Shapes Galore!

Dear Parents,

     We have been busy learning about shapes and fractions!  We had a ton of fun using shapes to make other shapes! Some of our 2D shape names are still tricking us, especially hexagon and trapezoid. Keep working on these words at home!

      You did a great job using positional and 3D shape names to play battleship in partners. Parents, one team had to tell the other team what to do and the goal was to make two identical structures.  It was no easy feat! Cylinder and sphere seem to be the trickiest for us!

Bear Hugs!

Patterns with Shapes!

Dear First Graders,

     I loved seeing all the great patterns you created with shapes! You are making nice progress with identifying hexagons, circles, triangles, rectangles, and those special rectangles... squares! 3D shapes are still stumping us but we will keep working on those!

Bear Hugs,

Happy Birthday!

Dear Class,

     I had a nice time celebrating our friend's 6th birthday. Can you believe her mom was our mystery reader too!

      We have had a few friends already design their Turkey's and they are adorable! 

Bear Hugs,

Pajama Day

Dear First Graders,

    Did you have fun during our school wide PJ day! I loved seeing everyone in their PJ's. We looked super cozy.  I can't wait for the next school spirit day!  Here is a great shot of us!

    We also wrapped up our Properties Unit in science with one more experiment about gases. 

How are your Turkey's coming out? We have had serval waddle into the room already! I will take a few pictures and put some examples up on the next blog entry!

Bear Hugs,

Mystery Reader and Veteran's Day!

Dear First Graders,

     Wow, we were busy last week.

     On Wednesday, Mr. D surprised us as the mystery reader! He read a great story that reinforced our growth mindset words of being optimistic, persistent, and resilient!

   On Thursday, we started our geometry unit. We used stir straws to make 3 sided and four sided closed shapes. Some of noticed that all 3 sided, closed shapes are triangles! Triangles can look different, but they all have three sides and three corners! Our four sided shapes took on many looks and we were able to put names to many of those. We also reviewed our 6 sided hexagon.  Some of our friends are a little rusty on 2D shape names and would benefit from some more work at home. Or have your child watch the brainpopjr video about 2D shapes (your child should know the username and password). 

    The fun didn't end there!  We had a Veteran's Day assembly where we sang some great songs that we have been learning with Mrs. Johnston. 

Bear Hugs,

How To...

Dear First Graders,

    I was impressed with how many of you tried to follow the steps in How to Make a Drum to create your very own drum. Each was unique and wonderful! I am so excited for you to start writing How To's and teaching others all the great things you know how to do so well! Some of you have brought back your green idea page. If you have not, try to bring that back by Thursday. If you need another copy, it is attached on the right side of the blog. This will help us come up with ideas when we start writing next week!

  We also learned about how important it is to give clear directions when writing our How To's! We used an example from a past class of Miss Maurantonio's to make "Valentine" hearts. It was tough for some of us to be persistent and resilient while doing this activity. 

   In math, we played double bump to practice our doubles to 10.  We love this double rap song.

  0 + 0 = 0 Ohhh!                                                    1 + 1 = 2 Boo!                                                        2 + 2 = 4 More                                                        3 + 3 = 6 kicks                                                      4 + 4 = 8 Spider Weight                                                                  5 + 5 = 10 AGAIN!

Bear Hugs,

Scientists Have Good Habits Too!

Dear First Graders,

       I had fun learning all about how scientists use the scientific method to investigate questions that they have.

Step 1: Ask a Question

Does an apple sink or float? 

Step 2: Make a Hypothesis

Some of us thought it would sink since it is heavy, and others thought it would float.

Step 3: Conduct our Experiment!

Step 4: Collect your Data

Step 5: Share... 

Did you tell someone at home what happened?

We then began using those great habits that scientists have and started asking questions about other objects and if that object would sink or float... Boy did we have fun! We were also very surprised by some of the objects. 

Bear Hugs,

Happy Halloween

Dear Trick-or-Treaters,

Happy Halloween!

   Did I scare the Tuna Salad out of you with our Mystery Bags? It was a fun way to practice both our investigation of textures, as well as using great adjectives to describe items. ** Parents, are you wondering what all this talk is about Tuna Salad... it came from a book by one of our favorite authors! We used this story to talk about our new growth mindset word... EMPATHY!

 ewwww!  Is that eyeballs? 

We had fun practicing using our scissors with a fun Halloween Ghost craft. Remember, elbows down, thumb up! Our scissor hand has the important job to "open, shut them.. open, shut them." Our other hand, steers the paper.

Big tip... "If you want to cut on the lines, you have to look! LOOK at the LINES!"
(sung in a sing-song pattern)





Boy, did we draw a FANTASTIC crowd for our publishing party! I hope you enjoyed the students personal narratives as much as I did! 

Some Halloween Action shots...

Bear Hugs,