Wednesday Already?

Hi families! I have no idea how it already got to be Wednesday. WOW! We are right in the middle of another great week. Have you had a chance to visit the Book Fair? Our annual Book Fair is going on right now in the school library. It will be open until Friday and there are some super titles to choose from. All proceeds go back to help build our own Sunflower library, so we are so very grateful to all those who come and support it!

Tomorrow is Grandparent and Special Friends Day at lunch! We are inviting all grandparents and/or special friends to come have lunch with their Sunflower student. Don't forget that our first graders eat lunch at 11am. I am looking forward to meeting some special people in the lives of my first graders.

Did your child tell you about our Toys for Tots project? Our first graders have been learning about the differences between needs and wants. As a culminating project, we asked all of our first graders to donate $1 (25, 50 or 75 cents was great, too) to contribute to the Toys for Tots program. A letter came home this week with information about this opportunity to help a child in our community fufill one of their 'wants'. Tomorrow, December 9, is the final day for your first grader to donate to the optional project. Thank you so much for your help in supporting this final component of the lesson.

In math this week, we continue to practice our 10-teams. With the end of the quarter just around the corner, it's almost assessment time. Daily practice with this basic math skills is essential to help your child find greater success! Today, we began learning about 3-D shapes! Your first grader learned: cone, sphere, pyramid, cylinder, cube and prism (rectangular and triangular)! Check their memory to see if they can identify some of these shapes. Make a game of it and see if they can hunt for these shapes in the house.

We continue to work on capitalization. Check your child's understanding and ask them to tell you at least 3 different times when capitalizing is necessary.

We are still learning about Native Americans and we've moved on the the Northwest Coast. We found this region on the map and learned that there are lots of trees in this area. Ask your child to tell you what they know about the Native Americans who live in this region. Have them share their knowledge of totem poles with you, too. We began working on our own class totem pole today. Talk with your child about the symbol they chose to work on and why we decided that thier symbol represented our class family. I can't wait to see our finished product!

Your child is bringing home their adobe pinch pot from our study of the Southwest Native Americans. Have them tell you all about it, but be careful! The pots are fragile!

Happy birthday today to our friend, Charli! Tomorrow we celebrate our friend, Aidan! It's a busy week for us, indeed!

Have a warm and safe night! Practice your spelling words! Don't forget, LIBRARY day is tomorrow. Bring your books back!