Penguins Penguins!

You have probably heard all about our week with our class visitor, an emperor penguin.  He arrived in our classroom in a box from Antarctica.  We spent the week learning all about our penguin and his needs to survive here at Washington school.  We even made a plan as to how we would create a room with all of its needs if we were to keep our penguin here at school.  In the end, we decided that it would be best to send our penguin home to his natural habitat, Antarctica.  It was much fun for the kids to learn all about penguins and integrate penguin activities throughout our day of reading, writing, and math.

Mrs. Block discusses the needs of our penguin with the students.

What will we do with this penguin!?

Our penguin arrived!

This week has been a busy one.  Here's our quick recap:

Reading:  This week we have been reading an African Folk Tale called Too Much Talk.  It was fun to practice reading it with expression in our voices for the different characters that spoke in the story.  We talked this week too about asking the questions who, what, and where?? 
WHO is the main character in the story?
WHAT are they doing in the story?
WHERE are they in the story?
We had the chance to go to the computer lab this week and get on RAZkids.com.  If you have access to the internet at home, this is a great resource to use to have your child practice their on-level reading.  Please let me know if you need your child's login information sent home again.  We practiced "visualizing" when we heard a poem called "The Balloon Man".  The kids came up with some great pictures of their visualizations.

Math:  In math this week, we have worked a lot on number stories.  In those stories we've discussed and compared amounts, figuring out who has more and how much more each time.  We learned that this is the DIFFERENCE between the numbers.  We're also comparing numbers using our symbols >,<,=. 
We continue to practice our math facts each day.  This week each day we also practiced putting data into bar graphs and discussing the information we found in the completed graphs.

Language Arts:  We completed another big writing activity this week.  We wrote a fact piece about penguins.  The kids made an idea web and listed 6 facts they learned about penguins.  We came up with a topic sentence, wrote the six facts, and ended our story with a concluding sentence.  They did wonderful writing!!  We are really starting to remember those capitals at the beginning of sentences and periods at the end. 

I really enjoyed meeting with all of you last week during conferences.  It's so nice to share how well your children are doing and all the wonderful gains they are making.  Thanks for all the support at home!

Mrs. Halon

Responsible first graders:)

First graders have been talking a lot about responsibility this week at school.  As first graders we stress that they are responsible each day for bringing their Washington "take home" folder to school.  This is an important communcation tool between school and home.  Please remember to empty those folders each night and look through the work your child is doing. 

Also, many of our students are participating in the RAH (Reading At Home) program.  It is also important to bring those book baggies back and forth to school each day to get new books to read each night.  Keep reading each night at home!  It sure does make a difference in the progress these kids are making!

This week at a glance:

READING/LANGUAGE

We have talked about main idea and details this week.  We've worked on the phonics sound "ar" and have discovered "ar" in MANY words we read!  Ask your child what it means to VISUALIZE.  We worked on this skill this week to help us put a "picture" in our head of what we are reading.  This is a good comprehension strategy.
We've continued talking about nouns this week, focusing on people and things.

WRITING:

We completed our first big writing project this week which included brainstorming ideas, webbing our ideas, writing our story including a topic sentence and details, and illustrating our story.  We can't wait to show you this work at conference time!  What great authors and illustrators we have in our class!!

MATH:

We began Unit 5 this week in math.  The skill we focused in on this week has been place value.  We've worked with base 10 blocks, did some fun activities on the smartboard to practice place value and even learned how to write numbers in expanded form.  ex:  the number 156 can also be written as 100 + 50 + 6.
Have your child write numbers and ask them ..Which digit is in the ones place?  The tens place?  The hundred's place?

We've had a super busy week but these kids are focused and soaking it up like sponges!  I LOVE IT!  I'm looking forward to seeing you all next week at conferences.

Mrs. Halon

We're having "Snow" much fun!

What a week!  We have been busy getting back into our routine with our first full week of school since break.  Here's a quick recap of some of the things we've been learning...

Reading/Language Arts:

This week in reading we have been reading a class story about dinosaurs called Catch me if you Can by Bernard Most.  It is a fiction story and the kids have loved using great expression in their voices as they read aloud, using their "dinosaur" voices.  We read another story by Bernard Most titled If Dinosaurs Came Back.  This was a fun and silly story to read!  Then, we wrote a story about what we think it would be like if dinosaurs came back. 

Nouns Galore!  We have been recognizing nouns everywhere!  We have talked about how NOUNS name people, places, things, and animals.  The kids have been sorting nouns, finding nouns in our texts, and naming nouns we see around us. 

"CH"  has been the phonics sound of the week!  You've seen it in the spelling words and we've been practicing words with the CH and TCH chunk all week.  We've heard songs, worked through "ch" activities on the smartboard, and have practiced writing words with "ch". 

Math:

We have finished up Unit 4 in math this week.  We learned about tape measures and even had the opportunity to use tape measures to measure things with a partner.  The students have also been working a lot with clocks this week, telling time to the hour and half hour.  I have introduced time to the quarter hour as well to them.  Any time you are able to talk about time and look at the clocks at home, it will help reinforce these skills.  We have continued to practice counting combinations of dimes, nickels, and pennies.  The kids are becoming expert money counters!!  We played a fun game on the smartboard that helped us practice counting money this week.  Here is the link to the game if you are interested in trying it at home.

http://www.mathnook.com/math/countingmoneybas.html


GERMS GERMS GERMS! 
We had fun learning all about germs this week and even made a fun little booklet together that taught us about staying healthy and keeping germs away.  During this wonderful cold and flu season, we are working hard to remember all of those healthy habits. 

It snowed in our room this week!

We read a story titled Snip Snip Snow and snipped a few snowflakes of our own to decorate our classroom.  It was a blast!

Clean up was not nearly as fun:)

Please remember to send in your pink conference note to confirm your conference time if you haven't already.  We are working to get all the conferences scheduled for the end of the month.  I look forward to meeting with you all again and talking about the wonderful things your child is doing.  :)

Have a great week!

Mrs. Halon

Teddybear Sleepover

This last week started off with lots of fun as we entered our classroom and our teddybears and other stuffed animals were gone!!  What kind of adventures did they have over the weekend during their sleepover at school??  Well, we soon found out as the stuffed animals took us on a scavenger hunt through the school to tell us the tale of their adventures!  The hunt ended in the library where we found our bears and other animals!  We enjoyed some teddy grahams as we watched a video slideshow, which captured these wonderful adventures.  Check out the video below.

http://animoto.com/play/uyk3DoqRKpCLSf7QmSwZSQ


The rest of our week consisted of some other fun events as well! We had the opportunity to hear the wonderful Jazz Ensemble from Parker High School.  We also had a whole school assembly to celebrate overall school behavior and all our efforts with PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Strategies).  Each child received a Washington T-shirt with our patriot pledge on the back. 

It was a great week!  I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday break.  See you next year!!

Mrs. Halon

Teddy Bear Sleepover

Congratulations to all the first graders on a wonderful performance in their holiday program!  The kids worked hard on their songs and parts and were very proud.  They should be! 

First graders said goodnight to their teddy bears and other stuffed animals Friday at 3pm.  Our teddy bears have spent the whole weekend at Washington Elementary School and  we can't wait to see them Monday morning!  (shhh...the kids will be in for a fun surprise when they get there Monday)

We had a fun time spending the day Friday with our special stuffed animals.  The animals watched the kids do math and write.  Best of all the animals enjoyed the children reading to them.

In class this week we have enjoyed writing descriptive paragraphs about our stuffed animals as well as other fun holiday writing.

In Math we have begun our unit that focuses on measurement.  We've learned about reading thermometers as well as measuring in inches.  We had the chance to measure some different objects in our desk to see how many inches long they were.  We have been continuing to work on our addition facts daily.

Our focus in reading this week was reality and fantasy.  The children learned that reality is something that could really happen and fantasy is make-believe.  We thought about what was reality or fantasy this week with every read aloud story, guided reading stories, and books in our read to self book bag.
We are looking forward to spending one more day with our stuffed animals at school on Monday! 

Busy Little Elves!

What were we up to last week??  A LOT!  Here's a recap of the events of our classroom:

Reading:  In reading this week we focused on comparing and contrasting.  We read passages each morning and compared and contrasted events in those passages.  Together we even used a Venn Diagram on the smartboard to visualize those events.  During literacy centers this week when the kiddos were not reading with me, Mrs. Kohl, or Mrs. Markestad, they had the opportunity to create little elves and poinsettias that are now decorating our classroom.

Along with our word wall words, we worked on the digraph "SH".  We read stories with "sh" words and searched for and read words that started and ended with "sh".  The kids really enjoyed our class story in our reading book this week titled Where Do Frogs Come From?  In this nonfiction story we learned all about the life cycle of a frog.  We talked about this change, or "metamorphosis".  We are going to continue learning about this topic this next week and do some writing about frogs and read some more books about frogs.  I think we may even compare and contrast frogs and toads. 

Math:  We finished up our third unit in math this week.  Unit 3 assessment will be coming home this week.  Take a look at your child's test.  The cover sheet will help you see the different skills that were assessed and how your child did with each skill.  If there is a particular skill your child had difficulty on, I would be happy to send home some extra practice activities/sheets/ideas to help you continue practicing at home.  Coming up in unit 4, we will be working on measurement.  We will continue practicing our addition facts each day, as well as taking our addition facts check up on Friday.  Last Friday in math we had a great time practicing different math skills in rotating centers.  Here are some of the things we did:


We practiced math facts with a fun penguin game on the Smartboard.

 

It was fun to try out the tangram puzzles!

Money counting is something we
work on everyday.  Money TOP IT
is a favorite game. 



We worked on our number writing!







*Congratulations to Lance, Parker, and Carter who all earned a free gift book this week for reading 20 books in the Reading At Home Program.  Super Reading!!!*

 

We look forward to seeing you at the holiday program Thursday afternoon at 2:00 pm.  The children have been working hard and are excited to perform for you. 

 

Have a great week!

 

Mrs. Halon

 

Kit and Kat projects were a blast!

What a fun and busy week!  I'm sure you all heard about our excitement in our classroom that involved a little furry rodent.  Even with all that excitement, we sure did manage to get a lot accomplished this week.  :)

In reading this week, we focused on sequence.  We read some passages and looked at how stories need to have details in order to make sense.  We spent the week focusing on a story by Tomie DePaola titled Kit and Kat.  It was a story about two cats that go to their grandparent's house for a sleepover.  The problem in the story is that Kit forgets his pajamas.  We sequenced the events in the story, writing about them using words such as first, next, then, and last.  The kids had a great time talking about sleepovers and what they would take on a sleepover.  We created a classroom idea map that lists all our ideas.  Click on the following link to see our classroom popplet!

http://popplet.com/app/#/617087

At the end of the week, we even got the chance to look through magazines and cut out pictures of things we would take on a sleepover.  We glued pictures into our "suitcase" and wrote about the things we would take and learned about how to use commas in a piece of writing when we are listing items.  A few students had the opportunity to share their project with the rest of the class.  They really had a great time with this project and story this week. 

We learned a new concept in math this week called Frames and Arrows Diagrams.  You saw a homelink come home this week that explained it and provided some practice for your child.  We will continue working on frames and arrows diagrams throughout the rest of the year, with both addition and subtraction.  Speaking of addition, please continue to work with your child a few minutes each night on their addition flashcard that were sent home early last week.  We will continue to have fact check-ups every Friday to monitor progress with these basic facts. 

*Congratulations to Sophia, Ayumi, and Breanna who have already read 20 books for the Reading at Home program and have earned a free gift book from me.  Keep reading!!

*The weather has been very unpredictable lately with the temps going up and down!  Please keep an eye on the forecast and dress your child appropriately for the weather.  Thanks!

Have a wonderful week!

Mrs. Halon