Getting Closer to Christmas

Greetings on this snowy day! I will say that I missed the cold weather and snow; now it feels like Christmas. We had a busy week in first grade. The students are getting excited for Christmas. I love seeing their excitement this time of year. 

In Religion class this week we learned about the early church. We talked about how the church began on Pentecost and grew with the help of the Holy Spirit. We also discussed things the early church members did together like pray, eat, and share. It did not take us long to see that they did the same things we do today with our families. 

Language Arts class was full of learning and practicing this week. We practiced reading our sight words, words with the vowel sounds of y, and CV words. We reviewed reading long e: e, ee words and VCCV words. We put our decoding skills to the test as we read An Egg is An Egg. While reading this story, we discussed how things change over time. In addition to all that reading, we talked about action verbs in Grammar. We practiced identifying verbs in sentences. We even created our own Action Hero and wrote action verbs to describe what our hero does. During Writing class this week, we wrote the steps in decorating a tree. 

With Christmas just around the corner, we have taken a break from our reading anthology to read Christmas stories. On Thursday, we read Santa's Stuck. After reading this funny story about Santa getting stuck in a chimney, we wrote about what we would do if Santa was stuck in our chimney. We then added a few pieces to create a craft project. On Friday, we read How the Grinch Stole Christmas. We then illustrate a way we would make the Grinch grin. Here are pictures from our projects: 

Math class was full of learning this week. We began the week by learning new math facts: the adding 2 facts. We discovered that adding 2 to a number is just like skip counting. To help us solve these facts, we used linking cubes to complete our fact cards. We then practiced these facts using a wrap-up. 

For Gym class this week, we went back to the gym. We talked about eating healthy foods. The students were divided into teams. Each team was given a hoop full of healthy foods (bean bags) and unhealthy foods (small balls). Their job was to trade an unhealthy food for a healthy food. They enjoyed this activity. In Social Studies, we talked about natural resources. 

On Friday afternoon, we attended the Handbell Concert. The students did a beautiful job playing Christmas music. After the show, we returned for Art class. This week, we made Santa Claus. Have a look: 

I hope everyone has a nice weekend. See you next week!