Reading/Language Arts We have been reading both fiction and non-fiction books and identifying the Main Idea and Details. We also worked on distinguishing between facts and opinions. We have been reading many different books and a few magazine articles about bears, hibernation, and migration. We have also been learning about the elements of a non-fiction book. The children wrote Fact and Opinion flip books about a topic of their choice, which were fantastic! We also have been working on the long a and long i sounds. We learned about "magic e" and the rule that when two vowels are together, the first one does the talking and the second one does the walking. We wrapped up our unit on nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The children worked in their Literacy Centers to reinforce these concepts. Some of our Literacy Centers were Listening to a story and identifying the MI and Details, Long A and I card game and Make a Word, Finding the Main Idea and Details, Fact and Opinion Flip Books and Fact and Opinion Sort, Read It, Draw It, Use It in a Sentence, and a Noun Collage activity.
We started taking Spelling Tests this month! The children are doing a great job and love doing different Spelling activities. One of our favorites is using our letter vests to make the words!
Science and Technology: We have been learning about Animals in Winter this month. We learned about the different ways that animals get ready for the winter. This theme has been taught in Science and then also incorporated into Reading, Writing, Math, Social Studies, and Technology. After learning all about hibernation, migration, and hiding, we focused on bears. We have learned all about the different kinds of bears. The children are working on creating a short slideshow about bears using the App Explain Everything on the iPad. They will present their slideshows during class. Stay tuned... a copy will be emailed soon! We are also writing Bear Books, which are chapter books. The children came up topics for each chapter and then had to research using books in the class and magazines to find their information for their book. They are doing a great job!
The First Grade has been working closely with Mrs. Drake on our Banana Experiment. Earlier in the year the children planted banana peels and plastic bags outside in the playground area. We were not able to dig up the banana peels and bags until after Superstorm Sandy. When we dug up the peels and bags we discovered the bags were still there but absolutely no trace of the banana peels. We assumed that they either decomposed or an animal ate them but good scientists need evidence so Mrs. Drake had us put more banana peels in large cans with soil. Every week we are digging up the peels from one can to see how the banana peels decompose over 5 weeks. The children absolutely loved this! Here are some pictures...
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| Look! We found sprouts! |
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| Observing what we found in the soil. |
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Writing: We have been busy publishing our fantastic books! Our Publishing Party is coming up!
I hope you will be able to join us on Wednesday, 2/6 ! The children did a spectacular job and are very proud of their work!
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| Class 1M authors/illustrators working on their books |
Social Studies: We are so excited to participate in a great Teddy Bear project through Iearn. Mrs. Burg and both First Grades have been paired up with a 3rd grade class in Pakistan. We have a bear and the children named her Liberty. We packed a few travel essentials for her and a journal and then we mailed her to a school in Pakistan. They will mail us their teddy bear too. Our bear will go to Pakistan and see what life is like for the children in that school. We will see what he does in school, on the weekends, etc.. and the bear that will be visiting with us will do the same. The classes will keep journals of what the bears do, email each other, and Skype. This should be a really fun and meaningful experience. Stay tuned...
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| First Grade packing up Liberty for her trip to Pakistan! |
Math: We just finished working on estimation. We learned how to estimate and how to use groups of ten to make a more accurate estimate. We just started Place Value. Click on the link to hear a cute song that we learned...
Cute Place Value Song
We have been learning how to use base ten blocks to show different numbers and we have been learning how to trade ones and tens and tens and hundreds. We played a really fun game called Race to 100 to reinforce these concepts.
Teddy Bear Sleepover: We had so much fun at our Teddy Bear Sleepover. Our bears spent the day at school with us and then we tucked them in and went home but those silly bears were not ready to hibernate. Click on the Smilebox to see what happened!
teddy bear sleepover
Have a great weekend!
