First Grade News

We loved seeing all of you at the Publishing Party! First graders were so proud to show off all of their hard work. As you saw, we’ve been working on revising and editing our work to make it the best it can be.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve been interviewing many different community helpers. First graders have asked thoughtful questions, used their listening power to remember important information, and made beautiful posters.

In Math, we’re working on addition with numbers 0 – 20. We’ve learned several different strategies such as “make ten,” “use a number line,” and “doubles plus one.”

First grade Scientists have continued learning about the weather. This week they learned how to read a thermometer and soon they will make their own thermometers.

In Phonics, we’ve continued to study the “mystery of the silent e.” We’ve learned that the silent e usually makes the vowel say it’s name; however, we need to be careful readers because there are some exceptions like “have” and “come.”

In Hebrew, We had an exciting two weeks! We played with dreidels, sang Chanukah songs and read Chanukah stories. We had a very special Chanukah together! The first graders were amazing in the Chanukah play – we are so proud of them! We also learned the letters samech and gimmel. We had a conversation about ourselves, including our names, where we live, what grade we are in, how old we are, and what we love. Then, we worked on a project where we wrote sentences in Hebrew about ourselves. The first graders where so proud to be able to write so many sentences.

In Yahadut, we continued working on our siddurim and learned two more prayers from the amida. The first prayer called chanun hamarbeh lisloach. We spoke about the importance of apologizing to people when we make mistakes and forgiving others after they say that they are sorry. The second prayer called goel yisrael. We spoke about the land of Israel and what we know about it and we added two more pages to our sidurrim.

Last week parashah was Parashat miketz. It is when Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams and Pharaoh makes him in charge of preparing for the seven years of famine. We spoke about how Joseph helped other people during a tough time, and thought about ways that we can help other people. This week parasha is Parashat Vayigash. It is when Joseph tells his brothers that he is their long- lost Brother Joseph. We spoke about Joseph kindness and forgiveness to his brothers after all they have done to him. We all shared an act of kindness that we can do in our community.