Walk, Stop, Wiggle, Sit

The whole first grade learned a new game this morning called Walk, Stop, Wiggle, Sit. It is a game to work on listening skills, focusing attention, boosting concentration and also just to have some fun. Ask your child to tell you all about it.

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Sleep is Important

Sleep or more specifically, the lack of sleep can have a significant impact on your child. Research is showing that lack of sleep impacts more than just mood and alertness. It can also impact brain development, cognition, behavior (mimicking symptoms of ADHD), weight and more. I have a linked to a few articles about these impacts for you below. I pulled out a few important quotes from each article for you.

The 7 Reasons Your Child Needs Sleep

2. Sleep helps the heart.
Experts are learning more about how sleep protects kids from vascular damage due to circulating stress hormones and arterial wall -- damaging cholesterol. "Children with sleep disorders have excessive brain arousal during sleep, which can trigger the fight-or-flight response hundreds of times each night," says Jeffrey Durmer, M.D., Ph.D., a sleep specialist and researcher in Atlanta. "Their blood glucose and cortisol remain elevated at night. Both are linked to higher levels of diabetes, obesity, and even heart disease."

6. Sleep increases kids' attention span.
Children who consistently sleep fewer than ten hours a night before age 3 are three times more likely to have hyperactivity and impulsivity problems by age 6. "But the symptoms of sleep-deprivation and ADHD, including impulsivity and distractibility, mirror each other almost exactly," explains Dr. Owens. In other words, tired kids can be impulsive and distracted even though they don't have ADHD. No one knows how many kids are misdiagnosed with the condition, but ruling out sleep issues is an important part of the diagnosis, she says. For school-age kids, research has shown that adding as little as 27 minutes of extra sleep per night makes it easier for them to manage their moods and impulses so they can focus on schoolwork.

Lack of Sleep Linked to Behavior Problems in Kids

“Children who aren’t getting the recommended amount of sleep have more difficulties with attention, with emotional control, with reasoning, with problem-solving, and also have behavioral problems,” lead author Dr. Elsie Taveras told Reuters Health. 

The bedtime routine should involve a winding down period with relaxing activities such as reading a bedtime story, Beebe added. “It seems old fashioned but it's very calming, it's very connecting. It can be very soothing, and it's very predictable,” he said.


7 Ways Sleep Affects the Brain (And What Happens If It Doesn't Get Enough)

If you have kids, you know that without sleep, they can be a tad difficult. Sleep deprivation in children has lots of short-term ramifications, and over the long term, it may even affect brain development. Sleep is especially important for the growing brain, which is why babies, kids and teens sleep so much.

Some studies have reported that kids who are sleep-deprived because of nighttime breathing problems are significantly more likely to have ADHD symptoms than kids who sleep well. Others have found that a little extra sleep can make a significant difference in school performance: Just 18 more minutes per night was linked to better grades in math and English in elementary school kids.

Word Work

We are learning about the many ways that long vowel sounds are spelled in words. We are taking an inquiry approach to this study. This means that we are searching all of our reading materials and noticing different ways that a sound might be spelled. Then we write out these words on sticky notes and sort them by type on a chart. We have had some amazing discussions about words and how they work. The crew is becoming very good at noticing and finding a wide variety of spellings for the different vowel sounds we have focused on so far. That is the goal of this study - to notice how words work and begin to make connections between words, letters, sounds and spellings. We are not trying to learn to spell all of these words perfectly yet. That comes later after we have a better understanding of how words work and are put together. Since we are taking an inquiry type of approach to our word work that also means that we follow the lead of the students and study the things that they notice, find and have meaning for them.  This led us to notice the spelling of the number eight in math and the word weigh - neither of those words have an "a" in them but they have the long "a" sound. The crew loves to find more words throughout our day that follow some of these patterns and it is truly the best way to learn. Be sure to have discussions with your child when they notice things like this as they are reading roads signs in the car or books with you in the evenings.

Nonfiction Books

We are going to be reading and writing nonfiction books about animals. We will research our chosen animal and then we will gather all of the facts we learn into our own book. This is one of the favorite writing units of the year. Check out the books below and see why. These series are perfect for first grade researchers.

Important Dates
2/1 Pajama Day for First Grade and Family Read Aloud Time from 8:30 - 9:15 am
2/14 Valentine's Day Party 3:00 pm
2/15 No School for Students - Professional Development Day for Teachers
2/18 No School - President's Day
2/19 Winter Voyage for First Grade - Day Trip - No Day of Rest
3/2 Life is Art - get your tickets here
3/16 - 4/1 Spring Break

Valentine's Day Cards for Students in Japan

Today we all created Valentine's Day cards for students at the school that Ms. Deborah visited. They have many more students than we do so we each had to create a couple of cards. We had so much fun creating them. We hope they enjoy them!

Ordinary People Can Change the World

One of my favorite series (I know, I say that about a lot of series and books. It is true, though.) is the Ordinary People Can Change the World Series by Brad Meltzer.

Each book in this series tells the life story of a famous person. These books go with our patriotic symbols/famous Americans study really well. The thing that I like best about this series is that it tells a little bit about the childhood of each person. This draws kids right into the story because they can relate to the young child that they are reading about. These books make great read alouds because they will generate great discussions. It is hard for me to choose my favorite books in this series because they are all great!

 You might want to check these books out on your next trip to the library or bookstore.

Ordinary People Change the World website
Brad Meltzer's Author Page with more on this series

Important Dates
2/1 Pajama Day for First Grade and Family Read Aloud Time from 8:30 - 9:15 am
2/14 Valentine's Day Party 3:00 pm
2/15 No School for Students - Professional Development Day for Teachers
2/18 No School - President's Day
2/19 Winter Voyage for First Grade - Day Trip - No Day of Rest
3/2 Life is Art - get your tickets here
3/16 - 4/1 Spring Break

How-To Writing

Ms. Cate is teaching a new unit on how-to writing. The crew has chosen so many interesting topics to teach through their writing. It will be fun to share their writing with each other and learn how to do new things.

Another photo from our day - but not during the writing lesson.

Clowning Around

Practicing Spelling

We recently did a short spelling assessment and now the crew is working on learning those words that they did not know how to spell. They practice them each day for a few minutes after recess.