Dear Parents,

 

     I hope that all of you have enjoyed Winter Break! It is always a perfect opportunity to relax and spend quality time with friends and family. We do have a short week of school ahead, but we will be busy learning as usual!

 

     I would like to thank Mrs. Thota and Mrs. Nardi for helping our class to create the beautiful Valentine's Day boxes last Thursday, especially since the craft needed to be rescheduled with little notice due to our Remote Learning Day. For those students who were absent, your boxes and cards have been saved for you along with the decorations. These will be sent home Wednesday for you to decorate at home.

 

     I would like to first thank all the families for sending in the tissue boxes that we requested. Also, I am sending out a huge "THANK YOU!" to Mrs. Thota who wrapped each and every tissue box to prepare them for the heart stickers, gems, and other decorations that your children used to make the boxes so beautiful! Thank you, Mrs. Thota for your gift of time and talent to our class!

 

     There will be NO TESTS this week since it is a short week. However, any student who missed the tests given last week due to illness or travel plans outside of school vacation time will be taking the Math Chapter 7 (Geometry) and Spelling Test tomorrow (Wed. 2/21).

 

     We will be starting Math Chapter 8 (Money and Time) tomorrow. Please have real coins available at home for your child to practice counting by ones, fives, tens, and counting on by ones for groups of coins. We have plastic coins in school which will be used for hands-on practice with our daily math lessons, but it always helps to use coins at home as well...especially if your child needs more practice with improving his/her skip counting skills (5's, 10's). As always, it is very important to continue practicing addition and subtraction facts to and from 20! This helps students to become more accurate and more automatic with these math facts! Please remember that students should be using their Clever badges to log in to the Reading Eggs and Mathseeds programs at home.

 

     I will be sending home parent letters and information about Lent tomorrow in your child's green communication folder. Please read and help your child to use the Lenten pathway as well as come up with meaningful ways that he/she can incorporate more prayer, fasting and giving during this holy season. Included is an idea sheet for these practices which is quite creative. (For example, fasting does not need to be from sweets!) Please discuss with your child how he/she can best prepare for Easter. We will also be talking and learning about Lent as part of our Religion curriculum in school. 

 

     Please refer to the posted Homework Cover Sheet as well as the Sunday Email Blast for more information about upcoming events.

 

     Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. I am always here to work in partnership with you for your child's first grade experience to be productive and positive!

 

Have a blessed week,

Mrs. Carpanzano