Parents and students,

As this crazy school year comes to a close,  I want to say how much I have adored spending time with our class each and every day– both in the classroom and the virtual one.  There have been wonderful opportunities for me to discover and enjoy each student’s personality. They are darling little children who have made me smile & laugh every day.

Best wishes to all our graduating First Graders! May you continue to learn and grow.  I will always remember the smart, talented, and amazing students we had the pleasure of teaching. I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for you! Kids, you’ll move mountains!

With Much Love,
Mrs. Nelson 

Your child has worked SO hard this year and deserves to maintain or even increase his/her skills over the summer!  Here are some ideas for keeping your child learning over the summer:

#1: READ!  

No other skill is more important to maintain over the summer months.  Children who read regularly are shown to have higher intelligence and general knowledge, less stress, better fluency, improved analytical thinking, broader vocabulary, better memory and increased writing skills. Please use every opportunity (long car rides, waits at the dentist/doctor, before bedtime, etc.) to have your child read to you.

• Your child’s iReady (clever.com) and Wonders accounts will still be available until July 30, and RAZ kids until September 30.
• Visit the public library.  Your public library has excellent resources for choosing appropriate books for your child.  Or check out some great online resources, such as:
• http://www.greatschools.org/cgi-bin/showarticle/623
• http://www.scholastic.com/parents/books-and-reading/book-lists-and-recommendations/ages-6-7
• Mrs. Anderson, our librarian, has several summer reading programs and links in her Google Classroom (reading lists, library programs, reading journals, reading logs etc.)

#2: Write!

Writing is “backwards reading” and not only improves your child’s writing skills, but also improves his/her reading skills as well.  Encourage your child to use best penmanship and to sound out words phonetically, and assist your child in creating complete sentences that include proper use of upper and lower-case letters, and to include proper punctuation.

• Encourage your child to keep a journal of happenings or discoveries over the summer months.  You may even have your child continue to use the extra pages in his/her first grade journal, which is in a format familiar to your child.  We strongly encourage students to write (with an actual paper and pencil!) over the summer – not just write electronically.  This helps to maintain proper penmanship and puts a greater focus on sentence structure, rather than on hunting for letters on a keyboard.
• Electronic writing is great, too, though!  It is important that your child maintain familiarity with the keys on the keyboard!  

#3: Math!

We learned SO many different math skills this year and it is important that your child remember these skills so that he/she can build on them in 2nd grade!  Review addition, subtraction, place value, time, measurement, 2 and 3-dimensional shapes, graphing, skip-counting, etc. with your child!

• Hover over “Extra Practice and Review” on our blog to find 

  Math Games & Activities and Practice Pages for Addition and Subtraction Strategies.

• Your child’s iReady account (clever.com) will be available until July 30.

• Summer Math Challenge (recommended by the state!) https://hub.lexile.com/summer-math-challenge
• Find great online games and resources for sharpening math skills, including:
• Turtle Diary: http://www.turtlediary.com/grade-1-games.html
• Education.com: http://www.education.com/games/math/first-grade/