Focus is on each one being special and how they are a part of a family and of God’s family.

What this all means is how we must show love, care, and respect for each other and to pray and the different ways that we can pray.

Knowledge of the different celebrations of the church year, especially the holy days as they come along.

Parents can participate in the program by going over the units with the children when they come home on Fridays and use the last page that is addressed to the parents.

In the second trimester we will continue to work on letter sounds with continued emphasis on the short and long vowels. We are still working with rhyming words because they are important in the continual implementation of phonemic awareness skills. We are learning to read; and some of the students will make the transition to reading to learn, a very important step. Continual practice of reading orally to your child is also essential, especially stories that are familiar to them. Having their own libraries is another step toward reading to learn. The students will continue to write short stories and type them on the computers in the classroom. We have been doing some peer editing and will continue to work with this method.

Please continue working with your child on letter sounds at the beginning, middle, and end of different words. Also, reading at least one story every night is strongly encouraged.

We are continuing to work on handwriting with emphasis being placed on spacing between each word, capitalization, and correct punctuation.

In the second trimester we will be continuing to review math vocabulary. More emphasis will be placed on learning the addition and subtraction facts. Very short story problems will be introduced.

Time and money will also be covered.

Our hundredth day of school is coming up shortly and we will be having a small celebration to commemorate the day as well as several activities having to do with a hundred.

Place value, skip counting, and estimation are worked on daily with the calendar.

We are continuing to work on a map of United States and California. Our globes are coming along nicely and should be ready shortly.

Folk and true-life heroes will continue to be covered, such as George Washington, Abe Lincoln, and Dr. Martin Luther King.

Asian cultures will be discussed and stories will be read from these countries to tie in Chinese New Year.

We will be covering plants in the second trimester, with emphasis on their parts, how they grow, kinds, where seeds are found, similarities differences of leaves and how people use plants.

For Chinese New Year, the children will learn how to do beginning Chinese watercolor.

Several lessons will also tie in the holidays and days of celebration such as, Ground Hog’s Day, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and Easter.

Music
(Taught by Mrs. Mary Reynolds)