Weeks of May 9 - 20, 2011

The highlight of our last two weeks together was Pajama Day! After such a great Teacher Appreciation Week, I thought it would be fun to show the First Graders how much I appreciate them. Everyone loves to go to school in their pajamas!

Pajame Day + Math = FUN!!

On Pajama Day we included our stuffed animals in the fun as much as possible. They were our constant companions and helped us hone our math skills, especially! After a midnight snack of Lucky Charms cereal where we sorted and graphed the marshmallows, we measured our animal with a tape measure, ruler and on a balance scale. Now we know how tall and big around it is and how many pop cubes, or another math manipultive, will balance it. The trickiest and most fun was the balance scale since some wouldn't exactly fit on the scale. Then, we practiced the art of improvising!

More Pajama Day Fun!

It is great fun to play outside in our pajamas! After recess, we wrote bedtime stories for our stuffed animals.

Making Lists

During Writing Workshop we have been talking about all the different reasons for writing. One idea that we practiced was making lists. Two of our classmates have a mohawk haircut. They decided to make a list of when to wear their mohawk "up" and when to wear it "down" so they could wear it the same way on school days. This is a great (and unique) example of students applying what they are learning in the classroom to their personal lives!

Birds and Nest Mobile

We love working together in First Grade, whether it is writing a story together, buddy reading, playing a math game or making art! It helps us learn how to cooperate and problem solve and share ideas. We made a mobile that includes birds, eggs and a nest. We had to decide what type of bird we wanted to use for the mobile and then find out what color its eggs are and what materials it uses to build its nest. Then we worked together to color it according to our research and make the mobile balance.

Retelling Stories

We are really enjoying retelling stories using puppets and props. "Miss Lucy" is especially popular and it's fun to retell "Mrs. Wishy Washy" too. Retelling stories helps us with our reading comprehension skills as we remember the beginning, middle and end of the story. It also helps us with the story elements of characters, setting and problem and solution. We are now doing text innovations with these familiar stories by changing the story elements. Next, we will make our own puppets and props to tell a brand new story!

Planting in our Garden

After a very soggy week, we finally got to plant in our garden. We planted basil, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, pumpkins, and lots of marigolds to keep the insects away! We also found worms, ladybugs, ants and grubs.

Mystery Reader

Our most recent Mystery Reader read us some really funny stories--Fancy Nancy, among others.

Weeks of April 25 - May 6, 2011

Happy Arbor Day!

In addition to celebrating Arbor Day by a visit from our Superintendent and lots of tree experts and a new tree in our Courtyard, we made a tree for our classroom. We made things for our tree that we would find in our area such as birds, butterflies and deer. After reading "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein, we added leaves to our tree "by tracing our hand to make a leaf cutout and writing a way that we are giving and kind on it. We also learned more about trees from a Park Naturalist from GUlf Branch Nature Center. Now we are all tree experts!

Writing Buddies

In Writing Workshop we are practicing revising our stories. It is really helpful to read our stories with a Writing Buddy and then hear tips to make the story even better. We learned that adding dialogue, an interesting problem and a "KAPOW!" ending all can make our stories more interesting.

Plant Investigations

We looked at the different parts of a plant using marigolds. We took the plants out of the soil to look carefully at each part of our plant and recorded our findings in our Plant Log. We repotted the plants so we can plant them in our garden next week. We learned that marigolds are a natural insecticide because of their "interesting" smell. We also set up an experiment to learn about one of the jobs of plant roots. We planted two marigolds in separate pots. Plant 1 has its roots intact. We cut the roots off of Plant 2 and put it back in the dirt. We drew what the plants looked like on the first day of the experiment and then we will observe the differences (if any) between the plants next week.

Retelling Stories

We are making Story Aprons out of paper grocery bags to use as we retell a familiar story or fairy tale. We draw the setting of the story on the apron, put the characters we make into the apron pocket and then hang the apron around our neck. It is great fun to retell a story to our friends using our Story Aprons. It makes it easier for us to remember the details of the story.