September 21 - 25

What a busy week! We started out with Field Day on Monday which had first graders rotating through 7 different activities outside and in the gym. Many of these are games you could adapt to play with your family or at a birthday party. Discussing the rules of games is a good chance to talk about how to be a good sport, how to take turns, and how to recall a sequence of steps (first, next, then, last...). Ask your child to explain how to play each of these games:

1. Hungry Hippo (beanbags in the gym)
2. Parachute Play (in the gym)
3. Car and Driver (one person with eyes closed being led by a buddy)
4. Hoop Pass (stand in circle holding hands and move hula hoop around everyone)
5. Ecology Circle (run so fast that newspaper sticks to front of shirt)
6. Pizza Delivery (make circle around someone who is collecting pizza boxes)
7. Ecology Pick Up (relay race collecting "trash" with a buddy)

We studied the following word wall words: the, I, see, me, go and practiced the following reading strategy for what to do when we don't know a word: Think about what makes sense (in the sentence and in the pictures), then check your guess with the letters you see.

In math we played several games that involve number ordering, number sequences and place value. Next week we will work on the concepts of 1/2 and 1/4 with pictures.

This week we also had a visit from one of the school counselors who gave an important lesson about bullies. We learned that bullies do mean things over and over again and they make the other person feel bad. We learned to tell the person to STOP and to get help from a grown-up.

We had our first visit to the Strategies Lab where we learned how to play 3 problem solving games (Clever Castle, Soduko Jr., and Bricky by Brick). I hope students will transfer the problem solving strategies they practice in the games to other situations in reading, math, writing, and playing with friends. We will be making a longer list next week, but so far the students have come up with the following strategies that helped them play the games successfully:

• Don't give up
• Don't worry about what level other people are on

We ended this week with Pajama Day! Thanks to all the families who participated. Students really enjoyed the chance to get dressed up and make it a special day.