"March"-ing forward :)

We hit the ground running after Spring Break, by starting a new math unit, a new reading unit, and two weeks' worth of exploring handwriting. We are feeling like we're back in the groove of school now, and ready for the fun of spring! Highlights from this week were participating in handwriting stations on Thursday (thank you to parent volunteers! Not possible without you!), and finishing off our health teeth unit by starting an experiment.

Thank you to everyone who made playdough!
The kids loved it!

Shaving Cream was the favorite station of many!

We put eggs (not hard-boiled) into six different beverages: Sprite, Coke, Gatorade, V8 Juice, water, and Grape Juice. The students wrote down their predictions for which beverage they thought would be the least healthy for their teeth, and which would be the most healthy. Most students thought that water would be the most healthy/would cause the least damage to the egg shell (a representation of our tooth enamel), but there were varying opinions as to which beverage will be the most detrimental to the egg shells. We made observations the first day, when the eggs were first submerged in the different liquids, and then the day after as well. Next week, we will make final observations on what a week's worth of sugar and no teeth-brushing would do to our tooth enamel.

Our six different beverages.

Scientific observations.

Finally, these first graders are becoming complete place value experts! I encourage you, whenever you come across numbers with your student, to ask them which digit is in the ones, tens, or hundreds place value. Ask them how many tens a number has. How many ones. I am thrilled with how well they are doing! Have a great long weekend everyone!

Practicing letter formation with beads!

Making our names with pipe cleaners.

Dr. Seuss Week

Happy First Week of March! What a week we had! There was a lot of excitement this week, with Spring Break approaching, and a week full of fun Dr. Seuss activities. The students heard various Dr. Seuss books read aloud to them this week, and on Thursday, they voted on their class-wide favorite. Horton Hears A Who! was the resounding winner, followed by Fox in Socks as a strong second. In addition, we got to create our own Dr. Seuss-like characters, using our imaginations to write stories about our characters. Students came up with all sorts of characters, and wonderful stories and were able to share those stories during Wednesday's morning meeting time. Our 'capstone' project this week was making Thing 1 and Thing 2 from The Cat in the Hat, and writing stories of what we would do if those energetic Things came into our houses! Here are some snapshots of our work this week, and I hope you all have a wonderful and restful Spring Break!

Thing 1 and Thing 2 fun!

Writing our Seuss stories!

Adding the crazy Thing 1 and Thing 2 hair!

Our 100th Day of School!

Adding book title names to our "100 Books Read"

Wow! We can hardly believe that we've made it to the 100th day of first grade! We had a crazy and fun day of all things 100-related: we had a visit from the Queen of 10's and the Princess of 5's, built forts with 100 cups, made structures with 100 marshmallows, and created certificates of completing 100 days of first grade. Friday was Mismatch Day, and we had lots of first graders and students coming to school wearing all sorts of mismatched clothes--boots with shoes, tights with shorts, and stripes with polka dots to name a few combinations. We had tons of fun this week; I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

Marshmallow Structures

The Award for Tallest Fort Built goes to....

The fortress

Reading, reading, reading towards those 100 books....

Future Engineers of America

Friday: Mismatch Day

100 Days Smarter....and Sillier?

Febrrrrrrruary!

Working on different kinds of penguins

Wow! January came and went, and now we are already in the middle of February! We've been able to do a LOT so far this month! Students have become expert observers of liquids, gases, and solids in science, they have become expert equation-solvers in math, and experts on bones in our health classes.

February is "I Love to Read" month, and in writing, we've been working on "All About" books for penguins and polar bears. We should finish up with them next week and have a celebration. The kids are excited for parents and guardians to see the finished products at conferences in early March.

Here are some pictures from our classroom activities during the past few weeks; enjoy!

Learning about where our bones are in our bodies!

Science!

I Have a Dream

"I have a dream that someday....little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

One of the greatest peace-makers in all of American history was celebrated this week, and I hope everyone enjoyed an extra day off! This week, we spent more time working towards our active goal of 90 minutes of activity time during the school days in the month of January. We also spent some time commemorating Dr. King by watching part of his famed "I have a Dream" speech. Then the students took some time and wrote about their dreams and hopes that they have for peace in the world. Finally, we wrapped up the week by attending our school-wide P.E.A.C.E. assembly. We learned that Parkview will be raising money at a school-wide Art fair in May, and then using the money to donate an animal to a family in need somewhere around the world. This is through Parkview's collaboration with Heifer International. 

Looking forward to the last week in January and saying good-bye to the (usually) coldest month of the year!

Penguins and Polar Bears and More

What a cold week! Our freezing weather this week allowed us to easily connect with the two different animals we'll be researching in the next couple of weeks--polar bears and penguins! Students were able to spend some time looking through books on Thursday. We watched two short videos about both species, and after watching the videos and doing a quick book look, students chose which animal they wanted to research for the "All About" books we'll be writing. Surprisingly, we had just about an equal number for each animal!

With the news of Kristen's illness, we also spent time this week making get-well cards for her. I was amazed at how well the cards turned out and how one student said, "We should put knock-knock jokes in every card. Because they say that laughter is the best medicine!" In learning about CARES last week, I was touched by the amount of empathy these first graders have towards others.

A final highlight this week was finding out the winner of the Caldecott Award. Our very own librarian, Laura Givens, was a part of the committee that chose the winning book. Below, you can see both the winning announcement as well as the students' pleased reactions:

Welcome to 2016!

PEACE begins with me!

Students practicing Cooperation through
"building" letters

It was a busy week back! This week, we got back into math, did some writing of goals for the new year, and learned about CARES. CARES is an acronym for Cooperation, Assertion, Responsibility, Empathy, and Self-Control. The students got to do some fun games and community-building activities for each of the letters, and we're learning what it looks like to use them in the classroom. Our week ended with extra Friday Fun time out in the newly-fallen snow.

Finally, we talked about what a Community looks like (The 'C' in P.E.A.C.E.). The students decorated hearts to show how THEY care for their own communities. They came up with great ideas--visiting the elderly, recycling, picking up trash, and taking care of others.

For those of you who are went back to work this week-I hope you all had a great first week back! We sure did!

Goals for 2016

How I help others in my community

Hard at work in writing new goals for a new year!