Plant Books

Working with our wonderful librarian we have been writing books about plants. We began by looking at lots of plant books and making lists of what we learned. Next, we wrote a book together about plants (I'll get it posted as soon as possible). Back in the library we explored the different parts of non-fiction books (title, author, table of contents, pictures, captions, index, glossary, etc.). After that we added a table of contents to our class book. During this time the students wrote books of their own about plants. On our next visit to the library we shared and celebrated all of our books. The books, our class one and individual ones, will remain in the library for others to enjoy.

Our Garden

We've been slowly working on our garden. The husband of another teacher came in last week and spent an entire afternoon getting our garden ready for some serious work. So we spent some time with our fourth grade buddies planting bulbs and pulling weeds. Now we will wait, impatiently, for spring to see the flowers sprout!

Reading

One of the most important things we do in first grade is read. We read in lots of different ways: teachers reading to the class, reading in small groups, reading on our own.

We have a lot of places we love to read.

Character Day Fun with our Buddies

Our fourth grade buddies came to visit on Book Character Day! We learned a new song with all the motions. We read a really fun book, Piggie Pie, about a witch who needs a pig to make piggie pie. The pigs trick her quite well. After reading the kids talked about the book and did some drawing and writing about it together.

Intersession Mural

We all had such a great time during intersession that when we returned we had to spend some time sharing and celebrating it. One thing we did was create murals about the classes we were in. It was amazing to see how much everyone learned!

Don't Let the Pigeon Eat Candy

Pigeon Drawing & Pigeon Book

Just before intersession our school had the fabulous opportunity to be a part of a special simulcast from the author Mo Willems. You can read Mo's description of it here.

Only 200 schools and libraries were able to be a part of this so we were really excited. We spent a lot of time before the big event reading Mo's books and watching other videos of him reading and talking about his writing.

After all of this time with Mo's work we learned to draw the pigeon (one of his most famous characters) and created our own pigeon book. It now resides in the library at school and is very popular!

Strategy Games

For the past couple of months we have been learning and playing a variety of strategy games. We have been to the Strategy Lab and brought some of the games back to our room. These games are helping us develop and practice problem solving skills. We've got a great list of strategies we can use when we are stuck or facing a challenge.

Dot Day

Back in September we celebrated International Dot Day. This day comes from Peter H. Reynold's book, The Dot. The book, which we read, tells the story of a little girl who doesn't believe she can create art. Her teacher convinces her to make a mark on the page and sign it. She makes a dot. When she returns to art class her teacher has framed and hung up her dot. She decides she can make a better dot than that and goes on to create some fabulous art simply by making dots.

We made art with dots and did math with dots. It was great fun!

Math Ten Frame Game

In math we've been working hard with numbers in a lot of different ways. One thing we have worked on is subitizing. This is the concept of recognizing how many there are of an object very quickly, without having to count them. We have worked on this through our daily calendar activities and through ten frames. Ten frames have dots on them and students see the frame briefly and then say how many dots they saw. We've also learned a game to help practice this.