ask your child to identify the first or the last sound.  At story time our focus will be on learning about the setting and characters in a book.

Our first Bible story is on the creation.  Talk about being thankful for God's creation at home.  We will practice our first Bible verse to prepare for a quick quiz on Friday.  Students will  learn about praise and making requests as we pray together as a class.

In math we will begin Chapter 1 on comparing and sorting objects.  This gives us an easy chapter to practice good listening skills as we learn how to watch, wait and work independently as a class.

In social studies we will be adding to the classroom rules based on student ideas organizing our ideas into the categories of showing respect, making good choices and solving problems.  Our first Social Studies magazine covers how to be a good citizen.  This will be the focus of our study for several weeks as we learn and practice how to be a positive, contributing member of every group.

We'll begin our first science unit on weather this week!  Students will share what they already know about weather and what they'd like to learn.

In art we'll be painting with watercolor paints as we study the artist Winslow Homer.

We're looking forward to a fun week of learning,

Mrs. Luoma