December 19, 2014

Last week in Art we put string on our looms to weave.

We have been working on measuring in math.  We have been playing Tric Trac in math too.

We had centers.

We made gingerbread cake.  We ate gingerbread cookies.  Then we graphed what we liked.  After we took bites of the gingerbread man we colored our bites on paper.  Then we wrote a paper about How to Eat a Gingerbread Man.

In Spanish we learned a new song-- Casca Bel (Jingle Bells).

In computer we programmed the iPad.  We finished an hour of coding.

We wrote letters to Jan Brett.

In PE some of us got to climb on the climbing wall.

We had a fabulous week!

December 5, 2014

This week we did a "double bubble" comparing and contrasting Native Americans and Pilgrims.  We also made another double bubble to compare and contrast children today and Pilgrim children.

In Art we warped a loom.  We used a pencil and cardboard to draw lines and then we cut them.  Plus, the back had dotted lines on the top and bottom of the cardboard.  Then we put string in the cut lines.

We are writing our opinion about whether we would want to be on the Mayflower or not.  Only a couple of us wanted to be on the Mayflower, most did not!  It was a long ride, people got seasick, it was dark and smelly, and there wasn't much to eat.

We finished Thanksgiving on Thursday last week.

In computer we were directing the iPad to do things (coding).

We are studying a new author of the month, Jan Brett.

We had a fabulous week!

November 21, 2014

This week we painted our pictures in Art.

We learned about Mayflower.  It was a big ship but had a lot of people, so they felt it was small.  It was not a fun place.  They did not have much sunlight or food.  There was a storm and it got them off course.  They got some holes in the boat from the storm, but they could fix them.  They got seasick.   It was stinky on the Mayflower.

We started a new read aloud book Thanksgiving on Thursday.

We had a fabulous week!

November 14, 2014

This week there was a bake sale for Girls on the Run.  The money went to an education fund for our principal's sister-in-law's children.  She passed away of cancer earlier this fall.

We painted over chalk in Art.  We talked about symmetrical lines.

We are writing about our opinions.

We are studying the Pilgrims and Mayflower in Social Studies.

We had a fabulous week!

October 24, 2014

This week we made trees in Art.   Next week we will get to paint our clay owls.

We had choice and indoor recess this week.

Scientists discovered a new dinosaur.  It was as big as a T-Rex.  It is called Deinocheirus mirificus.  We measured dinosaurs from the tip of their noses to the tip of their tails.  Plus we did an experiment to show how sharp teeth ate meat.

We made dinosaur pictures in Computer this week.  Then we had to tell if it was a carnivore or an herbivore.

We had a fabulous week!

October 17, 2014

This week we drew our faces to hang on our chairs for Open House.  We had an Open House last night.

We made clay owls in Art.

We had a guest bring fossils in to show us.  We learned that fossils are not only dinosaur bones.

We had a substitute yesterday because our teacher had a sick daughter.

We had a fabulous week!

October 3, 2014

This week we made dinosaur fossils out of clay.  We studied how the world changed--the continents shifted.  We learned a new word, Pangea.  We learned that there is no such dinosaur as the Brontosaurus.  We learned that scientists just discovered another new dinosaur.

We made pictures in Art with paper and black paint.

We switched tables because it was a new month.

We had a fabulous week!

September 26, 2014

This week we had our first reading groups.

In Art we finished our fish pictures.  Some of us even made a second one.

Some of us learned new iPad games.

In Spanish we made books and learned a new song.

We had our first computer class.

We had a fabulous week!

September 19, 2014

This week we learned to play HangMouse on the iPad to practice spelling.

We shared and showed what we wrote about the summer.

In Art we made little fish out of paper and watercolors and pastels.

In Guidance we made faces out of nature.

We had a fabulous week!

September 12, 2014

This week we made our stars with our hopes and dreams about what we want to do in first grade.

In Art we made landscapes with chalk and paper.

In science we went outside to discover there are many different kinds of green!

Yesterday was rainy, so we had an indoor recess and some of us played with Legos.

In math we worked on using tally marks and learned new things.

We have our own pencil bags with pencils and crayons to use when we have to write.

We learned about how to go through centers.

We had a fabulous week!

June 6, 2014

This week we had our last morning meeting.  We got to slide back to our new seats as second graders.

On our last day of PE we played Smart Shot.  We will have a field day on the last day of school.

We tried the clickers this week with the computer.  We were the first class to use them.  It took a couple of tries to get them to work.   They were fun to use.  

We have our last Art class of the year today.

Mrs. Fleming will be our second grade teacher next year.

We had an amazing week!

May 30, 2014

This week we had a day without Mrs. Wilcox.  Her daughter was sick.

Today is Maypole.  The fifth grade will do the Maypole dance.  We are singing.  We will have baskets to pass out too.

We had a substitute yesterday in PE.  Mrs. D went to look at another school.

We had a day home on Monday.

We got to watch Pokoyo in Spanish.

We had an amazing week!

May 16, 2014

This week we performed our "Continents" song in front of the school.

We had PE outside with a substitute.  Our PE teacher is with the 8th grade in Washington, DC.

We are learning a new kind of writing.  We are writing narratives about an event in our life.

We had recess with the fourth grade because they were testing and needed to join us.

We had an amazing week!

May 9, 2014

This week we had a guest to teach us about maps and keys.

We filled another bucket-- 21!

Yesterday was Miss Waterhouse's last day.  She will graduate next week.

Today we have a Japanese drumming (Taiko) show.  We will drum and dance.

In writing we are making an informative book for the Kindergarten about what we do in first grade.

We had an amazing week!

May 2, 2014

This week we are learning how to do Japanese drumming (Taiko) during our PE class.  We are also doing Japanese folk dancing.  We are learning from Stuart Paton, an Artist in Residence.

We also have a volunteer, Dan, teaching us about jobs; making money when we get older; wants and needs;  neighborhoods; and businesses.

Next Monday we are going to see the play Stuart Little.

We practiced a school bus evacuation and a fire drill in school.

We had an amazing week!

April 25, 2014

This week our behavior has been very good.  Many people have gotten 3 stickers each day!

We are learning about maps in Social Studies.   We made a map of our classroom.

Yesterday in PE we played Star Wars, or some people call it Jedi.

We started writing how-to pieces.  We are teaching people how to eat a mint.

In math we played a game called SKUNK.  It was a game of chance and practice adding with dice.  We worked with money all week.  We got a pretend dollar to buy something from the first grade store and we had to use math to figure out the change.  We got to keep the item we bought.

We had an amazing week!

April 11, 2014

This week we finished learning about liquids.

We filled another bucket and have 20 buckets full!  We also have been getting stickers for displaying expected behavior.  Our classroom has been much calmer.  The new red/green clips are helping us with our behavior.

School ended at 1:30 almost everyday this week for conferences.  We got to show our parents how we were doing.  We saw a video of ourselves reading in the conference.

We saw the fourth grade perform skits on hurtful behavior.

We got to vote for our favorite five pictures for the new playground.

We only got one PE because we got out of school early this week.

We had an amazing week!

April 4, 2014

This week we did an experiment with modeling clay and tried to find a way to make it float. We found that if our clay boats had holes they would sink.

We practiced for conferences which are next week!

We started a star student chart for recording our behaviors.

We are studying a new genre of the month, poetry.

We had an amazing week!

March 21, 2014

This week we had PE two days in a row.

During science we did an experiment about sinking and floating. We are still learning about liquids. On Monday we shared our liquid notebooks.

We worked on informative writing.

We had a two hour delay on Thursday.

We had an amazing week!

March 14, 2014

This week we had two snow days.

We started studying liquids in science. We looked at different liquids. We looked at water, vegetable oil and corn syrup.

We had PE this week.

Audrey Wood is our new author of the month.

We had an amazing week!

March 7, 2014

This week we celebrated Dr. Suess' birthday and Read Across America Week.  We had many parents come read to us.  We brought books in for multiage and colored  covers of  books to hang in the hall.  We all read our books.  We wore our pajamas to school and brought our stuffies to read to.  We guessed how many goldfish were in a goldfish bowl. There were poems in the hall for  people to add lines to.  It is the last day today, so we get to have cake!

We had an amazing week!

February 28, 2014

This week we learned about math fact triangles and fact tables.

We are finishing our study on manatees.  We are going to adopt one named Squeaky.  We won't be able to keep it in our classroom.  We will send money to help save them because they are endangered.  They are getting hit and hurt by boat propellers.  They are harmless.

We had an amazing week!

February 7, 2014

This week we celebrated 100 days of school!  We made necklaces out of some pipe cleaners and 100 Fruit Loops.

We finished studying the moon.  We are now learning about manatees.

We have now filled 16 buckets since the beginning of the year!

On Wednesday we had a snow day!  We got almost a  foot of snow!

In Spanish we are learning a new song-- CuCu.

We had an amazing week!

January 31, 2014

This week we watched a presentation of Chinese New Year.  The fifth grade came into the gym dressed as a dragon.

We are doing a great job filling our bucket!

We had an amazing week!

January 24, 2014

This week it was Martin Luther King, Jr Day.  We had a short day.  We had special presentations by the kindergarten and the fourth grade.  The kindergarten acted out a skit about Rosa Parks.  The fourth grade performed a poem about Dr. King's "I have a dream... " speech.  We went into multi-age groups until 10 am to talk about school values and make pledges to make our world a better place.

We have now filled 14 buckets!

We have a new teacher, Miss Waterhouse.  She is joining us to learn how to be a teacher.  We are excited to have her!

There is also a new teacher in PE, Miss Otis.  She is learning how to be a PE teacher.

We looked at the phases of the moon this week.  We are discovering how the moon's shape changes by its position around the earth.  The moon does not provide its own light, so it is reflecting the sun's light in different positions.

We had an amazing week!

January 17, 2014

This week the cross-country skiers could not ski because we did not have enough snow.

We are learning about the moon.  The moon does not make its own light, it reflects light from the sun.  You can not see the sun at night, but you can see the moon sometimes because it is reflecting the sun's light.  The moon does not actually change shape.  The earth is just blocking some of the light.  The moon has craters and mountains.  The moon is made of dust.  Neil Armstrong was the first person on the moon.  His footprints are still there because there is no wind or rain.  He had an air tank because there is no air to breathe.  He put an American flag on the moon.  The flag looks like it is blowing but it is just a wire because there is no wind.

We filled another bucket.

In Spanish we are making another story about a red dog named Cuckoo Pants.  He wants to ski but there is no snow.   It is very hot where he is.

We had an amazing week!

January 10, 2014

This week we played Star Wars in PE.

We are back from  a two week vacation.

There were two skits during morning meeting.  They were about the Unthinkables.  We learned to be nice.

We are learning about the moon.

Most of the class went skiing for the first time.  Some people even went on the chairlift.  Others were cross-country skiing.  We will do that for the next few Thursdays.

We filled another bucket this week--that makes 12!

We had an amazing week!