Spider-Man Math and a Special Guest

We have been learning about missing parts in math this week. In order to spice up our lesson and grab the attention of the children, we were given a special mission from Spider Man! 

We had to find the missing parts to see how many spiders were left!

Once we finished all of the problems we received a very special message from this man!

Tingalayo and some brand new plants!

You may have heard the song Tingalayo being sung around the house the past two weeks. If you would like the hear it, click here! This week we have taken the song to a whole new level by writing our own verses. First, we had to figure out the rhyming pattern of the song. Then, we were able use that pattern to make up our own verses! We have had some pretty creative songs with donkey's doing all kinds of silly things! We are hanging them up in the classroom so everyone can read them!

We also planted some seeds today! The girls planted pinto beans, while the boys planted garden peas.

 We watched this time lapse video to see how seeds grew into plants. We used our prediction skills to guess how long it would take for these plants to really grow! Did you know it was only 9 days?

Here is a before picture of our plants. Check back for updates on how our peas and beans are growing! 

The Needs of a Plant

We have been discussing needs of plants and animals. This week's focus is on plants. Today we drew a bubble map for the needs of a tree and then headed outside to do some scientific observations. The students took their science journals and pencils and made some great observations! Our next step is to plant our own plants and watch them grow!

This week in 1st grade..

Our Week in Pictures!

Here are just a few pictures from our week. Have a great weekend!

Geography

We used Google Earth today to review our continents and oceans. The kids were so excited when we zoomed in to see our classroom at Glenwood. We discussed the difference between city, state, country, and continents. This is a very hard thing for the students to grasp, but we will keep working at it! We used Google Earth to draw pictures in a book that had our state, country and continent! 

Math Rhymes

Even math this week has included rhyming! 

We used this poem as a part of the math centers to help us remember how to correctly write our numbers. We used colored hair gel in Ziploc bags for a fun twist on practicing. 

Our New Favorite Songs!

Thanks to Mr. Graham, we have some new favorite songs! We are using these songs this week to learn about rhyming and how we can use rhymes to make new words and improve our spelling!

Good-Bye Poem

We end everyday with our Good Bye Poem. This week in our literature block, we will be working on making and finding rhymes.

Continents

We are working on learning the continents and oceans as part of our curriculum. Here is a great website to practice. Start with level L and work your way up to level 3! Ask your child to sing you our continents song, it will surely get stuck in your head!

Power Towers

Power Towers are our new favorite spelling game! The rules are very simple and we use little paper bathroom cups with words on the bottom to play in our classroom!

TA-DA! These spellers built a tall power tower!

Math At Home

This week we are using a deck of playing cards in math centers. Cards are some of my FAVORITE math tools. They are a fairly common household items and are great for first grade mathematics!


If you are looking for some fun family games to play here are my top five Playing Card math games!

1. Number Order- pick 3-6 cards and order them from least to greatest. To make it a challenge race the other players to see who is fastest.
2. Sort- see how many different ways you can sort a deck of cards, you'll be amazed at the possibilities!
3. Addition and Subtraction- pick 2 cards to add or subtract. Play with a partner to see who can add and subtract the fastest
4. Battle- played with 2 players. Each player flips over a card at the same time. The higher card wins. Play till one player has ALL the cards!
5. Patterns- create a pattern using colors, suits, or numbers.

Open House

Thursday (September 15th) is our Open House night! Join us at 6pm with the first PTA meeting of the year, followed by classroom visits! I can't wait to meet some of you and talk with many of you again. So mark your calendars, and I'll see you THURSDAY!

This week in 1st grade...

What we do all day...

Our Week in Pictures

It was a short and action packed week. Enjoy the pictures and have a great weekend!

                                     

New Additions!

We are welcoming some new additions to our classroom... FISH! As a part of our 1st science unit, we will learn about the needs of living organisms. Today in science we discussed the 4 needs of animals in an effort to ensure we could properly care for our fish. We learned they need food, water, air, and shelter.

For the next few weeks, we will observe, predict, analyze and capture data from our aquariums. In the aquariums we have platy fish, duckweed, algae, snails, and anacharis. We will try very hard to keep these fish thriving in our classroom. Ask your child to tell you all about the needs of plants and animals.

Social Studies

Today the students did a social studies lesson with Mr. Graham where they learned the word "attributes". Students started by coloring a simple picture of a house in accordance with different attributes. For example: If you have a brother color the door red. If you do not have a brother, color the door blue.

Once the students were finished coloring according to all the different attributes, it was time to compare! They looked for houses that were the same, similar, and different. This was a great activity to not only get to know the other students of the class, but to introduce our social studies objective of the week! Look for these in the green folders tomorrow and ask your child if they remember all the attributes! 

Ready For Anything and a HUGE THANK YOU!

The first day of school we read a book called Ready for Anything by Keiko Kasza. We decided that first grade would be challenging and different at times, but we would be open and READY FOR ANYTHING!

 

Well... today was one of those days were we had to be READY FOR ANYTHING! The combination of tornado warnings and a classroom that is in a trailer provided a very busy day of shuffling back and forth. The kids were so patient and attentive to directions that it made me very proud to be their teacher! At the end of the day we were able to still squeeze in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies. We even accomplished it by staying "mostly" dry! I think after today our class really is READY FOR ANYTHING!



I wanted to give out a HUGE, GIGANTIC, MONSTROUS thank you to the parents who have purchased items from our classroom wish list. Today we received these:

They are awesome chair sacks so the kids can store their notebooks and folders right at their seats! SO WONDERFUL! The biggest downside to my online wish list is that I don't know who sends me all these amazing gifts! If you buy things for the classroom, please let me know, I want to give you a personal thanks as well! 

This week in 1st grade..

I hope everyone is having a great holiday weekend!  This week in 1st grade we are working on many exciting things. Now that the students are comfortable with the classroom routines, it is time to dive into our day to day schedule. 

Classroom Behavior

We have two different forms of  behavior management. The first form is our Behavior Clip Chart. This is used to track individual behavior. 

 Students are able to move their clip up and down on the chart in accordance with their behavior for the day.

Purple (Fantastic) Pink (Way to Go) Blue (Excellent Effort) Green (Ready to Learn) Yellow (Make Better Choices) Orange (Teacher’s Choice ) Red (Family Contact)

If a student ends the day on red, they will write a letter home. If this happens two days in a row, I will call home. For students who end the day on the Purple (Fantastic) or Pink (Way to Go), they will earn stars towards shopping in our Rewards Catalogue.

I love this chart because even if a student makes a bad choice, they are able to correct that behavior and move their clip back up. It is a great way to reinforce behavior positively!

Our second form of of behavior management in the classroom is our Brownie Points system. 

These points are earned as a whole class. When all the students are following directions and caring for one another, they get to add a brownie to our pan. When the pan is full, they will earn a class reward such as a extra recess or a game on the Smartboard. 

Writer's Workshop

We have completed our first week of writer's workshop. We worked on the process of THINK-WRITE-DRAW. We also learned the phrase "when I am done, I've just begun" to remind us that writer's are ALWAYS working. To end the week we learned about stretching out our words like rubber bands.