April 20 - 24

This week at recess first graders had some problems playing games that involved chasing, catching, picking up wood chips, and getting too rough, (especially when children feel frustrated during chases). We discussed why those types of games are not safe, and brainstormed alternative game options. Please help your child think of more safe games that he/she can play at recess, and encourage him/her to play with a variety of people so that no one feels left out. Thanks for your support with this important part of your child's social development.


 Seneca's Mom, Cindy, came in on Monday and Tuesday afternoons to teach the class a song she wrote when she was hiking the Grand Canyon several years ago and noticed the many fossils in the canyon walls.  It goes to the tune of the famous aria "La Donna e Mobile" and is about a cephalopod fossil.   I have posted the lyrics in a separate post here.  

She also gave us some dance lessons to help the students be more aware of the three dimensional shapes they can make with their bodies, and to begin to visualize the fossilization process.  We will continue with one more visit from her next Monday afternoon!

 

We have some amazing poets in our class who have enjoyed experimenting with many different types of poems.  We will choose some poems to make into a class book at the end of the month and I will encourage them to record themselves reading their writing aloud on here.

It's very important that first graders recognize which numbers can be added together to make ten (0+10, 1+9, etc).  We made up some stories about these useful pairs of numbers and began recording them on our Math Problem Solving Voicethread !

We began studying the words: friend, she, our, under, air  I recently discovered the website www.spellingcity.com  that provides spelling and sight word games, practice and quizzes that you can personalize with whatever words your child is working on.  

For Earth Day (April 22) we read Miss Rumphius and talked about ways we can take care of our planet and make the world even more beautiful.   Students then made Earth-shaped books where they wrote and illustrated their ideas.  These are on display in our hall and will come home in a few weeks.  We also started some lupine and other butterfly-friendly flowers in peat moss pellets!  We will watch them grow and eventually students will get to take some home and will plant the rest around our school to both support the local ecosystem and to make it more beautiful.

 

In math we worked on making change, or how much money you get back when you pay for something.  This is challenging for students as it involves both coin values and two-digit subtraction.  We also introduced the idea of fractions by talking about ways to divide up crackers fairly between people.  Students cut up rectangular paper “crackers” in different ways and practiced dividing up groups of manipulatives in different ways.  You can support this by using fractions in your everyday vocabulary, for example, when dividing up food between four members of the family you can say that everyone gets one fourth of the total.

Finally, I’m very excited to have two new tools in our classroom:  

SMARTboard and ThinkBlocks.  We will be sharing them with other teachers at our school, but they will primarily be in our classroom.