It's amazing how quickly the kids have adjusted to their new classroom. They are learning routines, making new friends, and working nicely together in small groups. Our library theme of the rain forest has captured their imaginations as you can see by all the books and pictures they are holding in the photo. They love when the maps of the world and country are pulled down, and they find the animals of the rain forest fascinating!
Small group math is up and running with the kids rotating between three math activities. This allows teacher directed work, independent work, and collaborative, hands-on math activities.
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| Dot markers to represent numbers |
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| Introducing the addition sign |
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| Independent desk math |
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| Partner math game |
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| Teacher group |
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| Hard at work |
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| Small group |
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| Math bags when done early |
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| Let's try vibrating the rulers on the mailboxes1 |
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In science we are learning the vocabulary words of vibration and volume when referring to sound waves and intensity of sound. The kids had a great time making vibrations with wooden rulers. Darby asked the question of what would happen if we used a different material or a different surface for our experiment, so we found out! We used plastic rulers and they all set out around the room to test the vibrations when used on different surfaces.
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| I see the vibration! |
Next week we will learn about pitch and look forward to more experiments with sound.
In writing, we have begun by seeing text examples of illustrations with written labels. We have illustrated our own papers and written labels for the information.
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| Labeling our own illustrations |
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| Labeling poison dart frogs |
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| Colorfully labeled frogs |
Read-Alouds this week introduced a few series: The Fred and Ted series, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and the other circular patterned books in that series, and The Alphabet Mystery. Everyone loved reading There's A Monster Under The Bed and following it up by putting a monster sticker under a paper lift the flap bed. Writing character traits for Fred and Ted and using class dictionaries to learn about ABC order after reading The Alphabet Mystery, was lots of fun.
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| Fred & Ted character traits |
We introduced our 'Peaceful Place' nook this week which is just a cozy nook to have a few minutes to themselves in extra time.
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| Just chillin'! |
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| Peaceful Place relaxing! |
We have some very talented puzzle makers in class, and working on the puzzles has given the kids a great chance to work as a team and to share in their success when completed.
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| Animal pets puzzle |
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| The rain Forest |
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| Team work! |
Learning about American Symbols is a Social Study standard, and this week we learned about flags being symbols of countries all around the world. We learned that our flag has 50 stars for 50 states and 13 stripes for the first 13 colonies. We marched around to 'You're A Grand Old Flag', counted the stars and stripes on our giant flag, and wrote a sentence in our social studies booklet.
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| Flag fun |
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| Let's count the stars |
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| Writing a fact about the flag |
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| Making a popsicle stick flag |
Spending time focusing on phonics and letter sounds is a daily activity. Here we are practicing!
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| Leading vowel practice |
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| Do you know this sound? |
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| Sing the sounds with me! |
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| Everyone ready? |
It still felt like summer this week and we love watching our sunflower plant continue to bloom!
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| Nice shirt! |
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| So pretty! |
The Tooth Fairy continues to have a busy start to first grade. This week, Aarnav, James, and Emerson all lost teeth - great chance to sing our tooth song 3 times!
Thank you everyone for coming to Open House. It was wonderful seeing everyone and watching how excited the kids were to show off their room and their projects.
Next week we have an early release on Wednesday. The first (optional) book order will go home and will be due on Friday if you choose to participate.
Nice and cool outside - enjoy the weekend!
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| Our Morpho Butterflies |
Mrs. Dagley
Read-Alouds this week introduced a few series: The Fred and Ted series, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and the other circular patterned books in that series, and The Alphabet Mystery. Everyone loved reading There's A Monster Under The Bed and following it up by putting a monster sticker under a paper lift the flap bed. Writing character traits for Fred and Ted and using class dictionaries to learn about ABC order after reading The Alphabet Mystery, was lots of fun. 
