Hello 1JB Families,

We can’t believe it’s already May! We also can’t believe the Post Office is officially closed. Students worked incredibly hard and should feel so proud of their post office success.

Important dates and reminders: 

Friday, May 10: Special Friends/Grandparents Day

Tuesday, May 14: Asian Culture Club hosts Lower School Students

Saturday, May 11: Spring Fair

Monday, May 13: Arabic Culture Night

May 14/15: Book Fair! Click here for the full Lower School Book Fair Schedule.

Sunday, May 19: Family event celebrating Jewish American History Month, Google form

Tuesday, May 21: Black Families at Friends, in connection with the Parents Association Diversity & Inclusion Committee, are hosting our first-ever community Black Excellence Celebration.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month which seeks to raise awareness and reduce stigma around mental illness and connecting to support. This year’s theme is *Take The Moment,* normalizing the practice of taking moments to prioritize mental health care without guilt or shame.

• Resources for the Lower School
• The Kids Mental Health Foundation
• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
• The 5 Principles of Parenting: Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans by Dr. Aliza Pressman
• Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids by Hunter Clarke-Fields

Post Office

Final sales, counting our earnings, gathering mailboxes, and graphing letters sent! 1JB had a busy final week of the post office!

The end of the post office always brings up big feelings! Ask your child about how they feel about the post office being over. What memories feel special for them?

Counting our earnings!

Students worked hard on counting their total earnings from the post office. They found different ways to make a dollar, like 100 pennies, four quarters, ten dimes, etc! Ask your child about the different ways they formed a dollar.

Students were so proud when finding out their total amount. Ask your child about our total earnings!

We can’t wait to learn from the Upper School students about the organization we can donate to.

Closing Ceremony 

To celebrate the closing of the Post Office 1JB had a closing ceremony! We had a closing circle where everyone shared their favorite memory and job. After our circle, students received a Postal Worker Certificate!

Following the ceremony, students received their own 1JB Post Office Memory Book! This book is filled with writing down memories, favorite jobs, class visits, and stamp sales. Ask your child about the work they have completed in their memory book.

As a reminder, all these photos and MORE are located here.

Day of Service Activity

To help prepare for the day of service, 1JB discussed what the word service means. We read Amanda Gorman’s Something, Someday, and discussed that even though the main character was discouraged from solving a problem because it was too big to fix, he decided to make a change.

We then learned about Grassroots Grocery and community fridges. To help support Friends Seminary’s Day of Service, every student decorated a bag that will be filled with donated food!

Math

This week we started our unit on time! As we read the story, A Second Is A Hiccup we thought about the different units of time.

What is something you can do in a second? Clap, jump up and down once, say a word, spin around, etc. What is something you can do in a minute? Write a short sentence, sing a short song, and so on! We worked our way up to thinking about things that take an hour. Ask your child about these units of time.

How can you support your student’s understanding of time? Practice timing different activities (like brushing teeth or getting dressed in the morning) or talk about time daily with questions like “How long do you think it will take us to get from ____ to ____”.

Along with time, we have continued counting the days of school. With that, we have been making addition and subtraction equations to prove our thinking. For example: “If there have been 136 days of school, how many days till 140?” 136+4=140. Using these numbers we prove our thinking by saying that “140-136=4”.

Another element of our daily math has been using math equations to figure out how many days are left of school (sometimes these equations make us sad). This is a math problem you can do daily with your child as well!

Poetry 

To continue our poetry unit students learned about personification and shape poetry. When working on personification poems students picked an animal, object, or part of nature to bring to life. What would this animal/object say? How would it describe itself?

Here is an example of one of our practice poems:

Most recently students learned about shape poetry! A Shape poem (sometimes called a concrete poem) is a poem that has a visual appearance that matches the topic of the poem. The words in the poem take the shape of a poem’s subject. To create their own shape poem students picked something that connects to one of the four seasons (winter, spring, summer, or fall). 

Author Visit

Author and illustrator of Hot Dog, Doug Salati came to visit! We read aloud the amazing book with him and watched Doug sketch Hot Dog. What an exciting visit!

Art/Writing activity with Isabel

1JB had a special visit from Isabel who helped students with an exciting craft. Each student created a first-grade book to give to a Kindergartner. The books explained things that incoming first graders should know! Ask your child about what they included in their book.

Hello 1JB Families,

Happy April and 1JB Post Office! Thank you all for joining us on Wednesday for the special family Post Office visit. The students had such a blast!

Please check out our 1JB Post Office photos to get an inside look into our post office excitement! Here are some questions you can ask your child: What jobs did you have this week? What has been your favorite job? Who have you sent letters to? Do you know how many letters have been sent so far?

We will continue our 1JB Post Office next week. If you have any extra stationery, please have your child bring it in!

Important dates and reminders:

• Wednesday, May 1: All School Day of Service
• Friday, May 3: Family Visiting
• Friday, May 10: Grandparents/ Special Friends Day

Post Office

This week was such a blast! 1JB celebrated the opening of our post office with the help of friends and faculty in the Friends Community. 1JB What Happens To Mail.docx

FUNdations

1JB is learning vowel teams! Ask your child what vowel teams they have learned so far?

This year we are going to learn the sounds of many vowel teams. A vowel team is two vowels together that make just one sound.
We will learn keywords to help us remember the sounds of the vowel teams. For example: “ai, bait, a” and “ay play a”. Children will see vowel teams in books and stories, so it will be helpful for them to learn the sounds!

Students are also learning about open and closed syllables. A closed syllable has one vowel only and must be closed in by a consonant, like the word cat. A closed syllable gives the vowel the short sound! Closed syllables can also be closed in by a digraph like the word bath or mash.

After mastering closed syllables, students learned what happens when a word ends in a vowel. When a word is not closed anymore, it is open! Open syllables have a long vowel sound, which means the vowel says its name. For example: go, be, hi, etc.

Find the Syllable Type Worksheet

New trick words: say, says, each, between, see

Math

This week students were introduced to their very own stamp math book! This booklet was filled with Post Office related word problems. Check out the example problem above. As you can see, each question requires students to show their work with a picture, equation, and record their answer with a label. As students continued with their math packet, questions became more challenging! Ask your child about the post office word problems. If your child would like a challenge, they can come up with their own Post Office word problems!

Literacy

1JB began a poetry unit! We started this unit by asking the question, “What is poetry?”

Poetry is a type of writing
that uses words to ‘paint a picture,’ tell a story, and express feelings and ideas.
Poetry arranges words in different ways to express specific meanings and emotions. It comes in many forms too!

Students learned about four different elements of poems. Two that we can see: lines and stanzas and two that we can hear: rhyme and rhythm.  

As a class, we read the following poem. We asked questions like, how many stanzas are in this poem? How many lines are in the first stanza? How many rhyming words can you find?

Next week we will be looking at different types of poems like acrostic and personfication. If your child has poems at home that they enjoy, take some time to read and discuss them!

Hello 1JB Families,

Happy spring break! We hope everyone has a restorative and enjoyable break.

Please check out our 1JB folder for resources and helpful worksheets to do over break!

For example, if you have dice at home you can play Roll a Story or Roll and Add.

If your child is a fan of the New York Times Spelling games, check out a printable version they can do on their own! Spelling Bee

Post Office Parent Letter

Other Post office info: When returning from break students should bring in some change that can be used in the Post Office! All the money that will be made during the Post Office will be donated to charity! High Schoolers will be visiting 1JB with charity suggestions and students in 1JB will then discuss and come to a consensus.

Important dates and reminders: 

• Upper School Culture Clubs Hosting Lower School Students:
  • Muslim Culture Club | March 11
  • Jewish Culture Club | March 14
• Friday, March 15: Spring Break Begins- Dismissal at the end of Day
• Monday, April 1: School Re-opens
• Friday, April 12: Eid Potluck Dinner 6pm-8pm
• Wednesday, April 17th, 9:00-9:30 (following MFW): Family Visiting/Post Office
• Thursday, April 18th/ Friday, April 19th: Parent Conferences- no school for students
• May 10: Grandparents/ Special Friends Day

Post Office

1JB had a special visit from Natalia’s grandma last week! Edith brought in her wonderful stamp collection and taught students how to carefully get a stamp off envelope paper without breaking it. 1JB is so grateful for all the special visitors who have come to our classroom this year to share their stamp knowledge and collections with us!

Our stamps have officially been created! We are so proud of all the hard work that students have put into creating their stamps and we can’t wait to share them with you when the post office opens! As you can see from some pictures, our block area has started to transform into the post office! Last week students began to organize their stamps, create envelopes, and make the mailboxes for the offices and classrooms around the school. Ask your child which classroom or office they wrote the address of.

Check out how to fold an envelope to see how the students learned to make envelopes!

Writing

Students received their very own Words I Use When I Write dictionaries. These are dictionaries specifically made for young spellers as they use more high-frequency words in their writing. Each dictionary has a page of blank lines where students can add words that they use often in their writing. For example, if a student loves a certain sport or activity they may add the name of it into their dictionary so they can use it in their journal writing. Ask your child about what they wrote about in their journals. What words did they add to their dictionary?

This week during Writing students completed their All About books (also called How To Books). Each student picked a classroom material to write about and explain how to use. During this process, students learned how to go back and edit their work with a teacher. Asking questions like, did I start every sentence with a capital letter? Did I use punctuation? Did I check my dictionary for tricky words? Ask your child about the topic they wrote about.

Another activity students took part in this week was a writing activity dedicated to Women’s History Month. Students learned about a handful of inspiring women who have made an impact on the world, like Malala Yousafzai, Frida Kahlo, Katherine Johnson, and Wangari Maathai. Students also had the opportunity to discuss and share about women in their lives that they look up to or love. Ask your child about who they wrote about for our writing activity. Why does the woman inspire them?

Math

Children have continued to examine and learn about each coin individually. We learned the names, values, and fun facts about each. Since the silver coins are hard to distinguish, we had the children discuss ways they can identify the different coins. As students began to feel more comfortable with each coin, we practiced counting coins! Counting coins includes the skill of counting by 1s, 5s, 10s, and 25. We recommend that you practice these counting skills over break as well as studying and discussing the different coins. Some questions you can ask your child: “Can you show me the counting by 25 macarena dance?” “How many quarters make a dollar?” “How many quarters do I need to make $1.50?” “If I have 6 nickels, how much money do I have?”

Check out some students doing the Quarter Macarena!

Students also learned a game called Sparkle! Sparkle is a highly engaging game that’s great for building students’ skip-counting fluency. Most recently we have played a version where we count by 1s and if you get a number that is 5 or a multiple of 5, you have to say sparkle and sit down. (Using a number like 5 or 10 supports students’ ability to count coins like nickles and dimes). Eventually, two students are left, and they continue to count until one student is left standing! This is a cooperative practice game that requires listening skills. If you are with a large group of people, give this game a try!

Reading

This week students took turns reading aloud to one another. This activity supports students’ active listening skills, reading fluency, and provides opportunities for students to see what their peers are reading. Over spring break, you can look for opportunities for your child to read aloud to you or others!

Spelling

What have we been up to in FUNdations?

R-controlled Vowels: Ask your child to read this poster aloud to you. Why are these called r-controlled vowels?

Students continued to practice digraph blends. Examples of words with digraph blends are lunch & shrub.

These words also have four sounds. A digraph (ch, sh) is blended with another consonant. Ask your child about the word pinch. Can they find the digraph blend?

Trick words to practice: would, should, could

1JB Enjoying the beautiful weather!

Celebrating and Learning about Nowruz!

Thank you, Ali, Roxanne’s dad for visiting 1JB and teaching us all about Nowruz. Students learned about the different traditions and celebrations that happen during this special holiday. Following learning about Nowruz, Roxanne taught 1JB how to make spring crowns! Ask your child about how they made their crown. How does it represent the start of spring?

Another big thank you to Sisi for inviting 1JB to the Business office to learn about Nowruz. Students were able to see a decorated Haftseen and learn about the different elements on the table. Sisi even had goldfish on the table! Ask your child if they remember what goldfish represent during Nowruz.

Creative Computing with Katherine

This week during creative computing, students continued learning and programming their bee bot robots! The goal this time was to find the shortest and longest route for the bee bot. Ask your child if they were able to successfully find these routes with their partner.

St Patrick’s Day Celebration 

What a way to end our Friday! Lilly’s mom Alexis came to 1JB to teach us about St. Patrick’s Day! 1JB learned about the history of St Patrick’s Day, words in Gaelic, and discussed how they would catch a leprechaun. Students all decorated their own festive glasses to wear on St. Patrick’s Day! What a blast!

Hello 1JB Families,

Happy March! The end of February was a busy time for students in 1JB. Learning about money, creating our stamps, new FUNdations concepts, and the 100th day of school! Below you will find pictures, resources, information, and updates.

Important Dates & Reminders: 

• Friday, March 1: Family Visiting
• Friday, March 1: Falafel Friday hosted by Muslim Culture Club and Jewish Culture Club
• Monday, March 4: After Owls Tri 3 starts
• Upper School Culture Clubs Hosting Lower School Students:
  • Black Culture Club | Feb. 27
  • Muslim Culture Club | March 11
  • Jewish Culture Club | March 14
• Friday, March 15: Spring Break Begins- Dismissal at the end of Day
• Monday, April 1: School Re-opens
• Friday, April 12: Eid Potluck Dinner 6pm-8pm
• Wednesday, April 17th, 9:00-9:30 (following MFW): Family Visiting/Post Office
• Thursday, April 18th/ Friday, April 19th: Parent Conferences- no school for students

Celebrating the 100th day 

1JB was thrilled to celebrate 100 days of first grade! We started our day by answering fun 100-related prompts like, “I would love to eat 100…” “If I was 100 years old…” “I wish I had 100…” Ask your child about these prompts. How did they answer them?

We continued our celebration of 100 days with 100 words! Students worked together to write 100 words that contained FUNdations concepts (trick words, glued sounds, digraphs, suffix s, or double letters). Ask your child what words they added to our list.

To end our day of celebration we joined together with other first-grade classrooms to do 100-day activities! We built 100 with pattern blocks and figured out how many times we could do different actions in 100 seconds. Ask your child how many times they wrote their name in 100 seconds!

Creative Computing with Katherine

To support students’ understanding of programming robots, they were able to step into the body of a bee bot (robot)! With partners, students took turns either being the programmer or the robot. When students took on the role of programmer, they had to create different instructions for the robot to follow. The goal was for the robot to make it from a start point to a stop point. When students took the role of a bee bot, they had to follow the programmer’s instructions and only move when they were “programmed”. To find out more about this activity ask your child some of the following questions- How it was being the programmer? How was it being the robot? What was tricky about this activity? What was fun about it?

Social Studies: Creating our stamps!

Our post office stamps have been created! Students went through the process of sketching out their stamp ideas, discussing them with teachers, and creating final drafts. Ask your child about their stamp process. What is the title of their stamp? What was it like doing the final draft? How did they come up with their idea?

Special Visitors

There is no better way to learn about the post office than from the students who know it best! Students from Jennifer’s class last year, visited 1JB Friday afternoon. The second graders explained the different jobs of the post office, showed us their post office binders, and answered our burning post office questions!

Thank you, second graders!

Math

We have completed our unit on place value and begun learning about money.

Children had the opportunity to examine and learn about each coin individually. We learned the names, values, and fun facts about each. Since the silver coins are hard to distinguish, we had the children discuss ways they can identify the different coins. Check out some of our observations: Nickel & Dimes.

We encourage you to have your children practice identifying coins! Once your child has mastered this, have them practice having them count from largest value to smallest value.

If you are looking for a math game to play at home, check out this game called Number Order.

Weather Graph

Students completed the weather graphs from February. Ask your child about the weather they recorded from the month. What predictions do they have for the next month?

Community Period: Lunar New Year Celebration

During the community period, we listened to upper school students read the story The Great Race (the story of the Chinese zodiac).

Following the story we learned more about why the dragon is central to Chinese culture. Here is the video we watched during the community period (we didn’t have a chance to finish the video, so your child may be curious about what other information this video has).

Language Arts

This week students continued practicing fluency skills like scooping sentences and reading with expression. To develop fluency and speed of reading, students learn how to read in phrases that connect meaning. Fundations uses a scooping technique to provide a graphical representation of phrasing. Ask your child to practice scooping with their finger while they read at home.

Another skill we practiced this week was retelling. Retelling is a short, consistent routine students can use to recall, order, and summarize a text. When reading a story called The Pink Dress, students discussed the difference between key details and supporting details. Key details consist of the important information we need to know as readers to understand a story, like the main characters, setting, and main events. We also use key details to retell a story and show our understanding of a text. After reading The Pink Dress, students sketched out the main events of the story to support their retelling to a partner. Ask your child about the key details of The Pink Dress story.

FUNdations

This week we continued to review glued sounds and suffixes. We discussed that the suffix s can be an action (sings) and it can also mean plural (kings). Sometimes we need to listen to the word used in a sentence to know whether it is an action or plural. For example, “Becca wears a lot of rings” vs. “Her phone rings when someone is calling”.

On Thursday we began learning about blends. Students learned the difference between a blend and a digraph. A digraph contains two consonants and only makes one sound, such as sh, /sh/. A blend, however, contains two or more consonants but they each make their own sound, such as /s/ and /l/. Blends can come before a vowel like the word flip or after a vowel like the word past. 

Trick words: some, come, would 

Upcoming: should, could, her, over, number

Check out some worksheets and games you can play at home!

Roll & Write Trick Words

Pick the Right Word

Another important concept we have been discussing is r-controlled vowels. R-controlled vowels are also known as the bossy r. When a syllable has a vowel that is followed by r, the vowel is “controlled” by the r and makes a new sound. Ask your child about this concept.

Family Visiting

Thank you families for coming to visit 1JB this morning! Students had a blast showing you all the different things that they’ve been learning and doing. We look forward to our next family visiting day on April 17th, 9:00-9:30. During this visit the post office will be open!! We can’t wait!

Check out these creative creations during activities: 

Hello Families,

February is flying! Field trips, holidays, post office prep, glued sounds, and more. Scroll down for more information, resources, and pictures.

Important dates and reminders: 

Monday, February 19: No School- President’s Day

Tuesday, February 20: No School- Teacher Professional Development Day

Wednesday, February 28: School Store

Friday, March 1: Family Visiting

Friday, March 1: Falafel Friday hosted by Muslim Culture Club and Jewish Culture Club

Monday, March 4: After Owls Tri 3 starts

Friday, March 15: Spring Break Begins- Dismissal at End of Day

Upper School Culture Clubs Hosting Lower School Students:

• Black Culture Club | Feb. 1
• West Indian Culture Club | Feb. 22
• Muslim Culture Club | March 11
• Jewish Culture Club | March 14

Social Studies (important info!!)

This week 1JB finalized their list of stamp ideas! Each stamp idea reflects our school-wide theme: Culture of Connection. Each of our stamps is a way of building a connection. Some stamps are how we build connections with people, while others are how we build connections with our environment/world.

On Friday students went through the list with us and checked off the stamp ideas they would be interested in drawing. Check out our list of stamp ideas! If your child was not in school on Friday, please take a look at this list together! Go through the stamp ideas and have your child check off or write down the ideas they would like to do (please make sure your child selects at least 5). Please email us by Tuesday your child’s selection of stamp ideas! If we don’t have your child’s selection, we will assign them a stamp. We must get all the selections by Tuesday because, on Wednesday (2/21), we will be deciding who gets what stamp. The hope is that each child gets an option that they are excited about! The more ideas they check off, the more likely they’ll be content with their stamp idea.

Post Office Field Trip

1JB took a field trip to the U.S. Post Office- Cooper Station!

Before going on our trip, 1JB did a Post Office KWL. What do we know about the post office? What do we want to know? Students came up with a list of questions they wanted to bring to the post office to ask our field trip guide. What if the mail falls out of the mail truck? How many people work in a post office? Does this post office have machines? Who made the first mailbox? Ask your child about the questions they had before the trip. Did any of them get answered? When we got to Cooper Station, our field trip guide was marvelous! He took us on an extra long tour of all the different areas of the post office. Students could see how the mail gets organized and even got to sort some mail themselves! Ask your child what they saw when walking around the post office.

Lunar New Year Celebration 

Thank you to the parents who came to 1JB to help students learn about Lunar New Year! Students had a blast learning how different families celebrate Lunar New Year. We listened to different read-alouds and family traditions, and played games! Ask your child about what they learned from our classroom celebration. What animal represents this year?

Identity/ DEB lesson

1JB continued reading the book Our Skin: A First Conversation About Race.

This book gave students meaningful and serious conversations about skin color, race, racism, family, and diversity. When reading this book, we reminded students that parts of the book may make us feel uncomfortable and sad. We discussed how these feelings are okay to feel that way and that our classroom is a safe space to ask questions. This book shared the importance of being an upstander if you feel that something or someone is being treated unfairly.

Isabel visited our classroom to help continue this conversation and think about how all of our skin colors are unique! With Isabel, students were able to find their own skin color by using paint! The important aspect of this lesson is that all students had to start with making the color brown. Ask your child, “What colors did you use to make brown?”After making brown, students were then able to add other colors to find a match to their skin tone. Ask your child what words they use to describe their skin tone. Does everyone in your family have the same words to describe their skin tone?

Here is a link to a helpful video we plan to watch in class. Feel free to watch it at home with your child as well:

FUNdations/Spelling

1JB has been working with glued/welded sounds recently. Earlier in the year, students learned the glued sounds all (/ol/), am, and an. We have now added ang, ing, ong, ung, ink, onk, unk and ank. The keywords for these sounds are fang, ring, song, lung, pink, honk, junk and bank. We tap out these sounds as a single tap but with three fingers touching the thumb– ask your first grader to show you how!

Check out these resources to practice reading and marking up these new sounds:

Current Concept Mark-Up

Glued Sound Mark Up

Find the right word

New trick words: Why, try, by, my, put, two

Upcoming trick words: too, very, also, some, come

Reading

Ask your child about what books they’ve been reading during D.E.A.R. time.

Math:

Students are continuing to practice place value with the game Race to 100! In the classroom, we’ve been using manipulatives to gain a hands-on understanding of how groups of ten work. Ten orange tiles complete a tens “sandwich,” and ten tens make one hundred. We’ve also practiced skip counting by tens (“10, 20, 30″) and then counting on (…”31, 32, 33”).

Choice time and sewing with Isabel: 

During choice time, Isabel came in and helped students finish their sewing projects! Ask your child what they are working on.

Legos are a popular activity choice in 1JB. Check out some of the creations below. Ask your child about what they created.

Mailbox creation:

Students used the following activity to create their own mailboxes! Students were then able to use these mailboxes to collect valentines on the 14th! Feel free to make more mailboxes at home!

Valentine’s Day Read alouds:

Special Visitor 

Becca’s mom Karen visited 1JB! Karen and Becca did a presentation together about Cambodia, a place they have a special connection with. Becca and her family have traveled to Cambodia many times to visit the Ridgewood Village School in Kandal Province. Over spring break Becca and her mom (who is also a teacher!) will be traveling to this school in Cambodia. In thinking about our post office unit as well as our school-wide theme, 1JB wrote letters to the children in Cambodia. Becca and her mom will be delivering these letters to students in Cambodia and plan to bring back response letters in April! Students were able to learn more about Cambodia, how to say different words in Khmer and learn a little bit about how their postal system works. Ask your child about this activity and what they learned about Cambodia. If you have any questions about this activity, feel free to reach out to Becca!

Hello 1JB Families,

Happy Winter Break!!

Below is a quick blog post to share what we have been up to this week.

Reminders:

Updated Lower School Key Calendar Dates

Over your winter break, children should be practicing reading digitally or with books. Raz Kids is a great online resource to use when traveling. We also recommend spending some time engaging in math games. You can use a deck of cards, the dice we sent home, daily math with subtraction and addition, etc.

Our most recent trick words: Or, For, To, Into, You, Your, I, They, One, Was, Said. You can practice these trick words over break! You can cut out paper and play Go Fish, bingo, Memory, or practice saying and writing the words together.

Stamp Reminder:

We will have a special visitor when we come back from break that will help us kick off our Post Office discussions. To help prepare children for our upcoming activities, it would be great for them to practice writing their addresses.

Check out some photos from this short week:

1JB did a Peace Craft with Isabel, a gingerbread math activity with Hilary, Trick Word Bingo, spent time with their 4th-grade buddies, celebrated birthdays, and sang in the all-school assembly! Ask your child what they enjoyed or learned this week?

Have a safe and fun break! See you in 2024!

Becca & Jennifer

Hello 1JB Families!

November is already flying by! 1JB has been very busy… check out the learning and excitement below.

Important dates/Reminders:

• Nov 15: 3-5pm, God’s Love We Deliver bag decorating event in the Inner Courtyard
• Nov 22-24: No School, Thanksgiving Break
• Nov 27: Diwali Potluck, 6:30-8:30pm
• Nov 29: School Store is open! 8-9:30am
• Dec 1: Family Visiting -Please see the following note for 1JB’s Winter Traditions Book for the classroom community: Holiday Family Traditions Invite 2023 
• Dec 4: After Owls Trimester 2 Starts
• Dec 7: Picture Retake Day
• Dec 8: Save the Date for Lower School Winter Sing-a-long: Friday, 10-10:40 AM in the Meetinghouse. Lower School Families are welcome to participate.
• Dec 11-15: PEACE WEEK
• We will be introducing Raz-Kids to the students at the start of next week. Check out the information for parents/families: Guide to Raz-Kids: A library filled with “Just-Right” books
• Over the break… if you would like to include some math and literacy in your child’s time away from school, here are some ideas!
  • Everyday counting. How many family members are we seeing this weekend? How many place settings do we need?
  • Cook food together. How many cups of flour do we need? We need 4 cups of water for our recipe and we only have 2 right now, how many more do we need?
  • Read books together!
  • Writing opportunities: Have your child help you make a menu, make name cards for the table, a list of things/people they are thankful/grateful for, etc!

Math/Literacy Resources from Parent Conferences:

• Math blog (including math games): https://blogs.friendsseminary.org/lsmathematics/
• Helpful Literacy Sheets 
• I Message/ Making a Repair

FUNdations/Literacy:

1JB has been learning so much during their reading/spelling periods.

Recently, students learned about digraphs:

Digraphs are consonants that ‘stick together’ to form one sound, even though there are two letters. That is why they are on one card. They are not separated. Digraphs also get ONE tap when tapping out words. For example, the word ship gets 3 taps. One tap for sh, one for I, and one for p. Ask your child to show you how to tap out digraphs! Here are some examples of words  (chip, luck, thick, shut).

Students have continued learning trick words: as, has, in, into, we, me, be she, he — ask your child about these words! Why are they tricky? Can they skywrite them? 1JB also learned about nonsense words! Nonsense words?? Yes! Nonsense words! These are NOT real words, but allow students to practice spelling patterns.

During FUNdations, 1JB has also practiced scooping sentences and reading a story with fluency. In this activity, we also practiced looking for the main characters, setting, and events in a story.

Reading: 

1JB did a lesson in reading roles this week. They listened to chapter one of a chapter book (Iris and Walter) and became Imaginative Illustrators. Their job was to illustrate a picture for the text based on something they imagined during the reading and wrote a caption along with it.

1JB has been busy picking Just Right Books/books of interest to read during D.E.A.R. time. Ask your student what books they have in their book bag.

Social Studies: 

Quaker Spices- Peace

This week 1JB took a deep dive into another Quaker Spice, Peace. We asked students, what does peace mean to you? 1JB blew us away with their thoughtful response. Here is a glimpse:

Peace means: silence, when everything is calm, meeting for worship, quiet, nature, the stars in the sky, helping someone when they need help, being calm, meditating.

We also thought about how peace looks at school/in our classroom.

To help us deepen our understanding of peace, we read/listened to the book Peace Train by Cat Stevens and Peter H. Reynolds. 

Ask your child: how did this book show peace? how do they practice peace?

Another aspect of our Social Studies curriculum that 1JB has continued to discuss is the school-wide theme: Continuing A Culture of Connection. While thinking about the theme and how it relates to the post office, we read Dear Mr. Blueberry.

We asked questions like, how does letter writing build a connection?

Ask your child about this book! What was it about? How do the main character and her teacher use letter writing?

Math

10’s Frame: A tens frame is a rectangular frame divided into ten individual boxes. The boxes are arranged in two rows of 5. Children add dots to the ten frame sequentially to occupy the ten boxes: the top row is filled first, from left to right, followed by the bottom row. Ten frames are such a helpful tool when it comes to building number sense in young children because they are a tool for visualizing numbers and quantities. They also support understanding relationships between numbers, especially from 1 to 10, and how to work with them. For example, if a student fills in 4 boxes, they can see 6 empty spaces remain and use that information to better understand that 4 + 6 = 10, 10 – 4 = 6, and 10 – 6 = 4.

Many of you learned about our use of ten frames during conferences last week. We recently played this fun game with partners using our special dice. Ask your student how they used ten frames to work on their addition skills?

Writing

As 1JB starts to think about Thanksgiving we spent this week writing period thinking about the people at Friends who we would like to thank. We especially thought about the faculty and staff that do so much behind the scenes of FS (like Martha, Ian, Tracy, Nancy, and our recess coaches). Ask your child who they wrote to? What did they thank them for?

Along with writing letters, 1JB thought about the word gratitude. What does it mean to show gratitude? What are you grateful for? After listening to this read-aloud, we made our own gratitude jars! Ask your child what they are grateful for? How do they show gratitude?

1JB writers began thinking about question words: who, where, what happened?

Ask your student about the difference between a sentence and a fragment? Can they give you an example of a sentence that has a who, what, and what happened?

Language Arts/ SEL

Our mornings are filled with classroom jobs like (schedule helpers), partner greetings, and check-ins.

Community Time: Diwali: This Friday, a special visitor came to 1JB to teach us more about Diwali!

Students were able to listen to the story above and ask questions/share connections about Diwali. Each student was able to take home their own Diya. Ask your child about this special event! What activities did they get to do that celebrated Diwali?

God’s Love We Deliver Bag Decoration with Isabel:

Activities

As many of you heard from your children’s self-evaluations, activity time is a beloved time in our classroom. Ask your child what activities they have been enjoying? Who do they spend their time with?

Spanish – a message from Luis!

¡Hola families! Our students got dulce (candy) today in Spanish class! Besides spending a whole month learning vocabulary related to Fall, Halloween, and Día de los Muertos, our students learned a song I used to sing on Halloween. In Colombia, where I grew up, people also celebrate Halloween, or as we call it Día de las Brujas (The Day of all Witches, scary name). Kids go door to door singing the triqui, triqui song. The translation is something like this…Tricky, Tricky Halloween I want candy But if you don’t give me any candy Your nose is gonna grow big. Hope you enjoy it.

Check out the 1JB singing the song: IMG_2822

Recent 1JB Read Alouds: