Here we go!

We are back and ready for our first full week in 2012! I hope you all had a great weekend. We were very busy getting back into our routine today. Your child is bringing home this week's spelling words to practice, as well as their two homework pages (reading and math). Please help your child practice responsibility and encourage them to complete their homework before Friday. Our sound of the week is the bossy R! Please encourage your child to play some of the new games located under the "Reading Games" section on our blog page. These games with strengthen your child's recognition of this bossy sound and hopefully they will have a little bit of fun, too. We read the story "A Perfect Lunch" together today. Please invite your first grader to give you a summary of the story. They should be providing lots of details about this fiction story. We also read aloud the fable of the Lion and the Mouse. Be sure to check our question of the day on our blog page and see if your child can answer it!

In math we began the journey of writing our numbers to 100. We looked for patterns and highlighted similarities we found on our chart. I have included some new games under our "Math Games" section of our website, too. Have them use the interactive 100's board or "Dog Bones" to help them strengthen their understanding of number relationships. We are about to dive into the concept of place value and this week. We reviewed that numbers love to be a in group of 10. Give your child a handful of coins, raisins, M&Ms, paperclips, etc. and have them sort the pile into groups of ten. See if they can count each group using 10 groups and figure out how many total objects they have. (2 groups of 10 plus 4 left over = 24)

Looking ahead for the week, don't forget:

1. PTO meeting tomorrow at 7pm
2. Dominoes Pizza Night Wednesday
3. Time for Kids envelopes can still be returned! Remember it doesn't cost any money and for every postcard addressed, we get 2 subscriptions to Time for Kids!
4. No School next Monday January 16

Let me know if you have any questions or if you need anything. Please help your first grader get lots of sleep this week. I want to keep everyone healthy! Have a great night and get ready for that predicted blast of winter ahead!