Happy Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving themed shadow box dioramas!

Our two day project of making a Thanksgiving shadow box was  big hit! The kids colored people, a ship, and trees, assembled a paper house, and best of all made tiny clay food and a few animals. They used tiny sticks for an outdoor fire inside a ring of stones and put in so much effort, creativity, and thought for their final masterpiece. 

Deciding on the final touch!

I'm making blueberries next!

This campfire is awesome!

I like yours too!

A line up of tiny clay food!

What do you think?!

Ready to put the harvest in!

Ready to take home!

Look what we made!

So exciting!

I hope you get a chance to share their Adventures of a Pilgrim writing- they wrote 4 entries from the point of view of a Pilgrim child, and they make for terrific reading! They wrote about going on the Mayflower, working in their new community in Plymouth, meeting a Native American, and finally eating loads of food for the original Thanksgiving! They were shocked that eel was on the menu and that it was the kids who served the food and who ate last!


In other news we have had three chances to sing the tooth song since Ty, Scarlett, and Anisha all lost teeth, and we sang our Birthday song to celebrate three birthdays. Happy Birthday to Mark, Dragon, and Tiger! We welcomed 2nd grade readers who were in our class last year as well, and we are continuing to read to our friends too.

Thanks 2nd graders!

Love that design!

We have the same shirt!!

Nice reading!

Hopefully, I will see you at Parent Conferences next week- they are on Wednesday, December 4th from 12:45- 7:45. Go to Signup.com if you have not yet picked a spot or call if you need assistance in signing up.

So much to be thankful for - we are truly blessed!
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Mrs. Dagley

We're reading!

Nice reading expression!

 Exciting things are happening in reading! Everyone has noticed how much more they can read now than when they first stepped into first grade. The kids are eager to show off their skills and read to the class and are practicing fluency, expression, and phrasing. New series have been discovered and attempted, and word detectives are spotting new spelling patterns and words within their books. What an awesome feeling to unlock the world of books!

Starting a new series

I marked favorite pages

I love Curious George!

New series for me!

I've been practicing for this

You'll like this book!

Reading a non-fiction book!

Using fluency when reading

More readers are 'signed up' for next week, and I told them that soon they can go with a friend to read to a kindergarten class. Exclamations all around - love seeing the enthusiasm! 
We also had a few 'reading buddies' this week in the form of small stuffed animals they read a book with.

Reading with bumble bee!

Bumble bear reads with me!

Enjoying a good book together

More fun with a little buddy!

Language arts centers remain a favorite part of the day. As the kids work independently in small groups, they are practicing reading on the computers, listening comprehension at the CD center, sight word identification and reading at the poetry center, and word work with pocket chart center and abc center. Sorting words by pattern, spelling words, unscrambling sentences, using abc order, and comparing and contrasting letter sounds are all skills that are helping build their reading skills. 

sorting pictures by vowel sounds

ordering a sentence

Reading on starfall

spelling words ending in __ay

Reading Three Little Plays

Unscrambling a sentence

Listening to stories on CD

A new activity has been playing boardgames that are either vowel sound games or sight word games. Everyone has made so much progress in identifying sight words and in distinguishing between vowel sounds.  

Sight word BINGO

A sea of vowels game

Spin a vowel

Can you see any light?

 Experimenting with properties of light has continued this week as we looked through tubes with different materials on the other end. Is the material opaque, translucent, or transparent? The big hit was bringing out the mirrors with flashlights. Learning about reflection was loads of fun. Where could they make their light reflect to? What happened when the mirror was placed perpendicular to their name tag? 

Translucent!

Tin foil is total darkness!

What do you see?

Mirrors and reflections!

 We wrapped up our math unit and completed a benchmark test. They are truly practicing math strategies when solving problems! Here are a few math stations that focused on doubles review, solving addition problems, making a ten, and using 2 and 3 addends to build a sum.

Doubles At Work

POP! with addition problems

Building an equation

How many more people to make 10?

I made a doubles match

Mayflower math to make 10

Practicing shapes

Geo board shapes

Look what shapes I made!

 Here is a little creative result from painting our seasonal pictures last week:

Ta Da!

Creative artists!

 Social Studies has revolved around the Thanksgiving story, Pilgrims, and Native Americans. We watched two engaging quick videos produced by Scholastic: Pilgrim Life and The Wampanoag Way. Both videos featured present day children from Plymouth Ma who dress in the attire from 400 years ago and work at Plymouth Plantation and in the Wampanoag Homesite. What was especially great was that the sisters who re-enact the Wampanoag people are actually descendants of that tribe.

Using a little suitcase to imagine what might be packed

I hope you read your child's 'newspaper' account of Squanto's life - the writing was amazing! We are currently writing from the point of view of a Pilgrim child. We wrote about what we would pack for the trip on the Mayflower and how we felt about the new venture across the sea. Next, we wrote about all the many jobs and chores we had to do- chopping trees for houses, cutting hay for roofs, fetching water, feeding animals, planting seeds, grinding corn...wow! The Pilgrims were constantly working! We will complete our booklet next week and send it home in time for Thanksgiving.

We will also start our shoebox scenes Monday. I hauled a bunch of shoeboxes from the attic to school on Friday so it looks ready to go.

Everyone should have received an email from signup.com and a paper notice telling about Parent Conferences by now. The conferences will be on Wednesday, December 4th (an early release day) from 12:45- 7:45. This online signup is helpful because you are able to switch times if needing to reschedule. You can also indicate a time slot for a phone conference if unable to attend. 

Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs. Dagley