Merry Christmas!

It's a little late but...Merry Christmas from first grade! We had a blast!!

First, second grade practiced reading Christmas books and then they read them to us!

Addison and Kacie

Jackson and Dawson

Elsa and Nik

Owen and Eva

Storm and Thomas

Nathaniel and Philip

Then, Miss Lloyd surprised us with a Christmas party!

We decorated and then ate sugar cookies. This is Dawson's response to, "Are they any good?" :)

We made a Christmas  craft for a loved one

We did a math surprise picture. It ended up being Rudolph!

We colored Christmas pictures while watching Frosty the Snowman!

Isabel's craft

Dawson's craft

It's Rudolph!

Yum!

Big bite!

Jordan's craft 

At the end of the day, Mrs. MacQueen read a Pete the Cat book to us!

We had a wonderful last day before Christmas break! Enjoy the last few days and see you all Tuesday, January 2nd! Happy New Year!

The Latest from our classroom...

Math

We have been learning about friends of 10, which are numbers that go together to make ten. Our friends of ten include turnaround facts. Here they are:

1+9=10

9+1=10

2+8=10

8+2=10

3+7=10

7+3=10

4+6=10

6+4=10

5+5=10

10+0=10

0+10=10

We have been learning how to tell time on the hour. We say it "o'clock". We know that when the minute hand is on the 12 it is an "o'clock"time. We love learning about time!

Time BINGO!

Elsa working hard on her math journal. 

Everyone is working hard on ST Math!

Literacy

We have been picking our own centers during literacy time! We call it the Daily 5 and we get to decide which centers we want to go to. We have to do read to self every day. Our choices include: fundations practice, listen to reading (with a comprehension check), word work (where we practice our trick words), read to someone, work on writing, and read to self.

We have been working on Weekend News where we write about what we did over the weekend. Some of us need help remembering what we did over the weekend. This could be something you talk about with your child on Sunday evening or Monday morning to help them remember.

More updates to come later in the week :)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Writer's Workshop

On Friday, we used our writing notebooks to practice digraphs and beginning sounds. We did two interactive notebook activities. The first one was a digraph sort. The digraphs we have learned are: sh, th, ch, wh, and ck. On Friday we sorted words into groups based on the digraphs sh, ch, and th. Then we did a fun flap page where we wrote the beginning sound behind the flap. It was important that we cut out our flaps correctly and put the glue only along one edge. We did a wonderful job following directions!

Here is Eva's finished product!

Bentlee is stretching the word to listen for the first sound.

Emily finished early and was nice enough to clean up everyone's scraps! 

On Friday we also learned about how to add craft moves to our writing based on the book Night of the Veggie Monster by George McClements. Miss Lloyd read the story and we looked for special touches the author adds to make his story interesting and different. We are going to try some craft moves in our own writing this week!

Guidance with Mrs. O'Hearn

On Wednesdays Mrs. O'Hearn teaches guidance, or Second Step, in our classroom. This past week we learned more about feelings. We learned that sometimes people have different feelings about the same situation, and that's okay! We played a little game to demonstrate:

First, we stood back to back and Mrs. O'Hearn read a situation. We showed on our faces how that situation would make us feel. Then...

...we turned toward the class and they had to figure out if we felt the same or different about the situation based on our faces. 

Bentlee and Thomas were both feeling happy and excited!

Jordan and Addison had different feelings about the same situation, and that's okay! We are all different and that is a good thing!

Quick Update

Here's a quick look into what we have been learning:

Literacy

-New trick words: is, his, to, into

-Editing our writing (checking for capitals and punctuation)

-Reading good fit books and stopping to ask ourselves and friends: Who are the characters and what are they doing?

Math

-Tens and ones! It's all about place value right now in first grade

-Students should be able to count by tens and then switch to counting by ones to identify a two digit number on ten frames, hands, and base ten blocks

We are also learning this poem, which we will recite as a class at the Harvest Luncheon Tuesday!

Five Little Turkeys

Five little turkeys standing at the door, 

One waddled off and then there were FOUR!

Four little turkeys sitting near a tree, 

One waddled off and then there were THREE!

Three little turkeys with nothing to do,  

One waddled off and then there were TWO!

Two little turkeys in the morning sun,  

One waddled off and then there was ONE!

One little turkey better run away,  

Because soon it will be THANKSGIVING DAY!

Happy Halloween!

Today was Halloween and in first grade we did some fun Halloween activities! We started our day with the spider web greeting!

Happy Halloween!

We had some Halloween math centers:

Addition BINGO with candy corn! Yum!

We practiced measuring using ones blocks.

Miss Amy helped us solve a Halloween word problem! Look at all that orange and black :)

This is an example of a word problem you might see in our classroom!

Some of worked on ST Math. It's really fun, but it also challenges our brains!

We even won the box top challenge for the month of October-AGAIN! Stay tuned for photos of our decorated pumpkins :) Happy Halloween! Be safe tonight and have fun!!

What a BUSY Week in First Grade!!

We have been practicing our literacy centers. They are called the Daily 5. They include:

1. Read to Self

2. Read to Someone

3. Word Work

At word work, we practice reading and writing "trick words" which are the words we cannot tap out because they don't follow the rules! This week our words are: is, his, and, the and of. You could practice them at home, too!

4. Listen to Reading 

5. Work on Writing

This week we were working on writing about a fall walk we had with Maggie Stoudnour and the Kindergarten class!

On Wednesday starting this week, we had Spanish. Comfort comes from the Mountain School and brings a few of her students. We learned how to say "My name is" and how to count to 10 in Spanish!

Here is Emily trying to count to 10 in Spanish ALL by herself! Nice job, Emily!

In math we are working on measurement. We are learning about length and words to describe objects, such as narrow, wide, tall, and long. We had some fun measuring with paper ant trails too!

We made this true by having Bentlee stand on one side and Emily on the other. When we read "Bentlee is taller than Emily" we realized it was true!

For "longer" we used hair. At first we tried it this way..."Thomas's hair is longer than Kaylee's" which was funny, but we realized it wasn't true!

We had them switch places and we thought it made much more sense!

And finally, Miss D. who came to teach us art with Ms. Bando, had her last day with us this week. She will continue her teacher training at a high school. We made her a special card and took a picture with her because we will miss her so much! Good luck, Miss D.! 

Our card for Miss D.

The class with Miss D.

aaaand we really wanted to do a silly picture!

We had a great, busy week! Next week should be fun with Halloween and three way conferences! Stay tuned for more First Grade News!!