"Peek at the Week" November 18-26

Happy Thanksgiving!  We have had a fun week and a half in room 126 learning about The Mayflower and the meaning behind the holiday we are celebrating this week.  We ended our fun week with an "Informance" showcasing all the exciting things children are learning in Music, Spanish, P.E., Art, and Library!  Our specialist teachers worked countless hours preparing for this wonderful performance!

 Writer's Workshop

We are working on showing, not telling our character's feelings when we write.  As we wrote our stories, we tried to put ourselves right back in that moment and remember how we were feeling and what we were doing.

1st graders did an amazing job writing about their feelings and showing the reader how they felt during the moment.  We also played a little game called "Guess My Emotion" to illustrate this point. 

Reader's Workshop

We spent the last several days learning all about The Mayflower and Thanksgiving.  We started by reading a fun book called The Ugly Pumpkin.  In this story, a pumpkin feels left out because he doesn't look like the other pumpkins.  We stopped and talked about how we have had feelings like the poor pumpkin.  Many of us 'told' the book about a similar experience.

We also learned that characters can change throughout a story.  At the beginning of this story the Ugly Pumpkin was sad and lonely because he couldn't find any friends because he thought he was a pumpkin.  At the end, he finally found where he 'belonged' because he realized he was really a squash and felt happy inside!

Of course, we had to try some squash!  Squash was eaten by many pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving.  Many first graders had never tried squash before.  Many didn't think they were going to like it, but were very surprise :)

After enjoying the squash we took a class vote on whether we liked squash.  These were the results:

Next, we began learning all about the Mayflower!  We read a story called "If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620."  

We learned that life on the Mayflower was very tough.  Families could not bring all of the belongings, and often could only choose one thing to bring with them!  We talked about what each of us would bring, and made a class book!

Throughout the week we collected facts we learned and added them to our "Mayflower" boat!

Pilgrims ate dried biscuits and salted beef while traveling on the Mayflower.  Many pilgrims grew tired of this meal after 66 days!  We decided to see if we would have been able to survive the Mayflower by trying this meal ourselves :)

We also made a Thanksgiving project on Tux Paint in the computer lab.  Children traced their hands to make turkeys and then wrote about what they were thankful for. 

Math Workshop

We wrapped up our unit on the Double Decker Bus.  This unit was very powerful, and many children have a stronger understanding of using 5 and 10 groups to help them add and subtract.  This is a skill that will be ongoing this year.  We spent the week using our arithmetic racks to help as add and subtract passengers on the bus. 

We wrapped up the unit by writing and solving our own bus stories!  Although this proved to be a bit challenging, I was very proud of how hard everyone worked!

Science

We started learning about clouds this week!  We read a story called It looked Like Spilt Milk. 

In this story, there are clouds that look like many different objects.  We decided to create our own clouds by painting a mixture of shaving cream and glue!

Next, we learned about 3 types of clouds:

Cumulus

Cirrus

Stratus

We will go onto more detail about these types after break.  To help us remember these types, we met some new friends who are now hanging in our classroom.

Other News

First graders are collecting mittens for children supported by the COA Youth and Family Centers.  Please help us out by donating new mittens to our mitten tree!

I wish you and your family a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I feel so blessed to have each and every child in my classroom this year.  They are truly wonderful and special little ones and I cannot wait to see where the rest of the year takes us!  Enjoy your holiday!

Love,
Mrs. Hogue

"Peek at the Week" November 11-15

It is crazy to think we are half way through November already!  This year is flying by! 

We had our first snowfall this week!  I absolutely love how exciting these little ones get over the first snowfall...it is so magical to them!  We had to stop to take a peek :)

Writer's Workshop

This week we began learning how to bring our stories to life.  We want our stories to sound like books we might find in our book bins....not flat and frozen.  We learned that writers need to 'unfreeze' the characters (people) in their stories.  They can do this by making them talk and making them move.

Many children started including speech bubbles in their sketches in order to make their characters talk.  We also started learning that authors give us clues when characters are talking by using quotation marks!

 

Next we learned that writers need to use 'itty bitty steps' when they write.  We sang the Itsy Bitsy Spider to illustrate this point.  We revisited a favorite book from earlier this year called Night of the Veggie Monster.

 

In this book, George McClements takes us through the 'itty bitty steps' in eating a pea! We were able to imagine ourselves being there with him at the dinner table!

Reader's Workshop 

This week we learned that readers talk to their books as they read! This was silly to think about at first, but it soon made sense because we have all had thoughts in our brains in response to something we have read! We learned how to talk to our books using sticky notes.  Sticky notes are a great way to record anytime we 'talk' to our book. Here is a look at some of our book talks!

Word Work 

This week we focused on the long and short sounds of Oo.  We sorted long and short Oo pictures.

Math Workshop 

This week we started a fun unit from Context for Learning Mathematics called The Double-Decker Bus.  We began this unit by reading a book about a little girl who loves trying to figure out how many passengers are on the bus as it drives by.  She uses adding and subtracting strategies to determine the number of passengers she sees.

Students were then introduced to arithmetic racks to help determine the number of passengers on a bus.  The arithmetic racks have 20 beads- 10 on the top and 10 on the bottom. 

The purpose of this unit is for children to begin seeing the 5-group in numbers in order to add and subtract mentally.  For example, in the arithmetic rack above there are 8 beads on the top and 6 on the bottom.  Rather than try to mentally add 8 + 6, students are encouraged  to see this fact as 10 + 4 which is easier to mentally add. There are ten red beads and 4 white beads. 

We also learned a game this week called Passenger Pairs.  This game helps children recognize the different combinations for a given number.  I hope you had a chance to play this game with your child at home!

Science 

This week we learned about the water cycle.  We observed that our puddles we put out last week were gone by the end of the week!  Where did the water go?  It evaporated!

 

We learned a fun song to help us remember the water cycle!  It was a tricky song because it had such big words- evaporation, condensation, and precipitation!  Ask your child if they can sing it to you :)

 

The Water Cycle Song

(sung to the tune of She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain)

 

Water travels in a cycle yes it does!

Water travels in a cycle yes it does!

It goes up as evaporation

Then forms clouds as condinsation

Travels down as precipitation yes it does!

Other News

 

During our “Fire Prevention Program” our North Shore Fire Department gave our first grade class something very special.  They gave us a big red bag that houses a special friend Sparky the Fire Dog.  Sparky will be a visitor to your home for one week.

It is your job to:

1.    Read the letter from the fire department.

2.   Fill out the special checklist in the red folder. 

3.   Document Sparky’s visit by putting pictures in the photo album.  (Please use only one page so all children have a chance to fill the book.) 

4.   Return the bag to school by the following Friday.

Our school wide food drive is running through November 22.  Please send in food items to school to help the Spanish speaking community!  We appreciate your donations!

Please LABEL all winter gear- hats, mitten, scarves, boots, etc.  I cannot tell you how many times I find mittens laying around in the hallway that end up spending the winter in the lost and found.  Many teachers check items for names before bringing them to the lost and found.  I also suggest adding 1H  (1st-Hogue) to your child's items for an even quicker return!

Don't forget about our upcoming Informance on Tuesday, November 26 at 10:00AM!

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. Hogue