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:
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!
