Wednesday, January 30, 2013

looking to the PRO!

All year I have tried to show students that you will never know EVERYTHING.  The important part of learning is knowing where to go to find the answers.  I like to model this often, as I use a dictionary to look up words.  Students know that we can use books, the internet, and now they know we can ask good questions to professionals.

In Science, we are learning about how water gets from the Stream to the Sink.  After a few different lessons, students (and myself) still had a few questions.  Knowing that we had a Professional Dad in our class, we typed up our questions and waited for the response.  Thank you to Mr. Molly (Madeline's dad) for taking time to help us find answers to our questions.

Student's were amazed to learn that the treatment plant is staffed all the time (yes, even Christmas!).  They were quick to connect that if the treatment plant stops making "clean" water, we could evently run out at our homes (and as Abby said - "if we ate a late dinner, we would have to brush our teeth with dirty water").

Friday, January 25, 2013

Where in the world is???

We used our visualization skills to study for our Social Studies Test. We used the grass to picture the world map. We placed all the continents in the correct location and listened to directions to tour our world. This was a great way to use our bodies to learn on a beautiful day!



Thursday, January 17, 2013

Toe to toe...

Brain breaks are great ways to wiggle our body and rest our mind! Ms. Lucht has been leading our brain breaks this week. We use one of these "get up and move" times to between writing and reading everyday.

Today students worked with their buddy to match up different ways. Toe to toe, fingers to fingers, head to head, and so on. It was funny to see everyone move cheek to cheek!

We love this 3-5 minute break to relax and WIGGLE!







Wednesday, January 16, 2013

We HEART school!

Nothing like walking through something to make a lasting impression!  Yesterday we were treated to an inside view of our heart.  Students were so excited to to come back from specials and tell me what they learned...

Righley said, "our heart is in the middle of our chest"

Ashley said "we went in blue and came
out red"

Myles said "that is how the blood is cleaned"







Friday, January 11, 2013

Show & Tell Celebration!

The class earned a Show and Tell Celebration.  Have your students told you about magic squares?  We have a class reward system.  When students work as team, I reward them with a "square".  As we color in the squares a secret message appears.  Once the message is revealed, we earn the reward.

Earning our last few magic squares,  was a great end to the first week back to school.  Students did an amazing job picking special things for show and tell.  Each student told why it was special and something about their object.  Here are a few clips that show the great job.  This was a super exercise in oral language and questioning skills.

 

Thursday, January 10, 2013

We're going on a SHAPE hunt, we're not scared..






We hunted for SHAPES, not bears today! Thanks to our photographers, Myles, Ashley, Cursean, and Harrison for taking pictures of unique 2 dimensional shapes.  Students did a great job at recognizing the difference between 2-d and 3-d shapes.  The highlight of the hunt was going upstairs and observing from the outside patio area!  Righley and Logan said, "it's like we are on top of the world".

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The Rest of the 1st Grade Year! it's all in the phrases...

Wow!  It is great to be back in the swing of learning.  I feel like we didn't miss a beat.  Students came in and went right to work.  We spent time talking about our goals for the new year.  During reading we learned about phrases, and pulled phrases from our own reading to write a class poem.  After it was put together the students named it - "The rest of the 1st grade year" (I am sad to say that they are closer to being 2nd grader than a Kindergartner - time really flies when you are having fun!)


It reads...

Wondrous to behold
yes I can
I can laugh

It's so cold
We need clothes
drink hot coco, big warm house
coats on, coats on for the snow
my mittens, a hat, and a scarf
cold winter is coming

playing
I will play with you
jump in the bunnies hole
oo oo ah ah
summers hot and dry
gets lots of sun

starting to rain
look at the puffy clouds
all around

60 days of school

Here is a picture of the finished product!