First Grade: Week of February 26th

Happy Purim! We had a fun filled week in first grade. On Monday we celebrated the 100th day of school. The Kindergarten, first, and second grade classes got together to do different activities all about the number 100. They built structures with 100 Legos, played math games, and wrote 100 reasons they love our school.

In Writing Workshop, we used our pretending skills to begin writing realistic fiction stories. First graders thought of pretend characters, gave them a name, and imagined adventures for their characters. In Math we learned about larger numbers and reviewed place value.

We read “Trombone Shorty” by Troy Andrews this week. It’s the true story of a young boy from New Orleans who learns to play an old trombone he found. He grows up to lead his own band and now plays around the world. Today Trombone Shorty gives back to his community through a foundation that helps teens develop their musical talent. After reading the book, we listened to some of Trombone Shorty’s music and made collages inspired by the music.

It has been a very exciting week in our Hebrew classroom. We read Purim stories in Hebrew, played games and sang lots of Purim songs. The first graders continued working on their megilot. We also spoke about all of the things that we do to celebrate Purim – giving Mishloach Manot, gifts to the poor, reading the megilah, and of course, having fun and eating! Wemade beautiful masks of each of the characters from the megilah and we had so much fun celebrating Purim together!

In Parasha, we learned about Parashat Ki Tissa. We learned about the golden calf and that the Israelites made a bad choice. We talked about how everyone makes mistakes, and it is important for us to correct those mistakes and try not to make them again. We also spoke about the people who worked at the mishkan – the Kohanim and the Kohen Gadol andthought about a special job that we have, just like the special job of the Kohanim.

Shabbat Shalom!