Mid-Week Check In

Happy Wednesday everyone! Here are a few highlights of our past few days. We continue to work hard at learning to identify when the /ck/ gets to go on their playdate. Ask your child to explain when a /ck/ gets together to make the /K/ sound. They should be able to verbalize that if the /ck/ sound follows a SHORT vowel sound, the c and k get to play together on their playdate. In math we are working hard on our math fact fluency. The kids have started timed math tests with both addition and subtraction mixed together! Yikes! That is a lot to think about. We are starting off trying to work our facts of +/- 1 or 2 in about 3 minutes. The goal for first grade in to complete 10 problems (+/- 1 or 2) in just one minute and fifteen seconds. Extra practice at home will help your child greatly! The Grab and Go strategy helps out a bunch with this endeavor. Has your child come home talking about safety tips? With this being Safety Week, we have spent our afternoons brainstorming different ways to stay safe both at home and at school. The kids are coming up with some AWESOME ideas. Today we spent a lot of time on stranger dangers. Please follow up with your child about the importance of this safety tip. We also talked at length about looking BOTH ways before you cross the street. Remember that you can never remind your child too often about ways to stay safe. Your follow-up at home really reinforces what we are discussing and thinking about here at school. Yesterday we had our first tornado drill. Did your child tell you about it? Our class was awesome and did a great job getting safely to the bathroom and staying quiet for the drill. Tomorrow we will practice our Code Red drill. This will come with it an opportunity for me to talk with the kids further about stranger danger and ways to stay safe in various situations. This Friday brings with it several exciting things. First, it is Walk to School Day! Sunflower families are meeting at the Gardner Pool and we are walking as a group to school on Friday. Not only does this help us practice safety when walking to school (looking both ways before you cross the street) but it also is a great reminder about the Buddy System (a favorite in our class family!). To culminate our safety week, we have many Sunflower families participating in Saturday's Kade Meyer Walk/Run. I hope to see your family bright and early on Saturday morning running (or walking in my case) for a wonderful cause. This Friday is also our annual Learning Celebration day! All of Sunflower will spend the day learning about our great nation (and state). Your child will also be receiving their brand new Sunflower "The Sky's the Limit" t-shirt, thanks to our amazing PTO. Please be sure to check your child's backpack tonight because a note went home today about lunch on Friday. In honor of Learning Celebration, we will be taking part in an all-school picnic. Your child is asked to bring a sack lunch from home on FRIDAY September 20. If you would rather have the school prepare a lunch for your child, please let me know by tomorrow or Friday morning so that I can give the kitchen a count. There will be no hot lunches served on Friday, so please start making arrangements to plan accordingly! Have a wonderful summer-like night. Be sure to talk with your kiddos about some of the safety tips we came up with today. Let me know if you have any questions. Hope to see you at Walk to School day on Friday! Be safe!