Dear Moms and Dads,

Today is our 16^th day of school! Time seems to be flying right by. It is such a pleasure to settle into a routine again with your children and to find out just what they need me to work on with them.

We have just finished writing our first poem about our time of day paintings. Our first poem was about dawn. While writing these poems we really concentrated on using powerful describing words know as "silver dollar words". You’ll get a chance to see these poems at open house.

We used our journals for the first time yesterday. I used the terms focus and details for this type of writing. The second graders chose a focus and then wrote sentences that supported their focus. For example, one of the students wrote, "Math is awesome". Then he wrote details to explain why math was awesome. The first graders drew a picture of something and that was their focus. Their sentences were about their picture.

We will begin to write another narrative on Friday. Children will write their own narrative about Madeline. Each of them will choose a problem that Madeline might have.

International Day of Peace is on Friday. We will take part in a pinwheel project along with many other schools. Each child will write about things that are peaceful on one side of the pinwheel. The other side will be decorated in their own unique style. We will put a peace symbol on the pinwheel as we pin it to a pencil. On Friday we will place our pinwheels in front of our school to symbolize that peace is important to us.

In math the first graders continue to work on adding combinations to 10 using games such as On/Off and In/Out. These games will arrive home with your child for homework today. I ask many of the children to "count on" to help them figure out what a missing addend is. For example, if there are 10 buttons in all and 4 buttons are outside of a cup and some are hidden under the cup, the child would count on from 4: "5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10" and find that it took 6 more to get to 10. Thus 4 + 6 = 10. There were 6 buttons under the cup.

The second grade group continues to work with Ms. Hartshorn. They have been focusing on adding two digit numbers using a variety of materials. Coupons and coins have been used to help match coin names with coin values and then counting the change to see how money can be saved using specific coupons. Some challenge problems have required your child to make choices about which coupons can be added together in order to equal a specific amount. For example, find coupons of only food items that will help you save a total of $1.25. We’ve also been playing a game called "Close to 20," using dice and cards. Both of these activities are requiring us to know our addition facts through 20 by using what we know about getting to 10 efficiently, such as 3 and 7, or 2 +3+5.

We also need to know coin names and corresponding money values, and how to count on from a number by tens and fives. For example, if a child had 1 quarter, 2 dimes, and a nickel, he or she needs to be able to count 25, 35, 45, 50 in order to find the sum total of the money. We’ve been using what we know about adding tens to numbers by showing numbers in expanded notation.

For example 72 is really 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 +10 + 10 + 2.

72 + 23 can look like this:

72 = 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 2

23 = 10 + 10 + 3

90+5

Which is a sum of 95.

Eventually, we will be able to show expanded notation in this way:

72 = 70 + 2

23 = 20 + 3

95 = 90 + 5

Reminders: