Busy Week = Super Long Post

Color Poem Books:

            We spent the week making color books. For each color the students had a color poem to write or trace and a small art project for their illustration. This is a great beginning of the year activity because the kids have to be able to follow multi-step directions in order to complete their books.

            Some of the kids kept their books at school (in their browsing bags), however many students took their books home to share with their families so be on the lookout!

Read-to-Someone

            This week we started practicing read-to-someone. The kids worked on nicely choosing partners, finding a quiet place to sit, whisper reading to their partner, taking turns and sitting EEKK (Elbow, Elbow, Knee, Knee). WOW! There were a lot of steps! We are working hard at increasing our stamina for read-to-someone so we can start fully doing our Daily 5 rounds.

Isn't is just PRECIOUS how into they all are!?!

Listen-to-Reading

            We also learned how to use the CD player and the computer to do the listen-to-reading choice for Daily 5 rounds. This is a pretty quick teach since the kids we have in K/1 are so technology savvy!

They are all listening to the book on CD

Little Jack Horner

            We worked on a sequencing activity with Little Jack Horner. The kids worked on putting the poem in order from left to right. This is a skill that many kids are still working on, so when reading books at home have the discussion about which direction we read books.

            The kids also made sponge painted pies to go with their Little Jack Horner poem in their nursery rhyme books.

Writer’s Workshop

            We have been learning about the components of Writer’s Workshop. We read Diary of a Worm to demonstrate why it is so important to put the date at the top of our writing.

            We also used white boards to write words together. We practiced writing one line for each word we were writing and stretching out the words to hear all of the sounds in the word.

Math Journals

            We bring literacy into our math time by having the kids make a journal each day. This week we practiced making quality journals with our patterns. The kids made an anchor chart to show that quality journals have a date, picture and words about what they did during math time.

Zero the Hero!!!!

            Zero the Hero brought us cookies (!!!) because they are zero shaped, for our 20th day of school. The kids worked in their zero the hero journals by putting together their 10’s frames to show 20 is two groups of 10 and make ladybugs out of their 20’s.

Food Fun

            With our school carnival on Saturday the kids worked together to make a ladybug cake. It was so great to watch them work together to make the cake!

            The kids also made fish bowls with rice cakes, cream cheese, goldfish crackers, and sprinkles. Everyone is doing such a great job trying all of the different foods we are making!

            I’ve also loved having help washing up those dishes afterwards. : )

Stinky Feet

            The kids worked really hard on Friday to earn the privilege to work in just their sock feet (or bare feet if they weren’t wearing socks)! They thought it was so great to work hard to all be bare-footed and making our class “stink”!

Families, Fair & Food

         We have been doing a lot of talking about our families as part of our Social Studies curriculum. The kids have been bringing in some AMAZING “All About Me” posters and it has been so much fun getting to learn about one another.

         We also did a project with shapes to share about who lives in our houses. The kids got big rectangles and triangles for the adults in their home and small rectangles and triangles for the kids. It was fun to see how all of our families are so different and yet we all have so many things in common.

         We have continued learning the Daily 5 process. I will add more information about Daily 5 in later posts, so keep on checking my blog!

         This week has been lots of practice for “Read-to-self.” The kids have gotten their stamina up to 7 minutes of Independent Read-to-Self. Our goal is 15 minutes since that is how long each round lasts.

         The Iowa State Fair was So.Much.Fun! The kids were wonderful and stayed right with the class. It was kind of a whirlwind day so we packed in as much as we could in our short time.        

         We walked through the animal barns in the morning, and the kids even got the chance to pet a few horses. The people in the animal barns were very kind to us.

         Lunch was a beef slider, chips, apple, and water. The kids seemed to really enjoy our picnic. : )

         We went through “Little Hands on the Farm” where the kids got to pretend they were farmers and plant a seed, pick their produce, ride a tractor, milk a cow and sell their goods for a treat at the end!

         We watched a really cool stunt dog show. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of it but the kids really enjoyed our break from walking and the show.

         We ended the day that the Animal Learning Center. The kids got to see some baby pigs and chicks, and some even got to pet a newborn lamb.

         For this Friday’s cooking we made English Muffin Cheese Pizzas. We are going to use our cooking time as a major part of our health curriculum this year. For each recipe we are going to talk about the different food groups and then what we could add to make our cooking into a meal.

         For example, our pizzas had ingredients from the grains, dairy, and vegetable groups. We could have incorporated the meat by adding chicken or pepperoni to our pizzas and put some fruit on the side. We will be using that time also to discuss healthy habits such as exercising, keeping clean and taking care of our bodies by getting enough sleep.

         Thanks for everyone who donated to this week’s cooking and parents who have already sent in for next week!

*Fall* 2011 Begins!

 Welcome back to all my 1st grade families and welcome to our class to my new 1st grade and Kindergarten families!

We have had such a busy first 7 days!! They have flown by so it is hard to believe we’ve already been in school for a whole week and are going into our 2^nd full week!

We have a wonderfully sweet class of kinders and firsties this year, 22 all together and we have all had a great time getting to know one another. Ask your child about who they sit next to during the day and who they are playing with at recess. A big thanks to my first graders who are working so hard to be great role models to our new Kindergarten students.

The first weeks are filled with teaching and practicing routines so that we can get deep into learning.

Our class is so great that we got to try our hand at cooking on the 2^nd day! We had been doing activities with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom so we made our very own coconut trees.

The kids at my cooking table did a wonderful job following directions to make their trees and the kids working in their bubble spots were working so hard and quiet that everyone got a chance to cook before recess.

A finished coconut tree

We also made coconut trees with painted handprints, traced (and cut) feet and sticky-note letters. It is a testament to what a wonderful group I have that we were able to paint, cut, AND glue on the 2^nd day of school!

                                     

 

The kids have also been introduced to the math manipulatives that we will be using throughout the year for the kids to be able to learn all sorts of different math concepts.

I forgot to take pictures but they have also started working in their math journals. Each child writes the date at the top and draws a picture of what they did during math time. The first grade students write words to go with pictures and our kinders will be starting with labels and move into sentences as the year goes on.

The kids have started practicing in their bubble spots with their browsing bags. The browsing bags are bags that each child has where they keep books to read during Daily 5 or when we have some down-time during the day.

It is precious to watch the kids reading all over the room.

The kids worked to create their thumb-print plate to be auctioned off at the school carnival. Come on August 26^th for the big reveal!

We also got to cook again this Friday and made school buses out of graham crackers, cream cheese, chex and oreos. This week the kids worked with their table groups and had to share the supplies in the middle. They did a wonderful job working in groups and making sure that everyone had enough supplies for their snack

Keep checking back for information throughout the year. I will let you know as I add more posts to this blog or you can subscribe to the e-mail link on the right side of the screen.

Looking forward to a wonderful 2011-2012 school year!!

Love,

Mrs. Cox