A few Classroom Happenings -

First Grade Math - We have been working on unknown partners.  (ex. 5 + _ = 8)  We have been working on story problems and writing the correct label.  We have also been working in math centers, such as shut the box, domino games, dice games, folder games, etc.

First Grade Phonics - We are learning about bonus letters.  (f, l, s, and sometimes z) We continue to work daily on letter keyword sounds, tapping, digraphs, handwriting in the correct places, and trick words.

Religion - We read the Gospel story about the king inviting everyone to his son's wedding.  We also touched on the 7 sacraments - most specifically on Reconciliation.  We also learned about the Ten Commandments.  Tomorrow we will read the Gospel story for this weekend and continue to learn about the sacraments.  This week we will focus on Baptism.  We have also been talking about and praying the rosary.

Reading - We work in daily 5 every day.  We have six different reading groups that are all focusing on different things.  I have also been pulling the students individually during daily 5 to do running records.  These past few weeks our word work focus has been nouns.  We started with person, place, or thing, we added common and proper, and this week we focused on singular and plural.

Handwriting - We continue to work out of our handwriting books.  The focus is forming the letters correctly and writing them in the correct spaces.

Science - We have been learning more about pumpkins.  I'm trying to think about STREAM with the pumpkins, since 1 and 2 haven't officially been given a STREAM project yet.  This week we took pumpkin candies and toothpicks and made some creations.  We started out by making a cube.  From there, we had towers and many other creations.  The kids had a blast.  They figured out quickly they needed a strong base and which candies worked best in which places.  Today we worked with real pumpkins.  We did some investigating with our senses.  We had to look at our pumpkin and draw it, decide on the size of it, count how many cubes tall it was, count how many ribs it had, predict if it would sink or float, and then find out if it did sink or float.  Tomorrow we're cutting them open to count how many seeds each pumpkin has.

Writing - We used the writer's workshop writing process to create witch stories this week.  The stories are about a little witch that came to my school and lost her broom.  First they had to make a web.  Then they needed to write a rough draft.  Next we edited the story together.  Then they wrote the final copy.  They also added a witch hat, dress, legs, and shoes to the final copy.  They needed to use the words first, next, then, and finally.


Mrs. Ihlenfeldt has an art update -

In Art we are beginning a review of the basic ART ELEMENTS. I explain these to kids as the ingredients the artist uses (beyond art supplies). The artist creates different images depending how they use the elements. 

     The first art element is LINE. We read a story about a boy named ART, who loves ART. He draws and paints a variety of lines, putting them together to make a house, wagon, tree and a night sky. Some of the lines he uses are, straight horizontal, vertical, diagonal, wavy, zigzag, curves, loops, dashes and my favorite...spirals!

Students were able to identify different types of lines in the story, and create them in our LINE project. We are making a painting of 3 layers of lines. The first layer is white crayon, the second is tissue paper. Now this week, we are painting these lines over the top. Our crayon resist lines will pop out like magic! The goal is to move away from a scribble line, to drawing specific types of lines.

  At the same time, we are practicing our basic painting skills, such as, controlling the amount of water we use, rinsing our brush, and keeping our brush, paints and water clean to keep our colors bright.

      We are still working on our expectations in the art classroom. If students are having a hard time following these expectations, I will be having them practice with me during a recess this week so we get those down pat, and use all class time most effectively.

Have a great night!