Fun Night Coming Up! / Let It Snow / Birthdays Update

Last Tuesday was a tough day for driving and commuting but a lot of fun for students at recess.

Welcome back, here is the message for the week.

Snacks
Thank you for all your snack contributions over the fall.  We need to refill our supply of quick snacks I can give the students in the morning between the start of school and lunch.  All contributions need to be nut free.  Here are some good, and nut-free, options: Wheat Thin Originals, Ak Mak Crackers from Trader Joes, Ritz Crackers Originals, Annie's Cheddar Bunnies.

Birthdays
I had a couple of parents ask me about birthdays last week. I realized that I haven't addressed the subject since the first week of school.  Here is what I wrote in September:  We love celebrating birthdays at school, but at Ann Arbor STEAM we do not celebrate with cupcakes and sweets.  On the day of your child’s birthday I will make him or her a crown and the class will sing to, and celebrate, their birthday.  If you would like to bring something to share we ask that you bring non-food items such as fun pencils, erasers, stickers etc.  Please keep it small and be sure to send in enough for every student (right now we have 24).  Also note that when you are having birthday parties outside of school and only invite some of your child’s classmates, children not invited may be disappointed.  For this reason, birthday invitations can only be passed out in class if all the students are receiving an invite.

Fun Night!!!
There is a A2STEAM Fun Night scheduled this month for kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade students.  It will be held on Friday, January 27th from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. There will be games, crafts, movies, and food.  This flyer tells you more and has a link where you can sign up to help.  I will be there helping out too.

Curriculum Overview
Science -  We are starting a new Project Lead the Way unit called ‘Pushes and Pulls’.  Students will learn about basic physics and the forces they experience in their life (using the swing on a playground, playing tug-of-war, dropping something).  We will also see how those forces interact.

Reading -  We are looking at the features of a non-fiction text like a captions, headers, photographs, diagrams, a table of contents and an index.  Some of the first books we are going to read introduce concepts from our Project Lead the Way unit on pushes and pulls.  We will also read some books about weather.

Writing - This week we are studying what makes a complete sentence. 

Math - This week we are looking closely at place value and understanding tens and ones.  Students will see that numbers like 15 are one ten and five ones.  They will be able to break apart numbers into their tens and ones (see drawing below).

Word Study - Students are identifying the vowel sounds found in words.

Thirty-six has 3 tens and 6 ones.