Monday Morning

Monday= B Tuesday= C Wednesday= D Thursday= A Friday= B
Good morning! A quick reminder before you leave the house--don't forget to return your child's green home folder to school this morning! Also, if you have not already returned your conference preference slip or emailed me your preferred times please do so today.

Hope you had a wonderful weekend! I can't wait to have your first grader journal all about their fun times this morning! Have a super day!

First Friday of fall...

Happy Friday! We've had a great first day of autumn here at school today. We celebrated the next season with a fancy writing and art project. Your first grader wrote a cinquain poem today about the autumn! We have learned about root words and the -ing ending. We used this knowledge to write part of our poem about the fall. Our cinquain poem only had 11 words about the autumn. Ask your child to tell you some of the words they used to describe their feelings about the fall! We made beautiful fall trees and leaves with our hands and fingers today, too. Have your child tell you all about it.

A big thank you to everyone for getting their field trip permission slips returned! Yay! We are going to have so much fun on October 6 at the zoo. Mr. Mortenson came down yesterday to teach us about hippos in the deserts of Africa. See if your child can tell you something interesting about this giant creatures.

Don't forget that tonight is movie night! We will be showing the movie "Rio" in the commons. Movie night runs from 6-9 and it is always are great time. Come in jammies and bring a pillow.

Looking ahead for next week's Specials:
Monday = B Tuesday = C Wednesday = D Thursday = A Friday = B

Have a wonderful weekend!

Daily Wrap-Up

We had a great day together! I had lots of sleepy kids this morning from the Royals game last night, but they worked hard! We worked in clubs today reviewing lots of important skills. We practiced writing our spelling words with stamps and we re-visited consonants and vowels. We played a CVC ("consonant, vowel, consonant")roll game and we made silly words. Ask your child to tell you one of their silly words that they invented. We did some comparing and contrasting of the story of The Three Little Pigs. We listened to 3 different versions and compared the similarities and differences of them all.

In math we continued to write equations and work with our 10-frames. Please continue to help your child with the automaticity of basic addition and subtraction facts up to 10. Daily practice, flashcards and the games on this blog page help reinforce these important skills!

We are learning about the deserts of Africa this week. We have studied lions and hippos. Ask your child to tell you something about these desert dwelling creatures. Check out the link on our blog under Art, Science and Social Studies. There are some great National Geographic Kids links to these cool desert creatures! We will be on the lookout for all of them on our field trip October 6! Be sure to send your permission slip back asap!

Don't forget that tomorrow is Movie Night! We will be showing "Rio" from 6-9 pm. Cost is $10 a child or $15 per family. Hope you can make it!

Wednesday Morning...

Good morning, families! Don't forget that today is a Library day. Help your child bring their books back to school this morning. Also, today all field trip forms are due back to school. I am still missing a few. If you have not yet returned your permission slip, please send it back! We are going to be going to the KC Zoo on October 6 and it is always a wonderful time!

Did your kids come home last night talking about the animals of the African desert? We learned some new things about lions yesterday. Check your child's memory by asking them to tell you 3 interesting things about lions!

Tonight is the big Royals baseball game! If you requested tickets, your child brought your tickets home on Monday. Have a great time!

Finally, please remember to complete and return your Conference request sheet. I am so excited to talk with each of you about the wonderful things your child is already doing in first grade!

Don't forget about Movie Night this Friday! Have a great day!

Monday Reminders!

Monday = A Tuesday = B Wednesday = C Thursday = D Friday = A

Hi families! I hope you had a wonderful (and rainy) weekend together. Don't forget that your child's Royals baseball form is due by noon today for the lottery drawing. Every Sunflower student is receiving a free ticket to the Royals game this Wednesday in honor of our Blue Ribbon Award. If you would like additional tickets for your family, be sure to return the form sent home last Thursday.

Also, don't forget that field trip forms are due this week. Your child's yellow form went home last week. If you have not already returned the permission slip, please do as soon as possible!

We have another wonderful week of learning ahead of us!

Learning Celebration is tomorrow!

Hi families! We have exciting news buzzing around Sunflower today! It was officially announced that our school has received the National Blue Ribbon Award from the U.S. Department of Education. AMAZING! It is an enormous honor to received this distinguished honor for excellence in education. We have many celebrations in the making and tonight your child is bringing home information about two important events for us to celebrate together as Sunflower families. Please be sure to read the notes coming home and join us tomorrow for the GEHS football game. We are also expecting a visit from our Mayor tomorrow at our Learning Celebration assembly at 2:30. Join us! We are so proud of our school and all of the children who make this such a wonderful place. Come celebrate with us!

Remember to send a sack lunch to school tomorrow with your child for our school-wide picnic lunch. You will also want to be sure to send a jacket for our outside time. We have many Constitution activities planned to celebrate this great country we live in and this great school that we are a part of. It is always a super-fun day!

Look at what we've been doing in first grade!

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Monday = D Tuesday = A Wednesday = B Thursday = C Friday = D


Did your first grader give you the note about Learning Celebration? A note when home in their backpack yesterday about our annual school wide Learning Celebration and Constitution Day which will be this Friday. Please be sure to send a sack lunch with a non-breakable drink with them on Friday September 16th. We will be having an all-school picnic outside.

Your child also brought home a yellow permission slip for our first field trip. We will be going to the Kansas City Zoo on October 6th to wrap up our unit on habitats. Thank you so everyone who already signed and returned the permission slips! If you haven't, please be sure to sign it and return it to school with your child asap!

Has your first grader told you about our fancy words this week? Test them to see if they can tell you, or act out, the words: politely, pouted and ambled. We have had lots of fun playing charades this week with our new fancy words.

I hope you all have a great rest of the day! Your kiddos looked so nice for pictures this morning.

Busy Mid Week

Thursday = B Friday = C

We had a great middle of the week, today! We have spent the last few days reviewing short /i/. Ask your child to tell you what the short /i/ says (remind them that the short /i/ gets grossed out a lot-that will help them remember its sound!). We have been reading a story in our books called "Miss Jill". Ask your child to tell you about this non-fiction story. We are also working hard on at writing complete sentences. Have your child review the ingredients for a complete sentence. You may even want to challenge them by having them write 3 sentences with this week's spelling words.

In math we are working hard on "take away subtract". I have included a YouTube video below of one of our favorite subtraction songs, "When You Subtract With a Pirate". Test your child's memory to see if they can tell you what a "difference" is. Do they remember what a "sum" is? We continue to work on measuring with non-standard units, too. Try to use words at home such as "taller" and "smaller" to compare sizes of objects.

In science, we did some magic to complete our ocean art habitats! Have your child tell you about their project. They are drying overnight and will be on display later in the week. Come see our ocean wonders!

Don't forget that the fundraiser packets are due back, whether you sold items or not. Please bring your packets back to school as soon as possible.

Thank you so much! Have a great night with your family.

Thursday check-in...

How is it Thursday already? We are off and rolling in first grade. Is your child coming home tired after school? They are working like crazy and learning all sorts of new things. We have been reading a story in whole group called The Van this week. Ask your child to re-tell the story to you. Some of our first graders worked on a sequencing activity today by putting events of the story in order. We made stick puppets and read the story to our partners while we acted out the events. Have your child tell you why the bus was so "crammed" and about the character who comes up with a "solution" to the problem in the story.

We have spent a lot of time of have-to-know first grade words. The words came home on Monday and are posted on our webpage. It is a great idea to help your child learn these words at home. Go for a hunt around the house for the words, make a list of all the spelling words they can find in their library book, write their words in rainbow colors, etc. Get creative! These are no-excuse words that are found in daily first grade text, so lots of exposure pays off for your child's success!

We continue to write like crazy! The kids are already doing better with writing in complete sentences and we just learned about it this week! WOW!

In math we continue to work on "Put Together Add" and the concept that 2 parts of something make a TOTAL. An extra challenge for your child at home is to give them a number (ie. 8) ask them to come up with as many math problems as they can whose answer is 8! This helps them formulate number relationship and recognize the parts can make a total.

We are focusing on the Ocean habitat this week. We learned that the ocean has 3 layers or zones. Check your child's memory by asking them to tell you the 3 zones.
(1. Sunlight Zone, 2. Twilight Zone 3. Midnight Zone)

Upcoming events for your calendar:
* No School September 5th
* Fundraiser Money due September 7th
* Picture Day September 14th

Don't forget Library day is tomorrow!

Have a safe and cool night!