We would like to welcome Mrs. Kim Richards to our first grade family. She is helping us as our first grade aide. Mrs. Richards comes to us with a history at St. Peter’s. Both of her grown sons graduated from St. Peter’s and have gone on to college. She was previously an aide for our fourth and fifth grade classes, and most recently worked as a tutor for Title I for Charles County. The children love her and I am so glad to have her with us.
I am looking forward to working with a new class of children and their parents. We will continue the Adventures of the SuperKids and learn many, many new things. I am anxious to begin our new school year! To our new families at St. Peter's, WELCOME, and we are excited to meet you.
January 5, 2012
It is hard to believe that the first part of the school year is over. It went by so quickly! We celebrated Constitution Day in September, traveled with Johnny Appleseed, and learned all about Christopher Columbus. The children are becoming quite adept at reading maps.
Of course, we celebrated Halloween in costumes and with a party. I think princesses reigned that day. At Thanksgiving we learned about the travels of the Pilgrims. The children were surprised to learn how difficult the trip on Mayflower was for the Pilgrims. No clean water and food and no DSes to play on the journey!
Advent was a special time for us. We made special promises to Jesus, and put the promises in our large wooden manger. By Christmas, the manger was overflowing with their slips of promises.
During the weeks before Christmas, each child was able to take either Gingerbread Fred or Ginger Gingerbread home for an evening. We are now putting their adventures together in a book for each child. The children have made their own felt Gingerbread people to put on their cover. We have quite an array, from an angel, a Pittsburgh Steeler, a super hero to a priest. It has been a fun project for us.
Before we had our Christmas break, we had a wonderful party. Many, many thanks to Mrs. Hunt and her helpers.
While in Kindergarten, the children met the characters in our Superkids reading program. The Superkids are now a year older, and we are enjoying The Adventures of the Superkids. The children love the stories and they are learning many new words through the phonics portion of the program. They are reading very well and they sometimes surprise themselves at how well they can read! We have even learned about onomatopoeia words. They love to say onomatopoeia.
In our Saxon math program we are building on what was learned in Kindergarten. Each day, we practice our calendar skills, patterns, place value and other number skills. We are learning our addition facts and using geometric shapes to make our own designs.
The first grade has been working hard to read library books and take their tests, on the computer to earn points in our school wide Accelerated Reading program. Several of the children have earned their blue dog tags and we are very proud of them. This program really encourages the children to read outside of the classroom.
As the school year continues, we will be continuing our math, reading more of the Superkids adventures, and learning a lot more about historical figures in our country. We are looking forward to the activities during Catholic Schools Week, when we will celebrate US.
We wish a very happy 2012!
Apple Painting in Art