First Grade: February 2 - 6, 2026
Dear First Grade Families,
Thank you for attending our curriculum morning, sharing dishes, helping to plan the auction project, and participating in the All School Meeting! Your warmth, support, and ideas were so appreciated. It was a lovely opportunity to come together as a class community and then join the larger school community.
With relish, the class has plunged back into Language Arts for their new block focusing on reading and spelling. While the consonant and vowel blocks largely drew on Grimm’s fairy tales, the stories for this block come from the British Isles, mainly England. These playful tales provide much-needed levity as we draw nearer to each other in the cold season and prepare for the outward-embracing mood of spring. Students giggled over the utter silliness of Lazy Jack, who does not know how to carry the penny, milk, cheese, mutton, or donkey with which he is paid, and of Mr. Vinegar, who through a series of trades gives up money, a cow, bagpipes, and gloves before ending up with a stick and promptly losing it! Students listen to the stories and build reading skills in recalling characters, setting, and sequence; they often compare and contrast elements of stories to previously heard stories from school and home.
Now that most students have mastered single consonant sounds and short vowel sounds, they are learning long vowel sounds, consonant blends, and spelling patterns such as -all, as in the words “ball” and “tall.” Learners experimented with expanding words by adding a consonant sound to words like “lay” to make “clay” and “play,” strengthening their phonemic awareness. The class has begun a new lesson book in which they are able to practice spelling patterns, capitalize the beginning of sentences, use spaces between words, and add periods to end sentences. Facing each page of text in the books are crayon drawings inspired by the tales students have heard.
In other news, students have been working as a team on two jigsaw puzzles. While pairs took turns working on the puzzle for one minute, their classmates watched, encouraged, held up the box lid to help display the picture, and took charge of the sand timer along with announcing start and end times. Each individual took pride in their task, generally working respectfully and cooperatively with peers. What a thrill each time the final puzzle piece was fitted and the full picture complete!
Announcements & Reminders:
Thank you for sending boots! They continue to be a need!
Parent Conferences are scheduled for March 12 and 13. Please sign up for a conference slot here. I look forward to meeting with each of you and discussing your child’s progress.
February 12: Lunar New Year Performance 2:30 pm (all families welcome)
February 16-20: Mid Winter Break (No School)
February 23: Teacher in Service (No School)
March 7: Community Work Day
March 12: Teacher-Parent Conferences (Half-day)
March 13: Teacher-Parent Conferences (No School)
Warmly,
Ki Michelle
