Mrs. Kellett's Classroom Blog

March Newsletter

Dear Parents,

We have started a  very exciting month of activities.  The themes we will be working on this month are Dr. Seuss, healthy teeth and bodies, nutrition and fairy tales. The fairy tales that we will be focusing on will be The Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff and Jack and the Beanstalk .  The students will hear different variations of these stories and will be doing lots of retellings. Each child will need to bring in 1 potato of any size for an activity relating to one of the fairy tales we will be reading.  Please send the potato in by March 12th.

As part of our science curriculum, we will be going back to Harris Farm to see what it is like in the late winter/early spring.  We will discuss the similarities as well as the differences that we notice. We will also see how sap is taken from maple trees and turned into maple syrup.  The date of this trip is Monday, March 22. We will be back to school in time for the hot lunch program.

March is also Wellness Month.  We will be learning about healthy bodies, how they work, and what we need to do to keep them healthy. Please reinforce these concepts at home by discussing how to stay healthy.  Dr. Nadeau came  in and played Dental Jeopardy with us as part of our healthy body unit.

We will have guests from UNE that will do a short presentation on being healthy.  They’ll be here on March 11.  On March 29, we will be going to see Charlotte’s Web at the Seacoast Repetory Theater.  We have been reading the book in class as a read  aloud.

At this point of the year, our children are finding it easier to read and write and we will work hard at developing writing skills.  Please try writing a sentence with your child each night.  Be sure it starts with a capital and ends with punctuation. If your child already does this independently, please begin writing stories that have a beginning, a middle and an end to them.  Daily journals are great!  List writing is also fun.  They are all doing such a great job!!

In math, we will continue working on money values as the quarter has been  introduced. We’ll continue learning about addition andgaining fact power. Please practice the math facts with their math fact triangles.  Please continue working on having your child tell time on the hour, the half hour and the quarter hour. We will also talk about digital clocks.  As always, we work on problem solving.  Please help your child with these concepts by letting them use money to purchase things, discussing concepts and talking in measurement terms. Unit 7 will be about geometry and attributes.

In Fundations, the students have been learning some beginning spelling rules.   They now know 5 digraphs-ch,th,sh.wh and ck.  They know the bonus letter rule-if a short vowel word ends with an l,s,or f -they need to give it a bonus letter.  They also have been introduced to 11 glued sounds-all, am, an.ang, ing, ong, ung, ank. ink, onk, and unk.  All of these skills are slowly, but surely being incorporated into their everyday writing.  At this point in first grade, it is ok to point things out to your child and expect them to do some correcting.  We should see the phonetic spelling changing over to conventional spelling.

Report cards will be going home on Friday, March 26th. Conferences will begin on March 15.  I will send a notice to all parents stating dates of availability and when to call the office to schedule.  I plan on doing conferences in the same format as how they were done at the end of November. I  look forward to seeing you all then.

Important Dates to Remember

• March 12 –book order due-please make checks payable to the book club
• March 17 Spring Concert for Grades 1,2,3 at 7:00
• March 22 field trip to Harris Farm 8:45-11:15
• March 26 Family Read
• March 29 to Charlotte’s Web in Portsmouth 8:30-11:15
• March 31 is a half-day
• April 2 no school for K-5

Christine Kellett

           February is a busy month!  President’s Day and Valentine’s Day give us an opportunity to strengthen our social and academic skills.  Friendship, responsibility and decision making will be in the forefront of our morning and integrated into our reading and writing.  We continue to strive for a strong community where we learn to care for others, our school and ourselves.  Please continue to encourage your child to perform community service and send a note to the office with your child’s service and name.  

            Our themes for the month are mammals, featuring the groundhog, Valentine’s Day fun, the 100^th day of school and presidents.  We are also learning about matter.  We are working on solids, liquids and gases.  Our focus in language arts will be story writing and friendly letters.  Skills will focus on capitalization, punctuation, contractions, ending sounds including suffixes and compound words.  Reading will continue with our balanced approach to instruction.  

    All the children are doing such a great job with their baggie books.  As soon as they fill up a sheet of 25 books, remind them to turn it in to me.  Then they get to pick out of the treasure bag and get acknowledged at morning meeting. Baggie books are Monday through Thursday evenings.

            Math will center around counting by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s, 10’s, addition and subtraction facts with sums or differences of 10, place value and problem solving.  Please help your child learn word problems by giving them one orally each day.  You might say, “If you eat all four ravioli’s and ask for second helpings and I give you three more, how many will you have eaten?”  Have your child write an equation for your work problem. 

          Valentines Day is an exciting day for first graders.  We do exchange cards to everyone in the class and would like you to make addressing these cards, using their very best penmanship, a priority.  This is to be an enjoyable activity so please only do a few each night.  Attached is a class list for your use.  We have talked about alphabetical order in school and would appreciate your time in practicing this skill by alphabetizing the cards with your child each evening.  We will alphabetize by first names.  If they are sent in this order it facilitates distribution and makes your child’s task simpler.  We will have a small celebration on the afternoon of February 12.  Mrs. Burne may be getting in touch with parents  to help out with this special occasion.

The 100^th Day of School will be on Monday, February 22^nd (weather permitting).  In honor of this event, please have your child bring in 100 things that they have already counted and will fit into a sandwich baggy (pennies, Cheerios, macaroni, etc.)  We will also be working on money and measurement.  Children in the first grade are expected to know all coins and the dollar bill by name and their values. 

Looking ahead—

            Winter Vacation –February 13-21

           Attached please find our latest book order form.  All orders should be in by Friday, February 12^th.

 February 24 is an early release day. 

February 26- Family Read at 2:00

Please remember to send in the appropriate snow gear and shoes/boots for your child.  The children seem to be slowing down and getting tired of changing into their gear for recess.  I also would encourage to send in shoes or crocs for them to wear during the day.  Sneakers should be worn on Thursdays when we have PE.

             I hope you have a wonderful February vacation with your children.  Please continue to read and write!  Every little bit helps!!

                                                                                     Christine Kellett

Mrs. Kellett’s Homepage

I hope you are enjoying the cold weather!!!  The children are certainly enjoying it!  The have come to school well prepared for the outside weather.  Please try to send in a pair of shoes, sneakers or crocs for them to wear in the classroom.  Please send in any extra plastics bags for wet things to go home in.  Our supply is beginning to dwindle!!  Also  please do not send in any hard sleds.  We only allow the soft rolled up kind.

Funky Fridays have begun!  Each Friday, there will be a new theme .  This Friday it is “Wear Something From A Places That You Have Been.”  This does not have to be a place that you yourself went, but maybe it is a souvenir from a relative.  A list of all the themes will be coming home within the next week.

Book orders are due by this Friday.  Please make checks payable to the book club.  There will be no school on Monday, January 18 as it is Martin Luther King Day.  We have been reading books about Martin Luther King Jr.  Please ask your child something that they have learned about him.

Lastly, we have officially started using the writing process.  We have talked about pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing and publishing.  The students each got a draft writing notebook and began writing stories.  They were so excited!!!  It was great to see!

Looking ahead:  Wednesday, January 27 is an early release day.  Friday, January 29 will be Family Read at 2:00.

Happy New Year!!!!!!  I hope you all had a wonderful holiday vacation.  I certainly did.  My best gift was that our almost 1 year old, Grace, started to walk!!  It is so bittersweet, as now she is not really a baby anymore.  She will be 1 on January 14.  Now the fun begins!!

One of my New Year’s resolution was to better communicate with parents since  we no longer have our blogs from last year.  We also received new Apple laptops, so I wanted to utilize that as well.  I have to say thank you to Jen Humphrey, our 3/4 grade teacher, as she was the one who began talking to me about this website.  I am in hopes that this will be much easier then my current  site.

January  usually is a wonderful month!!!  It is full of snow and the children come back from vacation well rested and ready to go!!!  Our themes for the month will be snow, Martin Luther King Jr. and  solids, liquids and gases.  We will reading all sorts of literature incorporating these themes.  We will also have new words for our word wall.  Please look for these words during the week of January 4th.  I will be sending them home for your child to practice.  Baggie books will also be starting up the Monday we get back!

Now that the snow is here, please send in all your child’s snow gear.  It would be helpful if you could label all of their items.  If you could send an extra set of clothes, that would be great!!  They also need a pair of shoes to wear in school.  We do not wear slippers in school.  Thanks for your help with this!!