A Busy Time

Our classroom is a busy place right now as we are working on a lot of different activities and concepts.  We have continued to work with water and heat by observing the physical properties of water and ice.  We also were trying to melt an ice cube quickly.  This activity reinforced the idea that heat (especially body heat) is very powerful when it comes to changing things from a liquid to a solid! 

Elliot was our winner by being the first student to melt his ice cube!  

We also had a nice visit from Dylan's grandma who was our Mystery Reader. We really enjoyed Stone Soup and the lesson the story taught us. 

We are going to try and see the work of the sun as we use it to grow an indoor herb garden. Friday we planted our seeds and hope to use our knowledge of what living things need to survive to cultivate some delicious herbs!  We'll keep you posted on our green thumb status!  

We also finished up our How-To writing unit. It was amazing to see how many books the students wrote. They chose their favorite to edit and publish!  Some students took home all of their stories already. Other students will be bringing theirs home this week. 

 

Elephants Dancing and Thermometers!

Today we began to learn our choreography for the elephant dance. You will be quite impressed with our techniques at our March performance. 

We also learned how to read thermometers and did an experiment with hot water, ice water and room temperature water and watched the temperature rise and fall. 

The Tempest and Place Value Fun

The Carnival of the Animals is upon us!  This is a musical suite by Camille Saint-Saens that all first graders will perform.  Poetry is a huge part of this performance. This week we began to learn the poem The Tempest by William Shakespere. Mr. Stankowski taught us that we need to sound as one voice when reciting the poem. We learned where to pause and which words to emphasize to help the audience understand the difficult vocabulary. We're pretty good with the first half of the poem and are exited to learn part two soon!  This coming week we will learn two dances for the big show!  Mark your calendars for our class performance on March 11th at the McCoy!  

We also became experts at place value this week. Students can identify tens and ones, draw a picture of the number using cubes and rods and write numbers in expanded form. This coming week we will work on learning about greater than and less than signs. 

Do You Want To Draw A Snowman?

We had fun drawing our snowmen and then writing directions for others to use. Give it a try and see if you can draw a snowman too!  

It's Great To Be Back!

Although the winter break was relaxing, it is so nice to be back into the routine and experience the excitement that comes with January.  There is no snow outside, but in the class we have been discussing snow and snowmen and thinking about what happens to snowmen after we go to sleep!  We read Snowmen At Night by Caralyn Buehner and had fun creating a chart full of ideas. 

Then we used a torn art technique to create our snowmen and completed a writing to match.  We worked to include a topic sentence, use transitions and then conclude our writing.  They are hanging in the hall and will come home after all of our schoolmates have a chance to check them out!

 

We also spent time this week talking about schema and how it helps us when we are reading.  Schema is like a built-in filing cabinet where we store information we have already learned.  If we have schema about Florida, we use that "folder" when we are reading a book that takes place in Florida to help us better understand the book.  Check out all of our schema about animals, the sun and winter!  When you are reading with your child, ask him/her about the schema that was used while reading. 

In math, we are focusing on place value.  We are focusing on 2-digit numbers and building them with tens and ones blocks.  The goal is for students to understand that 52 is made by putting together 50 and 2.  We played a game called "Grab and Dump" to practice this.  Students reached into the bag and grabbed some cubes and dumped them on the table.  Then they had to sort them into groups of ten.  After that, we identified the total number by counting the tens first and then the ones that were left over.  This is an easy activity to practice at home with a bag of dried beans or pennies.