Starting 4th Quarter!

It was so nice to meet with all of you at conferences.  I feel very lucky to work at a school with such supportive and caring families.  I can't believe we only have one quarter left!  As you can see, first grade is a very busy year.  We have learned so much this year.  First grade is important because we build the blocks for all future learning.  Tomorrow we are starting double digit addition with regrouping in math!  This is incredible and your children are doing so well.  I have a link to a youtube video if you are unsure of how to help your child.  This video will walk you through in three minutes how to help your child.  Having your child use some kind of representation for the tens and ones if they are struggling with the concept will really help.  (pretzel rods for tens and m&m's is one idea)addition with regrouping.  Here is another link to work out addition problems using online base ten blocks.  Go to "Base Blocks Addition" and work out addition problems together: Virtual Manipulatives.

This week in reading is a review week but I will test on last week's words (y endings).  Remember, if you would like to volunteer, please let me know.  The times are from 9:30-11:30 or 2:30-3:30 each day.  We LOVE volunteers!

Jada working on a St. Patrick's Day book.

Searching for gold long o words!

Wacky Day!!!

Jason working hard on IXL for our March challenge!

Thanks for all of the eggs!

Our Egg Hunt was cold!

Eggs!

Winners of Bunny Bingo!  Hopping down to the cafeteria for their prizes!

Bunny Bingo!

Happy Snow Day!  I can't believe how much snow we got today.  We have been busy again at school and at home learning.  This is such a great time of year at school for so many reasons.  We are all developing into such strong readers.  The progress is huge compared to when they walked into first grade.  We also are such a strong family at this point too!  

Ellie created this video with the "Lights, Camera, Action" take home bag and she wanted to share it!

Beach fun with long e and short e words!

Major did a great science project with the "Scientist Bag".  

Cartoonist Duane Barnhart teaches the kids how to draw a superhero.  He came to our school on February 26th.  He was amazing!  The kids loved him and have been drawing like him since.  He has many YouTube videos if you put his name in.  You can learn how to draw many different things.  I have linked a video on how to draw an alien below.

                                    

 

cartoonist Duane Barnhart draws an alien

Last summer I went to a workshop on using ipads in the classroom and learned about this app: 100's chart.  This is a great help to teach number sense and reinforce number skills that your child may have already.  We are going into the next math chapter this week of place value again.  Using a 100's chart with your child helps so much.  Looking for patterns, asking them to locate numbers (find the number that is 5 tens and 7 ones, or find the number that is 2 tens more then 67) and practicing counting backwards from 120 are great things to practice.  We have to test on counting backwards from 120 soon.  If your child cannot do this, please practice.  Here's a link to a 100's chart for you if you don't have the ones that I sent home previously.  Number Chart

Valentine's Fun

We celebrated the 100th day!

As you may know I was gone during the fun festivities on Valentine's Day.  My family took a quick trip to Disney World.  When I booked it, I completely forgot about the program!  I had my amazing sub (Diane Smith) take some pictures.  Nolan broke my classroom camera so they are a little fuzzy.  I am going to have to start bringing my nice camera to school I guess!  

Kendra (Major's mom) came and read to our class this week for I love to Read Month.  On Tuesday we have a cartoonist coming to our school.  If you would like to come and read to our class, please let me know!  Even in March, April, or May.  They really enjoy this.   In reading we have been really working on the magic e and long vowel combinations (ai/ay and ea/ee this week).  Some students are beginning to confuse their short vowels with their long vowels.  Here is a quick youtube video to watch that will help:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHO1aJyxWIE

You may know this already but I recently learned this fact: You can make your own YouTube station that bookmarks videos for you.  This is a very useful tool if your child wants to watch things on youtube but you are not sure if they are appropriate.  Bookmark the videos that I give you and they will probably watch them because they really like them when we do them in class!  

I am going to start using sensory boxes to help with our word work time.  This week I am making some moon sand and putting shells in it.  Then the kids have to sort short and long e sounds with our parent volunteers.  The kids really like hands on learning.  I found the recipe on pinterest and thought some of you may be interested:  http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/2013/01/cloud-dough-recipes.html.  Take a bucket and fill it with the moon sand.  Write words on rocks (or math problems) and have them sort them or spell them or you can just make it for fun if you would like too!  My kids LOVED it!  We had to try it out tonight of course!  

Lastly, if you go on ixl.com at home (remember 20 minutes a day improves test scores by 20%) the category that I would practice next is graphing (bar graphs, picture graphs, and tally graphs are our focus).  We are finishing up measurement this week.  Have a good week!  

Finally I have some pictures of our fun that we have been having!  Michaela (Jack's mom) took some fun pictures while doing shaving cream spelling words with some kids in the cafeteria.  This is very fun for the kids.  I use a cookie sheet to keep the cream contained and neater.  Your own children would love this for practicing their words at home!

Jason had the scientist bag at his house and he made an amazing volcano!  Here is a picture of him sharing it with our group!

The next chapter in math we will be starting measurement.  Have your child measure items around your house using different objects like shoes, pencils, toothpicks to practice.

We have a super busy week next week.  The students will perform for the whole school on Wednesday, perform for their grandparents on Thursday and do a craft, and have the cultural liason (Yuko) read a story in Japanese to them!  Remember, there are no spelling words next week due to review week.

Last night I was meeting some friends for my book club.  After dinner we went to Barnes and Noble and I bought some magazines for the boys.  Then I got to thinking that maybe you would like some good suggestions of magazines for your child!  MaKayla brought in a Ranger Rick magazine the other week and the kids were super excited about it.  This is a really good magazine to get kids reading.  Sometimes if your child is reluctant to read books, a magazine may be just what he or she needs!    Here are some links to them for you:

National Geographic for Kids

Sports Illustrated for Kids

Lego Magazine

American Girl

Writing Fun!

We have discovered a new way to use the ipads in class.  This is a learning adventure for all of us!  We used the app called Scribble Press.  We will be using this a lot in class. I am going to have students use it to create a book on the ipads.  The cool part is that you can go on it from your home computer (any computer with internet access will work).  As a family you can print off your child's stories or help your child develop as a writer by fixing up the work together.  Help your child with punctuation, capitals, complete sentences and generating ideas.  The website is http://scribblepress.com/.  You can access any story we do in class and you can make your own from home.  I will email you when we create something in class that you can upload at home.  The username is sfrater and the password is otters.  We did one practice sample writing How To passages.  The handwriting part needs a little work so we are going to type them or work on being neater.  We will get better as we get more comfortable using the ipads as writing tools.


We have started a challenging math chapter.  Students need to really understand their tens facts.  Here is a fun video that will help: Making 10 Video

Remember our special Valentine's Day concert is on February 14th in the afternoon.  We will be celebrating the 100th day of school in the morning.  Grandparents or a special adult are invited to attend festivities after the concert with your child.  Your child will have a snack with their special friend, open valentine's, and do a craft.  Everyone is welcome to watch the concert.  Please let me know if you have any questions!

Bread Making and Ipad Fun

What a beautiful snowy day today!  On Friday we had the ipads and we went on two different apps in our room.  The first app is a favorite of the kids and Nolan.  It is called Noodle Words and costs $2.99 in the itunes store.  It gives different sight words and puts a fun action to them.  It's very cute.  

The other app that we used was called iwritewords.  This is also $2.99.  It helps with handwriting skills so it is a good one if your child has trouble with fine motor skills.  

The beginning of first grade reviews a lot of kindergarten skills and concepts.  Our words are typically three letters (CVC) and students can sound them out.  We are at a turning point in the year and students are starting to work on fluency (reading longer passages with expression, speed, and accuracy).  Please practice reading with your child each night and make sure to check in with your child to see if they know their spelling words.  We talked on Friday about how it is important to know these word patterns for life and not just a test so if they got some wrong they should still practice and learn those patterns to be a successful reader and writer in their lives.  

Last week we read The Little Red Hen and then we had Emme and Jack's mom help us make bread.  I followed a very simple recipe that I found on Pinterest.  If you would like to do it with your child at home, here it is: Bread Recipe.

In math this week we will be learning about ordinal numbers.  This next week we will be doing Christmas Around the World and finishing up our maps and globes unit.  Thank you for sending in your information so we could travel to so many different places.  The kids absolutely loved it!  For Christmas Around the World they will be going to different classes each day.  I am doing England and the other teachers in first grade all have picked a different country.  Ask your child each day where they traveled to and what tradition they learned about.   We will start on the 12th.  Have a great week!  

Otter Tags/Thanksgiving Feast

The week before break we had a lot going at school!  We had a our otter tag ceremony on Friday.  Below are some pictures of some of the children that received one.  I have also included pictures from our feast that we had in the hallway to celebrate Thanksgiving.  We learned about the Mayflower and how Pilgrims lived long ago.

Jack got a tag for music!

Jada got the tag for gym!

Ellie and Austin got the Awesome Artist Tag!

We celebrated Thanksgiving with a feast in the hallway!

At conferences a few questions came up about homework.  I just wanted to let you know that all we have for first grade homework is the making words sheet each week and about once a week a math sheet.  These should come back to school.  We will work on putting the sheets in the "bring right back to school" side of the folder this week.  As for the activity bags, do what your family has time for.  They are for fun and the kids are excited about them.  If you need to keep it a couple of extra days, that is fine too.  Thank you for all of your support at home.  As you can see, it is making a big difference.

I need your help this week.  We are learning about maps and globes.  I thought it would be really cool if you could comment below and attach a link (if you are able) or just give us the name of someplace that your family is connected to.  We will take a virtual field trip each day to these places.  Here's my example:  My husband grew up near a town in England called Berwick upon Tweed.  We will use google earth to fly there so even if you give me a name of a city, we can use that application to see it.  I am attaching a website that we will look at with pictures of his city.  Berwick upon Tweed.  Please indicate the connection between your family and this place in your comment.  The kids will love it!

This week when we went to the computer lab we went on PBS Reading Between the Lions.  Mrs. Lewin came and taught us another app on the ipad as well.  We used the app: Puppet Show.   We will use it this week to recreate the "Little Red Hen" with our 4th grade buddies!  I will try to post a couple of the videos.  Have a great week!