Pack Your Bags...

it's time to ride on the Holiday Express! This week we began our around the world of holiday traditions by applying for our passports and getting our luggage packed. Stay tuned for more about our travels!

Scientist of the Week

Another great experiment by a brilliant lovebug! Today our scientist blew up a balloon using a bottle, vinegar and baking soda! Super job of talking us through it step by step! Great job!

Turtle #13

We have an new classroom organism visiting us from the Science Health Resource Center-Turtle #13. He's a pretty cool little guy-though a bit shy. He pretty much only comes out when we feed him every other day. We have set up a "turtle lunch bunch." Each child is part of a group who gets to feed him and do their school work by his cage so they can observe him "action."

Snow Business!!!!

Despite a long Texas history of promised snowfall only to be left high and dry, the weather reports finally came through. It snowed!!!! We had just "suited up" to head out the playground when on our way we noticed snow flurries. We ran out to the courtyard and reveled in our brief snowfall! Ms. Price had her kindergartners join us and upped the volume to her Christmas music CD. To add to the excitement we had magnifying glasses and black paper to capture the snow crystals as they fell. I can't imagine anything more fun than playing tag and tasting snowflakes to rocking Ghristmas music on a December day-a rare and unexpected treat.
We ended the day playing "Melt an Ice Cube" with our 5th Grade Buddies. Each child has an ice cube and depending on the roll of the dice they had to drop it, blow on it, put ten shakes of salt on it, float it in water for 10 seconds, or drop it down their shirt. There were lots of giggles-especially if they had to drop it down their shirt. We had a fabulous day getting "snowed in" and playing with ice!

The Lovebug Mall

In the classroom we have been studying needs and wants as well as goods and services. As a culminating project, the children selected their own good or service to sell to students in a neighboring classroom. They came up with their "business plan" of what to sell, selected a price, created an ad and then ultimately sold their goods. They had so much fun and it was incredibly eye opening to see our economy in action! Some children chose to be sole proprietors while others formed limited business partnerships. Our shops were: yoga classes, nails and "fortune tellers", finger weaving, handmade jewelry, bookmarks, lemonade and cereal, calendars, karate class, crystals and rocks and paper airplanes.
I loved hearing their sales pitches! "You need this bracelet because it is black like your shirt." Our "would you like your crystals washed or dry?" The crystal shop was the first to sell out. The three boys then split the profits. Two of them then used their money to shop at other stores, while a third took their profits and invested it in the paper airplane business at the next table. After a bit of time, our cereal seller decided to go out of business and leave the remaining cereal out for grabs. When he needed money to buy other goods, he then resorted to bartering his cereal for their product. It was a great lesson for everyone involved!

Upside Down Pumpkin Pie!

Our last two days before the Thanksgiving holiday involved a variety of Native American, Pilgrim and turkey centers. We had a special holiday treat of upside down pumpkin pie. (1 tsp of pumpkin, followed by seasoned vanilla pudding, followed by crushed graham cracker on top) Yum-oh!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I can't believe I did not take a single picture of this! Not even before we started! First time ever! Usually I pass that camera off to someone..thank goodness for parents-here is the video of the event-your kids are so cute!

Here is a link to the play video:

http://sharing.theflip.com/session/c48f3d5d6991c18cf0d981aaf364a8e5/video/7415894

A link to the poems:
http://sharing.theflip.com/session/c48f3d5d6991c18cf0d981aaf364a8e5/video/7415947

Our First Field Trip...

was great! Awesome weather, outside all day, fascinating animals, wonderful volunteers...who could ask for more? We went on an organism scavenger hunt and checked out the various habitats. The children enjoyed the petting zoo, and of course the lions and tigers were a big hit. We saw a lion enjoying her lunch right after we ate ours!

Can You Find Your Little Turkey?

Tomorrow we will be putting up our turkey projects, but I thought I would give a sneak preview...they could not stop giggling as I took their photos!

Shared Reading and Reading Aloud

In first grade we engage in a variety of reading opportunities. Shared reading with a big book allows a focused introduction on reading strategies and sight words as well as other skills. The enlarged text allows all of the students to "share" in the reading of the text as well as makes it easier for the teacher to model. These texts are read and reread. The children also read to these stories to the class whenever we have a transition.
Author studies are a focused way for me to direct the read aloud with the children. These stories are used to teach higher level thinking and skills with stories that they are capable of understanding but not necessarily reading independently yet. Our first book study from the author Susan Meddaugh-the Martha series. They are great books that the children love and PBS has even made series out of it. We then did a nonfiction book study on the topic of pumpkins to talk about different purposes in reading and different ways texts can be organized. Now we are enjoying the Strega Nona series by Tomie de Paola.

Needles and Other Living Things

First grade science has a heavy emphasis on organisms. To further enhance this study we check out animals on a rotating basis from the district's Science and Health Resource Center. The day before the animal arrives I give the children clues about our "mystery organism." They have a great time trying to figure it out and have some very good debates about their selections. The organisms stay for two weeks for us to observe them and collect data for ongoing organism chart. Our first organism was "Needles" the hedgehog. (One morning he was particularly active on the wheel much to everyone's delight!)We then followed up with "Tarantula 15" and now have two parakeets whom the children have named as "Blueey and Snowflake."

Rock Solid

We have begun a unit of earth science titled "Pebbles, Sand and Silt." We begin by looking at rocks, their properties, and how they can be sorted. The children examined them with a hand lens, rubbed them together and collected rock dust. With our fifth grade buddies we went out and collected rocks from the school grounds and will now categorize and sort them.

Lovebug Authors

At the end of September we had our first publishing party. Each child selected a piece to revise and publish and then share in our class. We shared our favorite part whole group, then divided into small groups to read our entire pieces. Finally we toasted our great work and had a special snack. Our next party will be with our reading buddies to share our small moments. Eventually we will work up to having parents participate!

Word Work

Word work is one of the children's favorite language arts activities. The kiddo's can use dry erase boards, playdough, wikki sticks, magnetic letters and alphabet stamps to practice word wall words, explore word families and spelling patterns, and apply endings or practice blends. We work on developing word power and making generalizations we can apply to our reading and writing!

Tie Dye!

Our first grade tie dye party was a success! The children loved using all the colors and seeing the vibrant results. We all wore our t-shirts for the first time during Red Ribbon Spirit Week. We will wear them next on our first field trip to the Austin Zoo on November 17th. Thanks to our many wonderful volunteers for setting everything up, twisting shirts, guiding children, cleaning up and washing t-shirts!

Scientist of the Week

We had our first Scientist of the Week demonstration! C. demonstrated the Bernoulli Effect which explains how airplanes fly. He used a ball and air blower. The air blower created low pressure air underneath the ball while the air in the classroom was high pressure keeping the ball from completely flying off. He also demonstrated this principle with running water and a ping pong ball. He then showed us with a diagram how this applied to airplanes. Great job C.!

Happy Halloween

The lovebugs had a blast wearing our costumes all day and celebrating Halloween together. We started the by lighting all of our pumpkins and working by pumpkin light. After lunch, fabulous parent volunteers helped us with Halloween centers: facepainting, toss a ghost, witches brew graphing, spooky hand cookie decorating, spooky bingo and arts and crafts. Later we joined the rest of the school for the Monster Mash!

Joke of the Week

Today I introduced the "joke of the week"-
How do you stop a skunk from smelling?
75% said "I don't know" Then a handful popped up with "kill it!" At that point several more pointed out that wouldn't keep it from smelling because it would rot and decay. Who knew an innocent language arts activity could turn into a science lesson on the circle of life? I love first graders!
P.S. How do you stop a skunk from smelling? Hold his nose...

Welcome to First Grade!

I can't believe our first week together is already over! We have been busy creating our classroom community and getting to know each other. Your children are brilliant and precious and funny and adorable! They have worked super hard this week learning and following rules and procedures as we have launched reader's and writer's workshop. We have giggled over stories, celebrated a birthday and started counting the days in school. We are establishing our math routines such as number of the day, using manipulatives and playing math games together. It's a long week after having so much time off, but our lovebugs did a great job. Here are a few photos of the first week of first grade!

May the Force Be With You...

We have started our study of forces, motion and simple machines. We began by talking about two forces-pushing and pulling. We experimented with those forces by building aluminum foil boats and pushing and pulling them in different ways in the water.

We then explored the force of gravity. We held up our arms and felt how tired they got over time because of gravity. We then made 3-D marble mazes and used gravity to manipulate the marble through the maze. The children were SO creative with ramps, hiding places, scoring areas, traps, etc. I was extremely impressed with them! Now we are going to work with magnetic forces before embarking on the second half of our unit of simple and complex machines after Spring Break...




Have a great week off and may the force be with you....

Scientist of the Week!

Did you know that you can blow up a balloon with vinegar and baking soda? Thanks to our latest scientist, we do! Our scientist did a great job of talking us through her entire experiment. The first time, the balloon did not get a perfect seal and we could hear the air escaping-it was very cool! Our scientist repeated the experiment, and we were so excited to see the balloon get so big. We have enjoyed watching the balloon slowly shrink each day in the science center. Great job!