First Grade: April 13 - 17, 2026
Dear First Grade Families,
Practice for the class play is proving to be suitably challenging and fun! Students have gotten into the spirit of the play with creative movement that has allowed character exploration and confidence building. One of their favorite elements of the play is the theme song with its playful choreography. Students are learning to listen for their cues and work in teams, helping one another navigate the script and decode the sentences for their parts during group work. Although the children mostly memorize their parts by repeating after the teacher, they have ample opportunity for developing their reading ability. Drama games during Circle help students relax while enhancing their performance skills. They have shown impressive self-control while speaking in a range of voices with accompanying facial expressions. They are looking more like Second Graders with each passing week!
In other news, the current lunchtime read-aloud, Mary Poppins, has the class spellbound. The magic realism that permeates the story is a reminder that childlike wonder and pretending transcend age boundaries. After being transported into a sidewalk chalk picture and returning to the real world, Mary Poppins is peppered with questions from the young children in her charge. They have their own ideas of what a fantasy land would be and are met with the following reply from their nanny: “Don’t you know,” she said pityingly, “that everybody’s got a Fairyland of their own?”In response to this scene, students drew their own fairyland picture, a scene that expressed their own innermost desires. The children glowed with pleasure as their hands worked to form their fantasies on paper. Many students chose to present their work, and they were so delightful that they must all be shared here: becoming Jack's brave big sister and fleeing the giant down the beanstalk, joining a pirate crew, swimming with a good friend and some sea turtles, riding a giant cobra with a classmate who had become a brother, living in a land chock-full of books, turning into a turtle in a paradise on earth, and finding a leprechaun with a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Evidently inspired, students found a pirate ship at the creek and became a pirate crew together!
Next week during play practice, the class will begin to move away from using their scripts, which will free up their eyes and bodies for greater expression during rehearsals in readiness for the performance. It really shows when students have run lines at home! Although this is optional, the boost to your child’s confidence in exchange for five to 10 minutes of your time is invaluable. Thank you for your partnership!
Announcements & Reminders:
Hope Blooms is this Friday, April 24 at 6:00 PM! We can’t wait to see parents and guests there (adults only, please). This is an important evening for our school and a chance to come together as a community. Join us for dinner, drinks, music, and our live paddle raise for class projects (in person only). Tickets are still available and needed to participate in bidding both in person and online.
April 24: Annual Auction Fundraiser (Half Day)
April 25: Community Work Day
April 28 - 30: Grades 4-6 Waldorf Southeast Pentathlon
May 7: Eighth Grade Project Presentations, 2:35 pm
May 15: Grades Spring Assembly 9:15 am (All families welcome!)
Warmly,
Ki Michelle
