Well, another week flew by us and we are getting ready to start our last month of the school year. As excited as I am to welcome summer and all things water related and easy mornings, I will truly miss these fun days with your kids. In my teaching experience, no two classes are alike, and this one is so immensely special and they are so sweet.

On Tuesday, we started off our morning by working on addition facts that equal 10 by completing a rainbow addition sheet. After our morning work, we did our devotion, calendar and pledge.

For lightning lit, we read our book of the week “This is London,” and completed our day one questions. We then talked about the difference between fiction and nonfiction and then completed our day one grammar page. We also then completed our spelling lesson 31A. 

After morning snack and recess, we did our centers. For centers this week, we had our usual AAR center where we reviews the sounds of a we knew, talked about the third sound of a and then played a game where I held up word cards and had them read them. Whoever read the card first got to keep the card and whoever had the most cards won. Each group got to play the game 3-4 times. Another center was our writing center where I had them draw me a picture of a musical instrument they would like to learn how to play and write me a sentence or two about what they picked and why. Another center we had was a fiction/non fiction sort where they cut out descriptions and had to match if that described a fiction or a nonfiction book. Our last center was some file folder games working on fact families, addition, and rhyming words.

After lunch and recess, we did our ninja facts! They are really showing improvement are very motivated to move up! Keep practicing these at home, even if its just verbally asking them in the car. We also did p. 113-114 in math where we practiced changing addition problems that have a 9 or an 8 into a group of ten and then adding. 

After math, we had our book party celebrating our finished of “The Two Trails” a sequel to “The Treasure Tree.” We all enjoyed a piece of chocolate cake and we shared our pictures from last week where they drew their favorite character and/or part of the book. It was a fun way to end our adventures with our Treasure Tree friends! 

For social studies, we continued our talk about Egypt and reviewed some of our facts we learned. We then started working on our craft where they were able to paint a pyramid. We finished this up on Thursday, because we had to let it dry.

We did our usual pack up routine and went home!

On Thursday, we started our morning off with a couple mazes just for fun! If they finished those, I gave them a color by subtraction fact sheet. After morning work, we did our devotion, calendar and pledge time. 

For lightning lit, we reread our book and did day 3 questions. We also worked together and wrote a short summary of the book and did our alphabet page of cities. I only require them to copy five down, but some wanted to write down every single one we came up with! We were able to come up with a city for every single letter. This was tricky for them as most of them do not understand the difference between city and country, which is completely normal at this age. 

After morning snack and recess, we did our Spelling Lesson 31c. They are all so excited that this coming week we get to do five letter words! After spelling, we did our centers. We had an AAR center where they whisper read “Life on the Blue Whale” while I listened and helped when needed and then we discussed the difference between realism vs. fantasy. For their writing center, I had them draw a book cover and come up with a title for a book they would like to write. For another center, they finished the file folder games they hadn’t completed yet. And for the last center, they got a chance to play the black hole game from science a couple weeks ago. 

After lunch and recess, we did our ninja math facts again and completed p. 116-117 adding within 20. They did really well with this and we finished in record time!

For social studies, we finished our pyramid craft which came out so cute. They cut out their painted pyramids and folded them up and then brought them to Mrs. Koh and I where we helped them assemble a mummy to put inside their pyramid. The mummies were made out of a little clip art image and a Hershey’s chocolate nugget. I gave them each a chance to name their mummy and I told them at home they could add extra treasures to their pyramid if they wanted to just like the Egyptians did. I did tell them they had to show you their mummies before they ate them, so hopefully you got a chance to look at them.

After social studies, I had to leave early at 2:00, but I gave them a constellation sheet to work on with Mrs. Koh where they got to design and color their own constellation. 

Reminders and notes for this week:

Curious George papers due Tuesday, April 30

Send AAR reader to coop on Thursday, May 2

Field Day is May 6. We are pink!

Lastly, on Thursday I started doing a reading evaluation with each of the students. My goal is to get through 2-4 kiddos a day, so I get everyone done before the end of the year. I will send this home with them after everyone is completed so you can see where your child’s reading level is and where you can practice with them this summer and what level of books they can read independently. I use the fountas and pinnell guided reading level assessment which gives a reading level between A-Z. I will print off a chart showing you if your child is at or above or below grade level and I will try to include some book suggestions that are at your child’s level so he or she can keep working on reading this summer. 

Week of April 15-19

Another week has flown by and we soaked up all the sun we could this week! We all have spring up our nose and we are enjoying the warmer days knowing that summer is just around the corner!

We started Tuesday out with a color by addition fact page. After, we did our devotion, calendar time and pledge before starting our lightning lit. For lightning literature, I read our new book for this week to them, “Babar the King” and we did our day one discussion questions. We also worked on identifying the subject and predicate of sentences on our day one grammar page. 

After snack and recess, we did our spelling lesson 30A. We did not have centers today, because we wanted to make sure we could finish the Two Trails chapter book we had been reading for so long. We did AAR whole class on Tuesday by reviewing the three sounds that -ed can make and then we played around the world with our word cards for review. We did 3-4 lessons worth of the green cards and they each got a few turns to practice reading the words while we saw who could make it furthest around the classroom. We then finished our book, the Two Trails and they were so happy. I’m not sure I’ll be able to pull off a scavenger hunt like I did last time as the book doesn’t lend itself as easily as the Treasure Tree did for a scavenger hunt. However, I did tell them I would bring them a cake next week, because that was the reward the characters got for completing their journey at the end of the book. I’ll send a message in the app on what day I plan to bring that in. 

After lunch and recess, we did our ninja math facts and p.105-106 in our math book. I used cardstock circles on the board to mirror the ones in their book as we worked together to make tens and then add the marbles. We also used magnetic place value sticks on the board  to do that as well on p. 106.

When math was done, we reviewed black holes from last week and then learned some fun and interesting facts about stars and completed our star page in our solar system booklet. To finish our day, I introduced Africa to them by showing them on the globe where it is and then we learned about Egypt. We watched a professor propeller video about Egypt where they learned all about pyramids, mummies, inventions from Egypt and more! I started reading a book to them all about ancient Egypt as well which they loved! 

We did our usual pack up routine and went home!

On Thursday, they started their day with a spring word search. They always ask me to do word searches and it had been a few weeks since we did one, so Thursday was the day! After morning work, we did our devotion time learning all about how platypus are made very unique and strange but that God designed them that way for a reason and just because someone is different, we should always be loving and kind and not make fun of anyone. We also did our calendar time (ask them to sing you the days of the week in Spanish if they haven’t done that for you already) and our pledge.

For lightning lit, I reread the book to them and we did the day 3 comprehension questions and discussed the story components. After, we wrote a short summary of the book. When we were done, I gave them an extra lightning lit worksheet I had found on their website where we practiced again dividing the subject and predicate in sentences. Since we had a little extra time, we went ahead and did spelling lesson 30c before snack. 

After snack and morning recess, we changed things up. We needed more time to make the science constellation light up boxes so we moved that to the morning instead of centers. We reviewed stars and I introduced constellations to them and we talked about various ones we see in the night sky. After, I gave them a piece of cardstock to cut out that they turned into light up boxes on various constellations. Mrs. Koh actually drew and designed this! They were so very excited to take these home and show you. 

After science, we went ahead and finished our book on ancient Egypt. I then gave them the opportunity to be translators and scribes as they were given the chance to work on some pages with hieroglyphics. They first were given pages with words written in hieroglyphics that they had to use the code to translate into English. Then we did the opposite where they were given the English word and they got to use hieroglyphics to draw the symbols that matched the letters. We will finish up our study on Egypt next Tuesday and move on to another country on Thursday!

After lunch and recess, we did our ninja facts and math p. 109-110. This took a lot longer than I expected so we did not get to afternoon centers like I had hoped. I think we spent around an hour on math. We focused on subtracting from whole tens and the first page went smoothly as we used the place value magnetic tiles on the board to illustrate this. The second page where it didn’t have the tiles proved to be a challenge. I ended up continuing to use the tiles on the board to show them how to do it. I then briefly introduced borrowing to them even though it’s not mentioned to show them that's actually what we were doing with the tiles. We talked all about how Mr. Ones goes to their neighbor's house. Mr. Tens and asks for a group of ten because he just doesn’t have enough to subtract on his own. They got a huge kick out of this and I do think it helped them to understand what we were doing. I would definitely go back and revisit this with them at home and also make sure they know the facts that add up to 10 (8+2, 7+3, etc.)

Since this took so long, we didn’t get a chance to do centers like I had planned, so instead I paired them up to do their AAR reading where they did a partner read. I went around to the groups and listened to them read. We then ended our time altogether identifying rhyming words in the story and coming up with additional words that rhymed. 

It was a great week and I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! 

Reminders and News:

Curious George Story is due April 30.

Field Day is Monday, May 6.

We won’t be working on brainstorming or modeling how to write a research paper on Knoxville next week. With the Curious George story being due soon, I felt like it was too much to ask them to do that as well. Feel free to do that at home if you would like.

Bring AAR reader to co-op on Thursday.

It was the epitome of April showers this week. Happy for bright sunny weather this coming week so we can play outside again!

We started off Tuesday by finishing our matryoshka dolls for our morning work. They did a great job on these and they came out so cute. I hope you enjoyed seeing their creations! After morning work, we did our morning devotion, calendar and pledge.

For lightning lit, we read our book for the week “Curious George Flies a Kite”. They were all troopers for this one because it was an 80 page picture book, but we made it through! We discussed day one questions, then worked on brainstorming for their Curious George story they have to write. I gave them a graphic organizer where we brainstormed various characters and settings they could add to their stories. It also had a place for plot and other information if you wish to continue brainstorming at home before starting. We then took a pause on lightning lit to finish our All About Reading lesson from the week before. We talked all about homographs and words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. We had a fun anchor chart that we looked at with lots of examples and then we played a game. I gave them each a card with a word and picture on it and then when I said go they had to shout their word around the room and find their partner that had a card with the same word on it. After everyone found their partner they came up with their partner to tell everyone what their word was and the two different meanings of the word. 

After morning snack and recess, we did spelling lesson 29A continuing to work on ending blends. After spelling, we didn’t do centers, but worked on finishing our lightning lit and worked on beginning, middle, and end. Instead of doing the lightning lit pages which required them to remember several stories, I read them a new book about Escargot, our favorite French snail that we have read a couple other books about this year. We read the book and then discussed beginning, middle of end and filled out our roller coaster graphic organizer. This helped them see that the beginning of a story leads us to the middle (like a roller coaster hill) such as the problem or  climax of the story which then leads us to our resolution and end of the story (like coming down the hill of a roller coaster). We also took a minute to identify our characters and the setting of our story. After, I divided them up into pairs and they practiced partner reading their story “Oh Brother”. I came around and listened to each group read and then altogether we did a few comprehension questions. 

After lunch and recess, we did our ninja math facts and p. 96-97 where we worked on subtracting without borrowing. They were able to take turns coming up writing answers on the board for various problems. We don’t always do this, but they love getting the chance to come up to the board to solve a problem. We didn’t get a chance to finish every problem because of our Asia party, so if you noticed some blank, that’s why. Feel free to finish those at home for additional practice if needed. 

To end our day, we got to have an Asia experience party! Thanks Laura and Jessica for a fun time! The kids got to paint fans and write their Korean names on them, play a relay race with chopsticks and make “sushi” out of Rice Krispies and Swedish fish. What a fun way to end our time studying Asia! We still start studying Africa this coming week! 

On Thursday, we started our day off coloring our Russia passport stamp and luggage sticker to add to their suitcases as well as telling me one fact they remembered about Russia on their postcard. We then did our morning devotion, calendar time and pledge.

For lightning lit, we reread “Curious George Flies a Kite” (whew!), did our day 3 questions, and then worked on writing our book summary. We then worked on our grammar day four pages where they practiced writing the correct punctuation mark at the end of sentences. We did the first couple together and then I let them do the rest on their own and then we checked them. They did well with this overall! The hardest for some was identifying when something was a question, so keep working on that at home as you are able. 

Following morning snack and recess, we did our spelling lesson 29c. We then moved on to our center time. We had our AAR center where we worked in small groups practicing the -ed sound. We talked about the three sounds it makes and I wrote various words on the board asking them to identify which sound -ed made. I then wrote words without -ed on the board and had them write them correctly on their lap boards adding the -ed. At the end, I chose to stump each of the groups by writing a word like hop on the board so they could write “hopped.” A few of them actually knew to double the p, but most wrote “hoped.” I used that to introduce to them that sometimes we have to double the consonant in order for us to know the vowel is still short. Another center we had was writing a letter to their Babushka (Russian word for grandmother) telling them why they loved them. Another center, we had file folder games focusing on fact families, addition facts and rhyming words. We will do those same file folder games again this coming week. For our last center, they played the sight word popcorn game again which has become a real hit in class! 

After lunch and recess, we worked on our ninja math facts again and p. 100-101 in our math books working on adding and subtracting two digit numbers. They are doing so well with this. I keep drilling into them though that for adding and subtracting you have to start with the ones column (in preparation for carrying and borrowing), so try and make sure they are doing that at home. It will make carrying and borrowing in second grade so much easier if they are already know to start with the ones. 

To end our day we had a lot of fun with black holes! First we listened to a fun song that taught us interesting facts about black holes. They liked it so much we listened to it twice and then talked about what we learned. After we watched a YouTube video of someone reading the book “There Was a Black Hole That Swallowed the Universe”. It was a silly book told in the style of “There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly”. Finally, we ended with a black hole game! They were divided into groups of two where I gave each of them a black hole game board that had 21 circles on it in the shape of a pyramid. They took turns each writing a number in it starting with 1 and ending in 10 until they were left with one hole. That hole became the black hole and every number touching it had to be erased, because it got sucked into the black hole. They then had to add up their total they were left with to see who the winner was! They loved this, so we will play this again in a couple weeks as a center. 

We ended our day with our usual pack up routine and went home! 

Reminders:

Send in AAR reader on Thursday.

Curious George short stories are due April 30.

Field Day is May 6 and we have been assigned pink as our color.

Week of April 2-5

It’s April already and our new class birds, Bud and Bloom flew in this week! I can’t believe how fast the time is flying by here in first grade. We have just seven weeks left of school. Here’s what we did this week.

We started Tuesday off with coloring a luggage sticker and passport stamp for Japan to add to our suitcases and writing one fact they learned about Japan. After our morning work, we did our morning devotion about not being a prickly porcupine, calendar time and our pledge.

We then worked on our lightning lit that was leftover from the week before. We completed our day 4 grammar page which was a review of capitalization rules. After, we completed our settings booklet. They were able to use their imagination to invent a new setting for Tikki Tikki Tembo and how it would change the story. 

Since that didn’t take all of our morning time, I read them the book “Peanut Butter and Cupcake” because it was National Peanut Butter and Jelly day. They loved this book and had fun doing something a little different. We then reviewed adjectives and we filled out a character trait page coming up with character traits/adjectives that described the main character, Peanut Butter. 

After morning snack and recess, we did spelling lesson 27D. Then we moved on to our center time. For centers on Tuesday, there was a writing center where they had to write a letter to Peanut Butter giving him advice on how to make friends. We also had a traditional matching memory game where they had to match food pairs  (peanut butter and jelly, Mac and cheese, hamburger and French fries, etc.) This was purely for fun and they enjoyed the chance to play a game. Our third center was free drawing and our last center was addition wrap-ups. 

After lunch and recess, we did our All About Reading together as a class. We reviewed the fourth sound of o and the fourth job of silent e before playing “around the world”. To play this game, two students stand up and I flip over a card. Whoever reads the card first wins and advances to the next student and whoever makes it the farthest around the “room/world” wins. We reviewed several lessons worth of word cards.

For math, we did our ninja math facts and also reviewed telling time. We had a short mini lesson where I reviewed telling time to the hour, half and quarter hour. We then played telling time bingo. This was a challenge for them, but they love bingo and didn’t even realize we were learning along the way. Afterwards they said “Mrs. Litton, we didn’t do a math lesson today!” 

We wrapped up our day by finishing up our koi pond painting. I hope you all enjoyed seeing their beautiful pictures! They worked very hard on these and had a great time doing them! We then did our pack up routine and went home!

On Thursday, we started our day with a color by subtraction fact sheet to get a little subtraction practice in. We then did our morning devotion, calendar and pledge.

For lightning lit, we started our new book “Millions of Cats” which was a pretty comical story that had a very surprising ending. We then did our discussion questions and discussed the story components. We also wrote our weekly summary of the book. To review comparative and superlative adjectives we played a game called “I have, who has”. For example a card might say “I have prettiest. Who has a card that says our class is the most quiet of them all?” And they would have to look to see if they had the card that said quietest on it and then they would shout out they had it and then read the next description. Everyone had two cards so this took quite a bit of time! Because of that, we didn’t get to my all about reading lesson plan which included a whole class homograph lesson about multiple meaning words, so we will do that next Tuesday!

After morning snack and recess, we did spelling lesson 28B before we did centers. For centers, we did library time where they were able to choose from the library books that had been brought in to look at. We also had a writing center where they were able to fill in a “pet bowl” with the food they would feed their pet or imaginary pet if they didn’t have one. They also had to write a sentence telling me what they would feed their pet. We also had a telling time center where they had to cut out clocks and match them to the correct time. Our last center was a comparative and superlative worksheet where they had to sort them by coloring the word apples based on the kind of adjective they were. 

In the afternoon, we did our ninja facts before our math lesson. We completed pg. 92-23 and concentrated on adding without regrouping. Overall, they did very well with this! 

After math, we played “planetary bingo”. They were each given bingo cards with different planets, meteors, sun, etc. I would then call out a fact about one of those and they would have to decide which planet I was describing and then look to see if they had it on their board. This was a great review and it gave those that didn’t win telling time bingo on Tuesday a chance to win. We will do more bingo games this quarter when we can. 

To end our day, we watched part of a Professor Propeller video on Russia. We learned about the types of food they eat, cosmonauts, maryoskyo dolls, their wildlife and more! I showed them a matryoshka doll that someone had brought me back from Ukraine as a child and they were fascinated at how tiny the littlest doll was inside. After we watched the video, we started working on our maryoskyo doll craft that we will finish on Tuesday. We then did our pack up routine and went home!

Reminders for next week:

Asia Party on Tuesday, April 9

Bring AAR reader to class on Tuesday.

Curious George story starts next week. These are due on April 30. 

Week of March 18-22

Spring has sprung and I couldn’t be happier about it! I live for the extra daylight, flowers blooming, soccer practices, dance recital practices, and warmer weather, but I also know all the sports and activities this time of year can be a lot! Hang in there; you can do this and if you miss a few things along the way, then give yourself grace and do what you can do. 

I want to start by thanking you so much for your generosity on Thursday for teacher’s appreciation day. I am blessed to be with your babies twice a week, and I truly enjoy getting to be their teacher. This position as their teacher, I truly believe God had waiting for me when I didn’t even know it. I struggled last summer with whether I wanted to apply when I knew they needed a first grade teacher. I have some complicated  health issues from an injury a few years ago and didn’t know if I could do the standing necessary for the job, so I let it pass me by and thought I’ll just sub for a while. Well that turned into a last minute request from the school asking me to be the teacher’s assistant and to see if I could tolerate it. By September, I was being asked if I thought I could teach first grade and I was so very excited, because it was the job I had wanted all along. God has sustained me each and everyday to keep up with your sweet kids, and I have enjoyed every minute of it and am excited to have another quarter with them. I tell you this, because I want you to know how much I wanted to do this, prayed for this, and truly enjoy each and everyone of their sweet and fun personalities. So thank you again from the bottom of my heart for the gifts, yummy snacks and cards and a special thank you to Allison and Jessica for coming to watch the class while I enjoyed some adult conversation with other teachers!  

On to what you are reading for: what we did this week! We started Tuesday off with completing a “spring break reflection” where they drew me pictures and wrote about what they did over spring break, who they saw, what they ate, etc. They then got to share with the class one thing they did over break. After morning work, we did our devotion on not fighting with each other like big horn sheep, calendar time, and pledge.

For lightning lit, we read our book for the week “Always Room for One More”. We used this book as a way to teach context clues all week long! We did our day one questions and also completed our day one grammar, but we didn’t stop there. We began our “detective training” at the “First Grade Detective Agency” and talked all about how to learn words we don’t know using context clues in the text such as pictures, helping words, examples, etc. Together we wrote the words we found in the text that we didn’t know, what we thought they meant, how we learned what they meant and the actual meaning of the word. I then sent them off on their “first assignment” where I placed picture cards around the room that had a word on them with one or two sentences on the card. They had to figure out the meaning of the word using either the picture or the description on the card. They overall did pretty well with this and had a good time being detectives and “collecting clues” to learn new words. 

After snack and recess, we did spelling lesson 26A focusing on blends on the end of words. We then did our center time; our first center was finishing up file folder games we didn’t complete last week. We also did a writing center where they had to write a grocery list with items they would want to purchase at the grocery store. Our third center was another context clue activity where they read a paragraph with a word they didn’t know and they had to use context clues to figure out the meaning of the word “drenched” and then draw a picture of the story. Lastly, we had a center for AAR where we reviewed the first two jobs of silent E and then we talked about the third job of silent E and practiced reading words incorporating the third job. 

After lunch and recess, they did their ninja facts and math lesson. Keep working on math facts at home as much as you can. We are getting ready to start a chapter on two digit adding and that will go smoother for them if they are more fluent with their math facts. We also completed p. 77-78 and worked on various types of measuring. We didn’t complete the top of page 78 as we didn’t have a bathroom scale in class, so feel free to do that part at home.  

After math, I introduced Saturn and read some interesting facts about the planet. 

For social studies, we read a book all about Japan and learned a few Japanese words, all about their food, Children’s Day, and more! 

To end our day after we packed up, we read the next chapter of “The Two Trails” and are nearing the end of the book.

On Thursday, they started their day coloring a cute spring picture! After we did our morning devotion, calendar time and pledge.

For lightning literature, we reread the story, did day 3 comprehension questions, talked about the story components and wrote our summary. We also added a couple more words to our “context clues” detective agency page. We also completed spelling lesson 26C.

After morning snack and recess, we had center time. For centers, we changed it up a little bit today. We had a fun center where they just got to free draw whatever they wanted using markers. We also had a sight word center where they played a “popcorn game” where they had to pick out pieces of play popcorn that had a sight word on it. They had to read the word correctly to keep the word, and if they picked out a piece that said “pop” they had to put all their popcorn back. Whoever had the most at the end won. They loved this, so we will definitely play again in the future! Our third center was writing/math where I had them draw pictures of four animals smallest to biggest and write me a sentence about one of the animals. Lastly, we had another “context clue” center. Olivia brought in magnifying glasses and they worked as detectives with their group to read clue cards and figure out the meaning of words. 

After centers, we did AAR together as a class and played a game where I held up a word card. Whoever “popped” up out of their seat first got to read the word and if they did it correctly, their table got a point. It was a great way to move our bodies and practice reading at the same time. 

In the afternoon, we did our math p. 81 where they used rulers and practiced drawing lines with their ruler to certain lengths. They also had to measure the sides of varying shapes. Due to time since I was at the teacher lunch, we didn’t do ninja facts, we will do them again on Tuesday. 

For science, we had a fun and quick experiment. I brought in a ball attached to a long piece of ribbon. We talked about how my hand was Saturn and the ball was a piece of dust or ice like what surrounds Saturn. I swung the ribbon and ball around and around. We talked about how when it goes quickly it looks like one continual ring around my hand, but that it’s actually not just like Saturn’s rings. Saturn’s rings are so far away from us they look like continual rings but they are actually just bits of ice and dust that surround the planet. 

Now, I believe I truly saved the best for last for them on Thursday. Since we had been talking about Japan, I decided to try to teach myself origami last week so that we could make a couple Japanese characters together in class and it was a success! We talked about what origami was and how it originated in Japan as well as different characters that were created in Japan. We then spent the rest of our day making Pikachu and Hello Kitty using origami. I hope they showed them to you, because they came out so cute! 

We ended our day with our usual pack up routine and went home! Whew! We had a busy week!

Reminders:

Bring reader to coop on Tuesday

Send math test 6 in on Thursday

March 28: Easter Party (please remember to send in 10 eggs)

March 29: Good Friday- no school

                 Deadline to purchase and complete personalized pages for the yearbook

April 1: no school work

Please read below for a note from Ms. Koh:

I am deeply grateful for your generous gifts, delicious foods and treats, and warm-hearted gestures and cards during Teacher Appreciation day. Your support and kindness mean a lot to me!

With heartfelt thanks,

Ji Koh

It was another great week in first grade! Our new “class birds” Tuft and Truffle have arrived and they were a big hit. (If you haven’t asked your child about our monthly birds, do so! They love them so much!) I hope you all are having a wonderful spring break so far! Here’s how our week went!

We started Tuesday off with our morning work which was a color by addition page. We then did our morning devotion on loving and being a part of a family just like the gorillas take care of their own. We also did our calendar time and pledge. 

We then moved on to our new Lightning Literature book which was Best Friends for Frances. This book prompted good discussions on how we treat other people and how we don’t retaliate just because someone is unkind to us. We talked about the Biblical principal of “turning the other cheek” and the importance of asking for forgiveness. We then completed the day one questions and learned about possessive pronouns. We also talked a little bit about the differences in different styles of writing and when we use them. 

After morning snack and recess, we completed Spelling Lesson 25A before we moved onto to our centers. For our all about reading center this week, we studied and looked at a couple different poems. On Tuesday, I printed off a poem called Spring Showers. We read the poem and then discussed different elements of this particular poem. We found the rhyming words in the poem and also came up with other words that would rhyme with the words found in the poem. We then also talked about stanzas and what they are in poems and how each poem can look a little different. I then reread the poem and had them draw a picture of what they saw in their mind when they heard it. It was interesting to see how they all heard the same poem but got something different out of it. Another one of our centers was our file folder games. We had four new ones this week they were able to choose from. One was cuckoo clocks where they had to match the correct time to the clock, another was practicing counting from 100-160, one was matching blends to the correct pictures, and the last was identifying beginning sounds and completing kites that all began with the same sound. We also worked in centers on our math facts by doing addition wrap ups. These are a fun and easy way for them to practice their math facts. Our last center was our writing center. On Tuesday, I had them use their math skills and draw a picture completely out of shapes and then list what shapes they used to draw their picture. 

After lunch and recess, we completed our math pages 69-70 on making halves and quarters. They did very well with this and did a great job at comparing which was more or less. For the sake of time, we skipped our ninja facts, but we did them again on Thursday.

After math, we learned all kinds of interesting facts about Jupiter. We learned about the moons that Galileo discovered, the red storm that has been going on for years and more! We then completed our Jupiter page in our solar system fact booklet.

To wrap up our day, we read some pages from a book called “Here and There.” It’s a book that talks about how life here may be very different from life in other places. We specifically focused on how life might be in various countries in Asia. We talked about the differences in traveling to school, shopping at grocery stores, and the kinds of food we eat!

We did our usual pack up routine and went home!

On Thursday, we started off with helping “leprechauns” learn to write correctly. They got to pretend to be the teacher and had to edit the sentences of the leprechauns by rewriting the sentences adding capital letters and punctuation. 

We then did our morning devotion, calendar and pledge time. For Lightning Literature, we reread “Best Friends for Frances” and did our day 3 questions and story components. We then worked on our summary of the story together. We also completed Spelling Lesson 25C.

After morning snack and recess, we did our centers. Our file folder games were the same as Tuesday; they just worked on the ones they hadn’t done on Tuesday. For AAR, we looked at the poem “In the Backpack” and found rhyming words. We also discussed stanzas again and talked about the differences between complete sentences and fragments and found examples of both in the poem. We talked about how fragments can be pretty common in poems. In our writing center, we celebrated the fact that it was National Cereal Day! I had them design their own kind of cereal by drawing a picture of their cereal box and naming their cereal. They then had to write me a description of their cereal. We are going to have a contest when we get back on the most creative/most delicious sounding cereal. For our last center, we worked on counting syllables and on some “leprechaun fact families”. 

After lunch and recess, I had to head to second grade to teach (we were short on teachers) while Ms. Koh came in and taught them a fantastic lesson all about South Korea! She had brought in clothes, fans, and all kinds of things for them to look at. She taught them how to write their name in Korean and how to say thank you. I was so sad to miss it, but I know the class loved it!

Once I came back, we did our ninja facts and our math lesson on measuring using shoes and other objects. They thought it was funny that we used Olivia’s and Mrs Litton’s shoes to measure items around the classroom (and that I had to walk around without shoes on!) 

After math, we had a quick science experiment. We used milk, red and yellow food dye and dish soap (Thanks Kelly Westbrook for sending in the soap!) to create a “red storm” just like on Jupiter. They loved when the dish soap broke the surface tension of the milk and caused the color to scatter. We did the experiment three times until I ran out of milk. 

We ended our day with reading chapter 4 of The Two Trails: A Treasure Tree book. We hadn’t had a chance to read much recently, so they were excited to get to read it again. We ended with our normal pack up routine! 

Reminders:

Please remember to bring all books and Lightning Lit pages to class. We are spending quite a bit of class time making copies. It happens to the best of us from time to time, but please if you have a chance check before you leave the house that you have everything.

Easter Party is March 28.

Good Friday- no school work on March 29

Easter Monday- no school work on April 1

Well another month has come and gone just like that! I feel like the time is just flying by here in first grade! Here’s a look into what we did this week.

On Tuesday, we started off the day with a find the differences in the winter scene for morning work. We then did our morning devotion on not being angry like a hippo, our calendar time, and our pledge. We also went ahead and did spelling lesson 24A before visiting the wax museum. We then spent some time visiting the third grade wax museum! They enjoyed walking around and visiting the different historical figures. 

We came back and did lightning literature. We read a really fun book called “Bill and Pete to the Rescue”. We did our day one questions and learned how to place commas after the greeting in a letter and to put it at our closing before our signature. We also practiced writing a letter to Ms. Koh on the board using these same skills as well as adding a postscript to the end of our letter. 

After morning snack and recess, we did our centers. For centers today, we had a choose the correct punctuation page and free reading. We also did a create and write your own subtraction word problem for our writing center. We also explored and played with pattern shape blocks by replicating the pictures they had in the kit. And lastly, we had our All About Reading Center where we read our story for the week “Under the Carpet”. They also had a blast coming up with different ideas of items they would like to find under the rug instead at the end. We had such creative ideas from baby siblings to time machines! 

After lunch and recess, we started with our math ninja. Please continue to work on math facts at home. If you’ve noticed your child has been on the same ninja quiz without advancing, work on those facts with them at home. It could be flash cards, math wrap-ups, online games, but continue as you are able to work on addition facts so they have these memorized for second grade. We then worked on pages 63-64 and practiced drawing shapes. Most of them had never used a ruler to draw straight lines, so this was good practice for them! 

After math, we watched a short video about India and learning all kinds of interesting facts such as India was the first to invent flushing toilets! That caused quite the eruption of laughter! I then had them practice their “letter writing” skills and write a 1-2 sentence postcard stating something they learned about India. We also added a luggage sticker to our suitcases and an India stamp in our passport. 

For science, we read some interesting facts about asteroids and meteors and learned there are over 970,000 meteors and 3,000 of them are so big they have names!

We ended our day with some sight word bingo, and our pack up routine! 

On Thursday, we had another busy day for leap day! We started off during morning work where they had to figure out how old they would be on the next leap year and draw a picture of what they think they will look like in four years. I got a real kick out of this. We had some girls think their hair will turn brown and a couple boys thought they might have beards by then! It was honestly adorable. After our morning devotion about being helpful like a meerkat, we went to another history fair! This time we had two classes to visit! They enjoyed going around and listening about all the places in Tennessee they could visit. 

When we came back we reread our book for the week for lightning lit, did our day 3 questions and wrote our summary. We did do the alphabet page as well, we just had to squeeze that in after lunch. 

After morning snack and recess, we did our spelling lesson 24C before doing centers. We continued working with pattern blocks for one of our centers. For our writing center since it was leap day, I had them finish the prompt “if I were a frog for a day I would….”and also draw a picture to go along with it. For our third center, I had them make leap day headbands with some help from Ms. Koh. And lastly, our last center was working on the second job of silent e. We talked all about how e can cause g to say its soft sound. We practiced reading words that had the soft g sound and then each group played a few rounds of hangman where I chose words from the word cards that they had to guess. 

After centers, I passed out smelly stickers for doing a great job and we had some friends fill up their charts for the first time and the rest of the class is very close to filling theirs! They were so excited to hear what the prizes were! Here is the list of prizes they get to choose between for doing a great job at centers:

Bringing a show and tell item

Trip to Treasure Box

Choose your class job the following school day

Have one of our special “class birds” sit with you for an hour

Eat lunch with me at my desk

Choose the next class brain break

After lunch and recess, we finished our alphabet page for lightning lit and then did our ninja facts. We also did pages 66-67 in our math workbook. This took quite a bit of time and so we didn’t finish all of page 67. If you would like to squeeze the rest in with them on Monday since they just have 68 to do that day, please feel free to do that. This was a hard lesson to do in class, because they needed a lot of help with using the ruler and making the patterns, but we powered through! 

After math, we did a fun science craft! We decided to change it up from our usual science experiment, and create our own shooting stars. We talked about how shooting stars we see are not actually stars, but are asteroids that have come into our atmosphere and are now called meteors. Our craft illustrated the look of what we are actually seeing versus the star shape. They enjoyed getting to work with the oil pastels and make this project their own. 

Because of the history fair, we didn’t do social studies today nor did we have time, but we will pick back up with studying Asia next week! We did our usual pack up routine and went home!

Reminders:

March 10-16 Spring Break!

Progress Reports will go home March 7

We had another busy, fun week in first grade! Here is everything we did!

We started Tuesday with finishing up our Spain booklet for our suitcases. We then did our devotion, calendar time and pledge before Lightning Lit.

For Lightning Lit, we read our new book for the week, “The Story about Ping”. We did day 1 questions, practiced working with contractions and then brainstormed several ways we can make sure we don’t get separated from our families when we are out. They came up with very good ideas and then we turned our ideas into sentences. We then did our spelling Lesson 22A.

After snack and recess, we did centers. We had our usual AAR center, where we worked on reading “Dragon in our Wagon” from our reader. We worked on some self to text connections by asking questions prior to the reading and then did some comprehension questions at the end. We also looked for examples of alliteration in the text. Our second center was a writing center where they worked on writing a friendly letter for Valentine’s Day for you moms! Check their folder if you haven’t already received your letter from your child. Our third center was just for fun, and I let them use dot markers to color in some Valentine’s pictures. Our last center was two valentine games. One was working in pairs to match words with their corresponding contractions and the other was sorting sentences into “telling” sentences and “asking” sentences.

After lunch and afternoon recess, we did our ninja math fact sheets. They love doing these and want to make sure every day that I won’t forget to do them. Please make sure you are working on math facts at home to help your child excel and continue working towards their black belt. We then worked with our clocks to help us understand our hour and minute hands and how to tell time to the half hour and to the five minute. They were all given small clocks to use to show me different times as well to practice elapsed time. 

For social studies, we watched a very short professor propellor video that gave us a few quick facts about France. We then read the book Escargot, which is about a cute little French snail who taught us a few French words. 

For science, we began learning about the moon. We read some facts from one of our library books, discussed the moon phases and then worked on our moon page in our solar system booklet.

We then did our pack up routine and went home!

On Thursday, we started with a fun Valentine i-spy page for morning work. We did our usual morning routine of devotion time from our Big Book of Five Minute Devotions, calendar and our pledge. We also started off our day by reading “Love, Escargot” a Valentine sequel to the book we read on Tuesday. They have all fallen in love with Escargot so hopefully we can get the last couple of books to read soon!

We then did our Lightning Lit by rereading “The Story about Ping”, answering day 3 questions and talking about the different story components. We also wrote our summary for the book. We also did our spelling lesson 23C.

After morning snack and recess, we switched things up. Since we were having our party in the afternoon, we didn’t have time to do our centers, so we did All About Reading whole class. We discussed the “hard” and “soft” sounds of the letter c and practiced reading different words I wrote on the board. We then played hangman where I wrote different words with “soft” c on the board and they took turns guessing letters and coming up with the word. They loved this so we will definitely be playing this again sometime. We then did our science “experiment” for this week. We used Oreo cookies to make the different phases of the moon. I split them up into their table groups to complete each phase. I had a “cheat sheet” of what they should look like on the board and had them copy it with their Oreos and put it on the right phase on their sheet. We had a great time with this! After they were all done, I gave them an Oreo to enjoy for a job well done! 

After lunch and recess, we did our math ninjas again. We had some friends earn their first belt, the white belt! It was so sweet to see them cheering each other on and encouraging those who didn’t quite make it. They really are such a sweet class. After our ninja facts, we worked on time order in our math books. They did a great job with this. The yesterday, today and tomorrow sequencing section was a little confusing for some, so if you have extra time to work on that with your child at home, they would most likely benefit from that. 

After math, it was time for our Valentine party! Thank you to Leslie and Elizabeth for planning a fun party! The kids had a great time playing games, decorating bags, passing out their cards, eating their snack, and listening to books. It was a great way to wrap up our day!

Reminders:

I will be out of town next week on a cruise. Mrs. Montgomery is scheduled to be the sub in for me next week. I won’t have access to the internet after Monday, so if you need something, please let someone in the office know and they can assist. Since I won’t have access to the internet, a weekly newsletter won’t go out next Friday.

Please remember to send in their math test on Thursday, February 22.

I hope you all have a great week, and I will see your kids on the 27th!

It’s been another fun week in first grade! Here’s a glimpse into our week and some reminders.

We started off Tuesday with our morning work, which was working on adding passport stamps and luggage stickers for our trip to UK, and writing a “postcard” with a fact they remembered about the UK. We then had our morning devotion about being patient like a sloth.

After our morning circle, we read our book this week for Lightning Lit called “Chester’s Way” and discussed day one questions. We then completed our grammar page and talked about pronouns and why we use them in place of nouns. Lastly for Lightning Lit, I had them work on a character sheet where we came up with “verbs” and “adjectives” to brainstorm for our writing prompt at home this week which was to write a character sketch about Victor.

After morning snack and recess, we did our spelling lesson 21A and centers. Our centers were rereading “A Storm in the North” and discussing some comprehension questions as well as picking out a vocabulary word. We focused on the word brisk and I had them guess its meaning and then we talked about it and gave examples of that word in different sentences. Another center was identifying pronouns from nouns and coloring the apples that had pronouns listed. We also had a writing center about pretending you were an animal that woke up from hibernation. Our last center was our file folder games where we worked on three different skills this week: identifying and reading different blends was two of them and the last was practicing adding ten to different numbers to make a touchdown. 

After lunch and recess, we began our first ninja challenge. They all did so well with this! They were excited to try it and I let them know this isn’t a competition between friends. It’s just a way for you to challenge yourself and see how you improve on your math facts. After that, we completed pages 28-29 in our workbook and worked on subtracting more than one number. 

Next, we moved on to discussing Venus. We read facts from some of our library books and then worked on our Venus page in our solar system booklet. After science, we moved onto our country for this week which was Spain. I showed them various pictures of places I had been and we learned all about Christopher Columbus. I love how excited they get when they learn new historical facts. They were all enamored with the idea that people once thought the Earth was flat. We then started working on a little booklet about Spain that had activities and facts inside. After social studies, we did our usual packing up routine and went home!

On Thursday, we started off our morning by doing a Spain wordsearch in our Spain booklet. We then did our devotion, calendar and pledge before diving into Lightning Lit. We reread Chester’s Way, discussed the story components, day 3 questions, wrote our summary and did our alphabet page on holidays. We also worked on a Venn diagram on the board where we compared and contrasted Chester and Wilson with Lilly and how they were different and the same. We then used that same skill to complete a Venn Diagram during centers later. Before snack, we also did Spelling Lesson 21C. 

After snack and recess, we did our centers. One of our centers for Thursday was rotating through the file folders games they didn’t complete on Tuesday. We also did a writing center where I had them each create their own addition word problem. I haven’t gotten to look at them all yet, but I was impressed with the few I did get to read! I also gave them a Venn diagram where they had to compare and contrast themselves with a friend saying what was different about each of them and what was the same. And lastly, we worked on the third sound of u where we worked on reading different words and phrases from the fluency pages and we also discussed the new “leap words” for this week. We also revisited the word brisk and I had them come up with a sentence using the word. 

After snack and recess, we worked again on our ninja facts before taking our math test. I checked them all and they are either in their books or in their folders. After they completed their test, they worked on a counting by 2s sheet. 

And finally, we ended our day with a party! Thank you to Francesca Harker for coming to help me with the party! We had paella and I showed them pictures of paella from Spain and we also had croissants courtesy of Costco to represent France and some punch with fruit in it. The kid-friendly Sangria punch was a big hit! After they had their fill, we read a book about the La Tomatina festival that takes place in Valencia, Spain every year. We then had our own “La Tomatina” festival. They were divided into two teams and given tomato splat balls to throw. Ms. Koh had graciously drawn pictures of three children’s faces and we put those on the board. They were each given two shots to hit the targets. If they hit the target, they were given a point. We played this game twice. We may have to play again next week if we have time. They loved it! Lastly, we created our own Eiffel towers using card stock and glue. We had a great week and I’m looking forward to next week!

Reminders:

-Valentine’s Day Party on February 15

-Send AAR reader to school on Tuesday.

-Please remember no nuts or nut products of any kind in class. We are a peanut and tree nut free class due to the severity of an allergy on red day.

-I will be out of town on vacation February 20 & 22. There will be a sub in the class on those days. 

Let me know if you all need anything and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

It was another fun week in first grade and finally we were able to play outside! Here’s what we learned this week! (Scroll down to the bottom for reminders!)

On Tuesday, after morning work we read from our “Big Book of Five Minute Devotions” where we talked about how horses have to be trained and just like horses, God uses our parents and grown ups in our life to train us and how important it is to obey. We then did our calendar time and moved on to Lightning Lit.

We read our book of the week, Stellaluna, discussed all day 1 questions and did day one Grammar where we learned when to put question marks at the end of a sentence. I also modeled for them how to brainstorm three things we could do if we could fly and then turned that brainstorm into sentences with their help. We decided we could fly to Disney World and do rolls and flips on our way there! We also completed Spelling Lesson 20A working on four letter words with blends again. 

After morning snack and recess, we had our center time which seems to be a big hit each day! Our first center was our AAR lesson where we practiced sorting pictures that had the -ar sound and the -or sound and then trying to spell one word that had each of those sounds. They did well with this! For our writing center, they drew a picture of something they wish for and wrote me a sentence about their picture. Our third center was a Stellaluna sequencing activity where they had to cut out sentences and glue the story of Stellaluna in order. Our last center was file folder games where they completed the games they hadn’t finished the previous week.

After lunch and recess, we completed math pages 21-22 on the fact families that equal 9. I am impressed with how well they are doing with their fact families.

For social studies, we watched Part 2 of Professor Propeller in the UK where we learned all about the types of animals in UK, their weather, and the sports they play there. 

To wrap up the day, we talked about the first planet in our solar system, Mercury. They are working on a little solar system fact book so we completed the Sun and Mercury pages and learned some fun facts about Mercury like it doesn’t have an atmosphere and it takes 88 Earth days for Mercury to go around the sun. 

After that, we packed up, read chapter 2 of the Treasure Tree and went home!

On Thursday, we had quite a fun day! It was both the 100th day of school and we celebrated Groundhog Day!

For morning work, I gave them 100th day secret messages they had to decode which they enjoyed! 

The rest of our morning was jam packed because I had a lot of extra fun activities I wanted to do with them. We started with our devotion about how we are gentle and kind to others just like we have to be gentle with kittens when they are little because we don’t want to hurt them. We worked on our calendar skills, said our pledge and moved to a Groundhog Day prediction activity.

I love Groundhog Day; it’s always been a fun little bright spot in my dads and my life, so I decided to bring the fun to first grade. I had them each vote on whether or not they thought the groundhog would see his shadow for six more weeks of winter or if it was going to be an early spring. We had 9 votes that no he wouldn’t see his shadow and 6 thought that there would be six more weeks of winter. We used this activity to work on our tally mark skills as well as work on creating a bar graph of our answers. We even turned our work into a subtraction problem by seeing how many more voted no than yes. 

We then reread Stellaluna, discussed day 3 questions and story components. We then worked on our summary and on our alphabet page which was to name things that fly. We go through each letter on the board, but I only make them write down their favorite 5 in case you’re wondering why the page doesn’t always appear filled out. It takes them a long time to write them down and some want to, which is great, but for others, they just like to participate and I’d rather them focus on coming up with words than having to write everything down. 

For snack, we ate our 100th day graham cracker and cookies before playing outside! 

For centers, most of them were Groundhog Day or 100th day themed! For our writing center, I had them draw a picture and write me a sentence on what they would do if they had $100. Their answers were so fun and creative! Instead of file folder games, we played “roll and color a groundhog” where they rolled a dice to color in a certain portion of their groundhog. The first to color their whole groundhog won! Our third center was a 100 chart that contained a secret picture which was fitting for the 100th day. The picture revealed the Union Jack flag of Great Britain which tied in great for our UK week. Our last center was working on brainstorming different kinds of winter animals and their attributes and habitats in preparation for the next story in their reader. 

In the afternoon, we worked on Spelling 20C and we completed pages 24-25 of our math, working on fact families that equal 10. They got to come to the board to write some of the facts and I have learned that they love getting to play “teacher” and write on the board. We completed the first page together and then they did 25 on their own and I or Ms. Koh came around and checked their work. 

Our science experiment this week was different from the one the book suggested. I really wanted to focus on the fact that Mercury does not have an atmosphere. I brought in a towel and a hair dryer. We took turns and I covered one of their arms with a towel (Earth) and left one of their arms bare (Mercury). I used the hair dryer on each arm and had them think about which arm was hotter. We talked about how Mercury was hotter because it didn’t have an atmosphere to protect it from the sun’s (the hair dryer) heat. 

To wrap up the day, we talked about the Buckingham Palace and the London guards. We then made a super cute London guard. It was a fun way to end our time visiting the UK! Next week we are off to Spain! 

Reminders:

Send your reader in Tuesday and math test 4 on Thursday. Don’t worry about sending in the fluency pages. We will still cover some of the words but we don’t need the pages to do it. 

Our European experience has been moved from next Tuesday the 13th to this coming week Thursday the 8th. 

We will be starting Ninja facts this week at school. This is for them to start committing their addition facts to memory. I will give them between 60-70 seconds to complete as many on the sheet as they can. It’s a small sheet with between 15-20 problems on it. They will start with +0 facts (then it moves to +1, +2, etc) Once they are able to complete a sheet without missing any they will move on to the next one. If they are unable, they will do that one again the next school day, so they will all move along at different paces earning their “ninja belts”. Please practice working on math facts at home. This will help them be successful as they need to know their addition facts before second grade. Each day they will bring home the one they worked on that day, so you can see their progress. Please let me know if you have any questions. 

We had a great week in first grade! Here’s what we did! (Scroll to the bottom for reminders)

We started by doing morning work by finishing up their social studies suitcases or passports for our social studies adventures and a bossy -er word search.

After we were done with those, we started our new morning devotional book called My Big Book of 5-Minute Devotions: Celebrating God’s World. On Tuesday, we talked about how just like working dogs, we also have a time to work and a time to play. We also did our calendar time and have been working on learning our days of the week in Spanish too!

We then moved on to Lightning Lit where we read our book for the week Make Way for Ducklings. We did our discussion questions together and then we did our poem presentations. They all did very well presenting and were also great audience members for their friends who were presenting. 

We also completed our spelling lesson 19A before morning snack and I’m so impressed with how well they are doing with their four letter words with consonant blends. 

After morning snack, we had a short mini lesson on the pirate letters -ar and how the r makes a slightly different bossy r sound. They all loved the pirate anchor chart Ms. Koh made for our lesson. We brainstormed words that have this sound and they came up with some great ones! We did more with this during small group center time as well.

After our short mini lesson, we did centers. One center for Tuesday was a writing center where I had them brainstorm one way they can stay safe. This was to tie in the book for Lightning Lit and the composition they are completing at home this week. Another center was our AAR small groups where we worked more on sounding out words with -ar and also how to divide large words into syllables to make them easier to read. Our third center was file folder games where we had a variety of games that helped with place value, skip counting, identifying short vowel sounds, and identifying missing beginning and ending sounds. Our last center was coloring the flag of Italy and then free reading when they completed. They all did great with centers and are highly motivated to do these to earn their smelly sticker at the end of center time! 

On Tuesday afternoon, we worked on our math pages 12-14 together and worked on fact families for 6. Since we had three pages to do we took a fun brain break in the middle to get our wiggles out. They did a great job working hard and I promised the rest of the day would be fun activities after we finished math! 

For the last bit of the afternoon we did science and social studies. Because we didn’t have school last week and didn’t get to do our solar system introduction activity, we went ahead and did our solar system scavenger hunt. I had planets hid around the classroom, and I broke the students into pairs and they went around together with their clipboards and a list of planets to check off. After everyone had found them all, we gathered on the floor to talk about each planet and a few facts about each one. 

For social studies, we continued our time in Italy with two activities. I put on some fun music and we had our “Milan fashion show” and they had a great time with this. It was a fun little brain break and a fun way to wind down the day. Our second activity which brought about a lot of giggles was our Michelangelo drawings. I showed them a few pictures of the Sistine Chapel and we discussed how he had to lay on his back day after day for years to complete it. We then made our own Michelangelo drawings under our tables. There was much giggling and smiling during this whole activity.

We then did our pack up routine and went home!

On Thursday, we completed an Italy page for morning work. They were given a postcard to write a sentence to someone about something they saw in Italy. They also were given a luggage sticker and a passport stamp to color and cut out to put on their “suitcase” and “passport.” 

For our morning meeting, we did another devotional. This one was about how people judge pigs as lazy and unclean when actually that isn’t true. We then talked about how we shouldn’t say unkind things about others. We did our calendar time and then we took a little field trip to Ms. Dawn’s class for a fun science experiment. Since the one in the book required sun and heat which we had none, Ms. Dawn took two thermometers and put one in the classroom and one inside Jupiter (her lizards) tank under the light. We went in and made guesses on which would be hotter and made guesses on how hot we thought the one inside the tank would be. 

For Lighting Literature we reread Make Way for Ducklings and then answered the discussion questions for day 3. We then wrote a 3 sentence summary and completed the day 2 grammar page on adding commas to lists. They did especially well adding commas and really understood this concept overall. 

After morning snack, we changed things up a little bit. We did lesson 19C for spelling and then instead of centers, we went back to Ms. Dawn’s room to check on the thermometers. We learned that the one inside Jupiter’s cage was much hotter and it had gotten to 80 degrees. Back in our classroom we talked about why that is and how direct sunlight is much warmer and how the sun gives off heat. We used the snow melting for example and how the spots in direct light melt faster than those in the shade. 

We then continued our travels to the United Kingdom and watched a Professor Propeller video all about the UK. They learned about Big Ben, the Crown Jewels, how many countries make up the UK, the flag, and more! They loved the video and begged to watch part 2 but I told them they had to wait until Tuesday.

After lunch and recess, we did centers. In our first center, we worked together on reading Mrs. Marvel’s Garden where I’m teaching them how to whisper read while I go around and listen to everyone and help where needed. We also worked on some comprehension questions from the story. Another center was building a garden to tie in with AAR where we used flower garden building toys to create a garden like in our AAR story. Our third center was writing where I had them create their own “warning sign” for danger and write one sentence about it. I said this could be silly or a sign you have actually seen before. Our last center was file folder games where they completed the games they hadn’t done from Tuesday.

To finish up the day, Ms. Koh did math with them while I went downstairs for the rising fifth grade parent meeting. Ms. Koh said they did very well! 

We did our pack up routine and then we got to read the first chapter in the second Treasure Tree book, The Two Trails! They have been asking me every day when we were going to start, and so when I pulled it out there was much excitement! 

Reminders:

Please remember no nuts in the classroom. We don’t have an allergy in our class but because of red day, we can’t have them in our classroom.

Next week is the 100th day and while we aren’t having a party, I will be bringing them a snack on Thursday and doing a couple activities with them as well as doing some Groundhog Day activities. Please let me know if you have any concerns regarding the snack.

Don’t worry about sending in the AAR pages this week. I’ll cover the concepts doing something different and I’d rather you all not lose any pieces.