Happy Holidays!

 Thank you to everyone who contributed to making our celebration a success! We had lots of yummy food, we enjoyed our gifts from each other, and we had a great time singing and dancing at the music program and just enjoying each other's company. 

having fun with a gift

 Snowman Wrap Game

a scene from our morning program practice

The students hope their gifts to their families brought a smile to your face!

Learning about Solids

We have started our new science unit, Solids and Liquids. We began by learning that solid objects can be described by their properties. 

Some of the properties might be color, shape, texture, or flexibility.

 We also learned that solid objects can be made of different materials.

These objects are made of different materials -- wood, plastic, metal, and fabric.

Key Words and Timelines

The First Graders have been learning about "key words" when they read nonfiction. These words are important to help you understand the topic. We practiced saying as much as we can about a key word, in order to add it to our vocabulary and to understand its connection to the topic.

key words chosen from a book about sand

 In social studies, we finished our unit about Life Long Ago. Thank you to all the family members who compared their own lives as First Graders to their First Graders today. We have shared many of the comparisons, and we have just a few left.

timelines

Next, we will switch from social studies to science. We will be learning about Solids and Liquids in the upcoming weeks.

Becoming Super-Smart

The First Graders are working hard to become super-smart about nonfiction topics in Reading Workshop. They have been learning how to study every part of each page and to tackle hard words rather than letting those hard words get in the way of their learning.

comparing what different books say about young animals

They are also continuing to bring their enthusiasm for learning to their homes and then back to school again, to share with the class.

This student did an experiment to make a bouncy egg!

This student made his own "knickers" game after reading about this game that Pilgrim children played!

 

This Week

Here are a few things we've been doing this week.

We started our social studies unit, Life Long Ago, by learning about Native Americans. One classmate decided to extend the learning by building a teepee at home!

We learned about Christopher Columbus, and his three ships -- the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. Columbus has a holiday, but some people are not Columbus fans... ask your First Grader what he or she thinks!

We searched books for verbs with -ed endings, which means the action already happened.

We played games to practice reading words with -nt, -nd, and -nk at the end.

We used dry rice to learn about capacity. We tried to get containers exactly "half full".

We learned how to double numbers, with the help of a mirror. What is double seven? Fourteen!

Thank you to First Grade photographer, Talan, for some of these pictures!

Walking in the Woods (and Math-a-Thon)

We took a walk in the woods on Friday. We are learning about Life Long Ago in social studies, so we stopped in the outdoor classroom to talk about how Native Americans might have built homes and hunted in this area long ago. We actually saw a deer while we were walking!

All students will take the Math-a-Thon test on Friday, November 18th. This is one of the fundraisers for the PTG this year. Even if you choose not to collect pledges, these are important addition facts for all First Graders to learn.

Verbs

 Our class was full of action this week, as we learned about verbs.

We worked in groups to take pictures of each other doing actions.

We used an app called Pic Collage to create a collage of pictures labeled with verbs.

Here are a few finished products!

Seesaw

The First Graders have been using Seesaw, an app on our classroom iPads,  to document their learning. Seesaw is a digital portfolio. Students can take pictures and short videos to show their learning. 

Families, just follow the directions from the beginning page in your First Grade Handbook that explains how you can view your child's work on Seesaw. The pictures below were taken by different students, and are in that student's Seesaw portfolio. There is even a quick video clip of the kids singing in music class, which I put in everyone's portfolios. They are so proud to show off what we have been doing at school!

One of our reading charts 

A page from our math journals

A page from our math journals

A word sort

Putting words in alphabetical order

A picture drawn with pattern block templates

Digging in the Dirt

We examined dirt from different areas around the school yard. We found that soil is made from rocks of different sizes and from humus -- bits of decaying plants or other things that used to be alive. We even found some tiny living creatures in the soil!

Pajamas and a Performance

Today was Pajama Day for Red Ribbon Week!

Sleepy kids in pajamas

The class perked up in the afternoon and give a musical performance for an audience of 5-K students. Check out all the different instruments they learned about, so they could create sound effects for a spooky story.

Descriptive Words and Contractions

We have been talking about words we can use in our writing to appeal to the five senses. Today we brainstormed words and phrases for how Pop Rocks candy looks, smells, tastes, feels, and sounds.

There were lots of different reactions when we tried the Pop Rocks!

The class came up with amazing ways to describe eating Pop Rocks. One favorite was, "It feels like glitter rolling around in my mouth!"

We learned about how contractions are formed, today, too. Ask your child about the "mean apostrophe" that "kicks out" some letters!

Making the contraction "don't"
(thank you to Talan, our photographer!)