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06 May 2021
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First Grade Newsletter

Hello Families,

In Hebrew, we continued traveling through the state of Israel and visited the city of Eilat. We spoke and wrote sentences about what so special about this city. At the end of our traveling the students made their own map of Israel.

In yahadut, we learned a new prayer from the Amidah. That prayer does not have words. We spoke about how the Amidah is a time when we can have a private conversation with God and make our own wishes or prayers. During tefilah we leave a minute for each first grader to say their own prayer. We also spoke about Lag Ba’Omer. We learned that many years ago the Jewish people used bonfires to communicate with each other. The first graders loved roasting marshmallows over a “bonfire”, just how some people in Israel celebrate Lag Ba’Omer! We also had so much fun celebrating Lag Ba’Omer in school last week.

In Music, First Graders have continued to explore tempos through their study of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals. Since the last blog, they have looked at the Tortoises and Kangaroos movements. They learned that Saint-Saens wrote a little joke into Tortoises – he took the melody from Jacques Offenbach’s “Gallop Infernal”, otherwise known as the Can-Can, and slowed it down. First graders are looking forward to sharing a Tortoises/Can-Can mash-up with you at their end-of-year celebration.
In phonics, we have been practicing building contractions, reading compound words quickly, and recognizing “soft C” and the diphthongs “ou” and “ow” in words we read.  1st graders have learned a MASSIVE  amount of snap words this year and as we approach the end of our list we are working on spelling them correctly in our writing by looking closely at our personal word wall.
In writing, we have worked hard on making our reviews even more convincing by adding comparisons and catchy introductions.  If your child sees commercials at home, have them notice if they named the product, made us wonder with questions, and said their opinion to get our attention and hook us in.  We also learned to talk directly to our readers just like they do in commercials!
Shabbat Shalom,
The First Grade Team

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