Back to Work

 Wow, we had a fantastic Catholic Schools Week.  It was different with COVID,  but one of the best I can remember.

So, now we are back to working hard on the academics. We are now more than halfway through the third quarter.  Some of the most challenging skills we are working on in class are:

writing compound sentences

writing an explanatory paragraph

writing about the plot, setting, character, and main idea of a story

dividing words into syllables

identify antonyms, synonyms, and homonyms

verb tenses - past, present, and future

building sets of hundreds, tens, and ones

counts coins of  the same denomination

tells time on the hour and half hour

identifies fractions of half, fourths, and thirds

We have worked on all of these in class already.  But now I will begin testing over these skills.  It's going to take a few weeks.  These are not easy concepts for first grade, but they are part of the curriculum and on the report card.  Any time you can reinforce these skills at home, your child would benefit.  The third quarter ends in 17 SCHOOLS DAYS!

Don't forget there is an early dismissal this Tuesday, 2-9.  It is also a dress down day. please be in the parking lot to pick up your child at 1:15.  We will have the  Valentine Exchange on Friday.  I noticed we still have two slots to fill for the snacks.  You can find the sign-up link in the last Newsletter.  We will not have the traditional party, but I have great things planned for use on the Chrome Books.

There is no school on Monday for Presidents Day, 2-15.

There may be pictures of some of the students from our room in News and Tribune in the next few days. The students were interviewed about making gift bags for health care workers for a service project during Catholic Schools Week. Some of the comments were so genuine but some of them were hilarious, too.  One little guy said, "Mrs. Lauf taught us that Jesus said, "If someone slaps you on the cheek, it's ok if they slap you on the other cheek, too."  That may have been taken out of context a bit!

We are back to the usual homework, math and a new book to read each night with a new list of High-Frequency words due back on  2-11.