Second Week!

We had a successful second week of school! We have been slowly introducing new materials and academics. Here are some of the things we did this week...

First graders shared what type of class they wanted.

We read Rose's Garden By: Peter Reynolds and used it to inspire our hopes for the school year. We shared our hopes and dreams, illustrated them, and began to create our classroom Hopes and Dreams display!

 We opened up the colored pencils!

We revealed the scissors! We practiced holding, carrying, and using the safely. Then we practiced our cutting skills on flowers for our Hopes and Dreams display!

 We used pastels to decorate our Hopes and Dreams flowers. 

We revealed the glue so we could glue our hopes and dreams onto our flowers!

We visited the library and Mrs. Daigle taught us about the METIS organization of the library. 

 We opened the ENTIRE math shelf! We talked about the materials and how to take care of them. Ask your child about his/her favorite material!

We read Chrysanthemum and Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon to inspire our thinking around other people's feelings. We illustrated a time when our feelings were hurt and sorted them together between two categories: "Heart was Hurt" and "Body was Hurt." Then we talked about what we could do if we were about to have our feelings hurt.

 We did a lot this week and have more in store for next week! Remember to keep asking your first grader about their experiences and favorite moments of the day! :)

Social Thinking

We began learning about "Social Thinking." We read You are a Social Detective! to introduce the ideas of "social smarts" and our language of "expected" and "unexpected." We learned that "social smarts" means that we know that people think about us and that we think about them too! We think about what people need, what they want, what they say, and what they do!

We learned that we can make choices that are expected and unexpected. An unexpected choice is something that makes others say "huh?" It might sound like: when the class is talking about a book, someone is thinking about lunch or a video game and interrupts the group to share something off topic. We say that when people do things that are unexpected, others might have "yellow" thoughts. This means they start to feel confused or uncomfortable. "Red" thoughts happen when something unexpected keeps happening or if something is dangerous. "Red" thoughts make us feel really uncomfortable, unsafe, and confused.

An expected choice is something that makes sense. It might sound like: when the class is talking about a book, everyone is talking about the book and thinking about the book. It might look like: when everyone's on the rug and someone is speaking, everyone is facing the speaker and is close to each other, but not touching.

We decided to show our knowledge of expected and unexpected choices by making posters in our desk groups. We worked together to show expected and unexpected choices in different situations.

Here are a few groups presenting their posters!

Here are the completed posters! Click on the photos to enlarge them or come by our classroom to check them out. :)

Ask your child about expected and unexpected choices at school as well as what expected and unexpected choices might be in other situations (at bed time, at dinner, at a soccer game, at dance, etc)!

Math Has Begun!

We began math this week! We use the Investigations Math Program to build our math skills. Check out our Math Curriculum section of the blog for more information about Investigations Units and the Math Practice section for information about our current units!

The math games we played this week are: Collect 20 Together, Staircases, Start With/Get To, and Mystery Bags.

Start With/Get To is a class game we play that involves counting and using a number line. We choose a "Start With" number (1-30) and a "Get To" number (2-30). Then we count on the number line from our "Start With" number to the "Get To" number.

Mathematicians played Collect 20 (see the Math Games section for directions).

We built staircases by using cubes to build and notice patterns between numbers.

We started exploring with Mystery Bags. We counted the objects in a bag, recorded our math thinking, and double checked our results.

We had a lot of fun exploring with math materials and playing math games. Ask your child what his/her favorite math choice was this week!

First Week of First Grade

Wow, our first week of first grade was busy, fun, and exciting! Here are some bits from our three days...

Every morning we sign in, read and respond to the Morning Message, take down our chairs, and have choice time. Children can play with materials in the room or go to Mileage Club (Mileage Club begins on Tuesday!)

We uncovered a few materials this week including: Geoblocks, Pattern Blocks, Connecting Cubes, and Base 10 Blocks. Children shared creative ways to use the materials as well as how to take care of them. 

We had our first All School Share as First Graders! Thatcher was there and so were our new principals and Ms. Goodnow's dog, Cooper!

 

On Friday, we reflected on our first week of first grade. We read My Brave Year of Firsts, by Jamie Lee Curtis and after revealing the colored pencils, we drew our favorite memories from our first week of first grade. Here is some of our work:

We had an adventurous first week of school! By Friday this was the response on the Morning Message:

Tomorrow we will start our first four day week, so remember to get plenty of rest! :) 

See you all soon for more learning, fun, and exploration!