This Week *Mattered*!

This week was short, but we made it count! Be sure to talk with your first grader about their week and ask them why this week "mattered."

Conferences
It was great to meet with our families at conferences on Thursday! I am really proud of all of the hard work our first graders have done so far this year and look forward to all they will accomplish throughout the rest of the year. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns as our year progresses. As always-- thanks for your continued help in supporting your child’s learning.

Winter Wonderland Reminder
First Grade will have a Winter Wonderland on December 21st at 9:00am. Your child is invited to bring a special nut-free snack on this day. If you would like to volunteer for our special event please let me know by Monday!

Mystery Readers!
A notice was sent home today about having Mystery Readers come in to read to our class. If you or a family member is interested in participating, please let me know by sending back the attached form.

Matter!
This week we have been very busy in science! We learned all about Matter. When we researched matter, students took notes in their research notebook. We learned that matter is anything that takes up space and that there are three states of matter: solids, liquids and gases. We talked about the difference between each. On Wednesday, all first graders went on a “Matter Hunt” to find as many solids, liquids, and gases in our first grade classrooms. We found LOTS of solids, some liquids, and very few gases. First graders were challenged to find some more solids, liquids, and gases at home!

On Friday the first grade classes conducted some matter experiments! Be sure to ask your first grader about the experiments and what they learned. Here is a list of all of the experiments we did!

1. Matter Mystery Bag: We used our five senses to explore the properties of objects and guess what is inside the bag.
2. Classifying Matter: We sorted objects by shape, color, size, texture, and other properties.
3. Weighing Matter with Blocks: We explored mass-- which we learned is how much matter an object has. We measured how many blocks it would take to balance the scale with a variety of objects.
4. Balloon Experiment: We used balloons filled with ice, water, and air and saw what happened when the balloons were popped.
5. Ice Cube Melting: We experimented with an ice cube and thought about how we could melt the ice cube faster. We also explored how matter can change its state.
6. Liquid Volume Experiment: We used 4 different containers of water and predicted which one has the most. We were VERY surprised with the result! Ask us what we learned from this!

After we completed our experiments, our first grade scientists chose their favorite experiment to write about! We learned that just like readers and mathematicians-- scientists write too!

Talking Tidbits

• Our ticket jar was full AGAIN!!! Every first grader earned a Hoot! card!
• Suffix s to make words plural
• Facts about matter!
• Our Matter Hunt!
• Matter Experimenting
• Holiday songs in music
• Square One Owls in Art!
• Using addition to solve subtraction