First Grade News

Last week, first graders celebrated Chinese New Year. We read non fiction books about Chinese New Year and then used a venn diagram to compare Chinese New Year, Rosh Hashanna, and New Years Eve.

First grade writers finished their teaching books. We celebrated with a gallery walk and publishing party!

In Math we began the challenging work of double digit addition and subtraction. First graders learned to add or subtract from the ones first and then the tens. They used manipulatives to regroup when necessary.

First grade readers continued to work on reading longer and longer words. We’ve been learning common endings such as “ick,” “ill,” and “ang” and using them to read more quickly. We’ve been practicing our reading skills by reading non-fiction teaching books to learn more about the world. We even used our phonics skills in Science class to read non fiction books about the weather!

We celebrated the hundredth day with the Kindergarten and Second Grade classes. We rotated through five stations each having something to do with the number 100. Stations included writing 100 things we love about our school, sorting coins into groups of 100, and building with 100 legos.

In Hebrew, we had a party in class to celebrate our accomplishments – finishing learning the Hebrew alef-bet and our nitzanim workbooks. I encourage you to look through your child workbook to see the amazing work that he/she have done! The first graders were also very excited to get a certificate for learning all of the Hebrew letters. We kept practicing our reading and wrote sentences using all the vocabulary that we have learned so far. As a continued of learning how to describe ourselves in Hebrew, each of the first graders choose him/her favorite animal and wrote about them – they did such an impressive job!

In yahadut , we learned two new prayers from the Amidah. The first prayer called boneh yerushalayim. We saw pictures of how the city looked in the past and how it looks today. We spoke about the importance of the city of Jerusalem and what makes her a holy city.  The second prayer is matzmiach keren yeshuah. We listen to Louis Armstrong song – “What a wonderful world” and made a list of all the wonderful things in the world. We discuss what we can do to make the world a better place.

In Parasha, we learned about Parashat Terumah.  We learned about the mishkan, the temporary place of praying while the Israelites wandered in the dessert. We went on a trip to Bet Elohimwhere the first graders noticed the similarities and differences between the mishkan and a modern day synagogue. We also spoke about the addional laws that God gives the Jewish people and thought about thing that we are responsible for at school and at home. We also learned about Parashat Tetzaveh. We spoke about the people who worked at the mishkan – the Kohanimand the Kohen Gadol. Each student made paper figures of the Kohen and Kohen Gadol with all their special clothing. First grades also thought about a special job that they have, just like the special job of the Kohanim.