Christmas Fun in Mexico!

What a week we're having in first grade!

For our Christmas around the world project, we have traveled to two countries so far! We started out in the United States!! Some of the American Christmas traditions we learned about include hanging stockings by the fireplace, putting up Christmas trees, going Christmas caroling, and spending time with family! We also talked about our own Christmas traditions! We are really getting in the Christmas spirit in first grade!

The next country we traveled to was Mexico! Thankfully we have Paloma to help translate for us! As soon as our plane touched down in Mexico, we were greeted with the Christmas carol “Feliz Navidad.” After, we watched a reading of the book Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie de Paolo. After, we made our own poinsettia’s in our travel scrapbook. It was so much fun. We also learned about Las Posados, which is a Mexican Christmas celebration. We ended our trip with hitting a pinata! Inside there was candy and toys! Below are some pictures from our fun day!

Fun in First!

I cannot believe it is December already! Time flies when you’re having fun in first grade!

This week we are working on:

Phonics: We are working on the long E sound including ee and ea sounds.

Spelling: Our spelling words this week include the long E sound. The words are listed below:

Feet

Feed

Seed

Me

Bee

Mean

Beak

Teach

Clean

See

Math: We are starting our fifth math chapter. Some of the standards include: doubles facts can be associated with memorable real-world situations, some addition facts can be found by changing to an equivalent fact with 10, addition facts involving 9 can be changed to an equivalent fact with 10, addition facts involving 8 can be changed to an equivalent fact with 10, three numbers can be grouped and added in any order, and numbers can be grouped in different ways to solve word problems with three addends.

Religion: We are learning about advent and the Christmas story!

Writing: We are working on our journal prompts everyday and also writing letters to Santa!

Each day we are also traveling the world to find out how different countries celebrate Christmas. For the past two days we have been in the United States. We spoke a lot about our own Christmas traditions including caroling, putting up a Christmas tree, hanging stockings, and putting up wreaths. In class, we joined forces with the second grade and made reindeer food and homemade ornaments! It was awesome! Below you can find some pictures from our fantastic day!

Happy Thursday!

We are continuing to work very hard in first grade! I am thrilled with our progress!

A few announcements:

1. Spelling test is moved to Monday.

2. Math test is moved to Tuesday.

3. On Tuesday at 11:45, we will be having our first and second grade Thanksgiving feast! All are welcome to attend! We have been working on some fun songs and stories for our feast. If you would like to sign up to bring something, here is the link: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0f4baea62da5f58-first

Happy FriYAY!!!!

Happy Friday! We had an awesome week in first grade!

Today we had an awesome morning meeting celebrating FriYAY! Everyone went around the room and shared what makes them say YAY! Annabelle (my puppy) and my six awesome students make me say YAY!!

This week in math we wrapped up chapter 3. The objectives students mastered were:

1. Numbers to 10 can be represented on a ten-frame using 5 and 10 as benchmarks.
2. The number 10 can be broken into parts in different ways.
3. A missing part of a whole can be found when the whole and the remaining part are known.

Our next chapter is subtraction facts to 12. We will start that on Monday.

For language, we continued to practice short a, e, i, o, and u sounds. Make sure to ask your student to sing our short vowel song!

For writing, we are working on writing our first book. We read If you give a Mouse a Cookie, and students are writing their own books based on it. They are very interesting! We will be finishing them up next week.

In spelling, we continue to work through our sight words. Today we had our 10 sight-word spelling test. The next 10 words are below. We will have our next spelling test on Friday.

1. Long
2. Which
3. Where
4. Were
5. How
6. Back
7. Another
8. Learn
9. Other
10. Over

In social studies, we are going to read Duck for President and discuss what qualities make a good president.

In science, we continue to monitor the growth of our tadpoles, Ginger and Star.

In reading, we are starting our non-fiction unit! We have a lot of interesting passages and books to read. I am very excited!

Congratulations to all the award winners in first grade! I am so proud of everyone!

Upcoming:

1. Virtue of the month for November is kindness
2. $10 free dress- Tuesday-Friday for election week
3. Turkey in disguise project due Monday, November 14th

Have a great weekend!!!!

Jillian

Happy Halloween and Happy November!

Happy Halloween and Happy November! Even though it’s only Tuesday, we have been having so much fun in first grade! Yesterday for Halloween, we all dressed up in our AWESOME costumes! We had two Draculura’s, a scary skeleton princess, another amazing princess, and Abby from Monster’s High! Everyone looked spectacular.

In language, we are continuing to practice our short vowel sounds-- a, e, i, o, and u. We even made up an awesome song to it. Ask your child to show you!

In writing, we are working on writing our own short stories. We read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff. Now first grade is coming up with their own version of that story using their own animals and food. It is going to be very interesting!

In reading, we are beginning our non-fiction unit. We started it last week when we read all about sharks. It was awesome! We learned that sharks do not have any bones! They have cartilage which we also have too on the tip of our noses.

In math, we are finishing up chapter three. We are working on ten frames. Today we cycled through 5 ten-frame stations. Everyone is doing a great job!

In science, we are continuing to monitor the growth of our tadpoles, Ginger and Star. Pretty soon their back legs will come in. We just ordered a tadpole rock for them to lay on once their legs come in. We also made songs about GInger and Star- ask your child about them -- they are awesome!!!

Below are some pictures from our awesome Halloween day!

What a fantastic week we had in first grade!

We have been working very hard in all of our subjects, but we have also been having a lot of fun too.

In language, we are going over our short vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u). We just started our long vowel sounds at the end of the week.

In writing, we are working on our very spooky stories! Each student received a writing prompt and filled in a graphic organizer. Students determined who would be the characters in their story and where it would take place. They also filled in a graphic organizer in which they had to come up with a problem in the story and the solution.

In reading, we finished up our unit on Peter Rabbit. We learned many lessons from that book! From now on, we will always listen to our parents :) Next week we will be reading The Hallo-wiener by Dav Pilkey. It is a very exciting Halloween book!

In spelling, we had our unit test on our first 20 sight words! Next Friday, we will have our second unit test on the next 20 sight words.

In math, we started a new chapter on comparing numbers, and counting by 5s, and 10s.

In science, we are writing songs about the life cycle of our tadpoles, Ginger and Star. We will be finishing and performing next week! I will be sure to take plenty of pictures!

In religion, we wrote letters to God thanking him for the special people in our lives.

Yesterday we had a great day at Cox Farm. Everyone had so much fun. Below are some pictures from our awesome day!

Fantastic Friday!

We had a great week in first grade!

We had so much fun learning about our star of the week Paloma! We learned that Paloma’s favorite food is broccoli and that she’s also bilingual! Some of the show and share items she brought in were her firegirl rain boots and jump rope. Our next star of the week is Marake!

This week we started our first literature unit. We started reading The Little Red Hen. We filled out a character chart for the Little  Red Hen. We all agree that she is a very hard worker and that her friends should have helped her plant the wheat seeds.

In math we are working on our second chapter on subtraction. We have been working in our workbook and using the TV in our room to watch cool math videos.

In spelling we learned ten more sight words and we had a spelling test on Friday.

In Science our tadpoles finally arrived! We took a class vote and named them Ginger and Star. On Friday we started to learn about frog life cycles. We watched a video on tadpoles and then we made our own life cycle chart. It was so much fun.

We also celebrated Paloma's 6th birthday with awesome donuts! It was awesome! Happy birthday Paloma.

I cannot wait until next week!