1B Newsletter!
An update of the events of the 1B classroom
Welcome to Our New Newsletter!
The First Day of First Grade!
Here are some key pieces of information to know about First Grade.
Birthdays
In First Grade, we are integrating our community building across the grade, including having students celebrate their momentous days as a collective group. To do this, we will have a once-a-month classroom celebration for ALL students with a birthday occurring in that month. Besides promoting the idea of community, we feel that this will allow us to meet and better manage the diverse dietary needs, schedules, and cultural backgrounds of our school families.
This monthly birthday celebration will take place on the last Friday of every month. In the month of your child's birthday, please reach out to the co-teacher team one week before the last Friday to confirm your attendance. We will complete an activity in class to recognize each birthday child. Our focus this year is on the children, their personal story and history, so we encourage you to bring along your child's favorite book for a read aloud. We are moving away from celebrating with sweets in the classroom, if you are interested in bringing in a healthy snack, like pre-washed fruit, please inform the classroom teachers.
Allergies
We have one student who is allergic to peanut as well as several other food items. We will be a peanut-free classroom this year and appreciate your support in providing home snacks and lunches that avoid including peanuts or peanut products. Please touch base with us if you would like to bring an alternative snack for the child during birthday celebrations and we can put you in contact with the child’s parent.
Park
This year, we will continue going to Fort Greene Park to enjoy some playground recess time. We are fortunate this year to have K-2 students to interact with on the playground! This will create many opportunities for friendships to flourish across grade levels. 1B is scheduled to have park each Tuesday. The set schedule as of right now is for students to board the bus by 10:45am, have lunch at the park, and board the bus back to BPCS at 1pm.
Eventually, we will be walking over to Fort Greene Park and having lunch there. We ask that you please pack your child’s lunch in a lunch bag that is easy for them to carry.
Extra Clothes and Supplies
We greatly appreciate all of the supplies you have brought into our classrooms to help us kick off the school year in full force. A quick reminder to bring in a change of clothes for your child in a Ziploc bag and have each item of clothing labeled with their name. While First Graders are less likely to have bathroom accidents, there are still those unexpected moments where milk spills or a child comes down with the stomach bug. Items to include in the Ziploc are a BPCS shirt, shorts/pants/skirt, underwear and socks.
Homes
This year we are going to kick off our IB inquiry unit with homes. Within this unit, we are going to explore homes around the world in order to guide our students toward the understanding that homes reflect the surrounding culture and environment by comparing their homes to those of other people (both local and global). In order for our students to explore and learn more about homes, we would greatly appreciate if you could please provide two photos or hand-drawn pictures by your child. One of your child’s favorite spot in their home and the other of the outside structure of their home. The first will allow the students to catch a glimpse of where their friends spend most of their time and learn about other friends and their homes. The other will help in our comparison of New York City homes to those found in other countries. Please send the photos to school either in their backpack or through the class email.
One last thing! Please keep sending in responses to the Welcome Letter that was previously sent out. We thoroughly enjoy gaining more insight about our new community members.
We look forward to working with you all throughout the school year!
Best,
The 1B Team
Emily and Kendra