St. Christopher School

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had an enjoyable Christmas break.  The children seemed happy to be back and are ready to get busy learning about our next topic which is about life in the Arctic and  Antartica.  We will be exploring the various animals which live in these amazing climates such as penguins, seals, polar bears, walrus, puffins, arctic fox and reindeer.  Through books and film the children will be able to understand some of the ways these animals are specially equipped to survive in such harsh environments.  We also will find out about the Inuit people who still live in these climates and learn some  interesting things about their culture. 

In the area of math, we will be learning how to tally and make the correct marks to record numbers.  We also will be spending a good deal of time becoming more familiar with numbers beyond ten and comparing values.  (more, less, equal) There are some great card and dice games that we will be playing to reinforce thsese skills during our work stations. We will continue with counting practice through 100.  Already the children are pretty good at base counting by 2, 5 and 10.  We are fast approaching our 100th day of school so there are a couple fun activities planned for that day and of course we will  love going to visit the first graders to see their collections of 100 things!

As we work our way through the alphabet, we will be focusing on correct letter formation as well as spacing between words when writing.  We will continue to apply phonics to our journal writing and some children will be working on writing simple sentences.  This is such an exciting time of year when a lot seems to come together for the children and wonderful progress is being made.

We will have our first computer class with Mrs. Tassoni on January 20th!  The children will have their first exposure to the Eno boards---very exciting!

January brings "orderliness" with it as our new character trait.  This a great one for those of you who want a little help getting your children to keep things organized.  Organization allows us to achieve the greatest efficiency and also produces inner peace as opposed to the tension caused by clutter. 

Thank you all for everything you do to support our program and our school.  Your generosity is a wonderful example to your children and is very much appreciated!