Japan Study and More!

Wow! It is hard to believe that January will come to a close this weekend! We have been working hard all month long and have learned so many new things. We spent much of this month involved in a country study of Japan. We have learned about the culture, the people, and the land, and have been comparing Japan to our own country. We have completed many projects, including Japanese carp flags (celebrating Boys' Day-see photo at right) and we decorated paper fans (in honor of Girls' Day). We have also learned a number of songs, including the Japan Song and the Japanese Number Song. Please enjoy as you listen to our class sing both of these songs here!

Japan Song:


Japanese Number Song:


We will continue to learn about Japanese food and customs next week.

In literacy, we have been taking our knowledge of letters and sounds to learn how to "finger tap" simple words. Students use their fingers to "tap" out the sounds of a simple word and read it (for example, if they see the word mat in front of them, they say and tap /m/ /a/ /t/ and blend the sounds together to say "mat.") The children are very excited because they know that this is an important step in learning how to read. I am encouraging students to notice words around them and to try to read them using this strategy. It is also a great way for them to sound out and write words! We are also practicing sight words (also known as high frequency words): words that can not be sounded out because of their irregular sounds and must therefore by memorized or instantly recognized. Some words we have worked on this week include: the, I, a, me, and it. We will continue to add more words each week, and I encourage students to use these in their daily writing, as well.

In math, we continue to add more work stations and practice more complex skills. Some of our new work stations include, "Beat You to 20," "Ten and More," "Bucket of Sea Creatures," and "Beat You to 20 Cents." We are working on recognizing and using coins, grouping, sorting, patterning, and the concept of more than and less than. In the coming weeks, I will be introducing the children to the problem solving process using story problems.

I hope you all were as pleased as I was with your children's progress on the quarter 2 report cards. The entire group continues to impress me daily with their knowledge and great thinking skills. Before we know it, they will all be big first graders!