Grandparents Day!

What a day!  We had so much fun with our grandparents at school today! While we were waiting for them to arrive we worked on a grandparent paper.  It said, "I love my grandparents because..."  They did such a great job on them. While we were waiting to go to the gym to perform, seniors from upstairs kept coming in to get students to go the gym to get their picture taken with their grandparents.  Such a great idea!  Here are some of our papers that we did.

They are so cute!  I love the drawings too!  This is just a sampling of the ones that I had.  





Around 9am, we headed to the gym. We started with Pre-school and Kindergarten and then it was our turn.  We sang "The BIBLE."  They did a great job!









After each grade sang, we went back to our classrooms and grandparents came to visit. Each student had a list of things to show their grandparent.  For those whose grandparent couldn't make it, they took pictures with our iPads.  Check them out:

Once the grandparents left we got a little silly.  :)

Aaarghh! Learning the sound of ar

Wow! What a busy day we had on Tuesday!  It was so much fun though.  This week we are learning the sound of ar and Tuesday was a day filled with ar words. Monday night I had been looking for ideas to introduce the ar sound and came across The Inspired Apple's blog. She had some great ideas for teaching ar so I now I had a plan. I arrived at school early so I could hide ar words around the school and as soon as the kids come in they started chatting about the words they were seeing.  I had a large treasure map on the board.

They took turns finding the words, reading them aloud, and putting them on our treasure map.  I had put up a total of 16 words around the school so I told them we had to find all sixteen before we could open the treasure chest and see what was inside.  Throughout the morning we kept finding words and adding them to the map and by lunch we had found 15.  They tried to convince me to open the treasure chest but I held strong and told them we had to find all 16.  We made ar words on our Smartboard and even  sang a pirate song from Heidi's Songs.

To go along with our pirate song we made some really cute pirates and hung them in the hallway with our treasure map.

As we got closer to the time to go home the kiddos were getting very concerned about our treasure.  Fortunately Mr. Dawson showed up with a few minutes to spare with our last word, smart.  He said he had found it and didn't know what it was for.  He figured since first grade is sooo smart he thought
he would check with us to see if we knew anything about it.  Well..... we were very excited to say the least.  We finally were able to open our treasure chest and it was filled with another ar word.
                                                                Candy Bars!!!!

DuckTours!

Today was so much fun!  K, 1st and 2nd grades went on the DuckTours!  The kids (and teachers) were so excited. We got everyone loaded in and went on a tour of Portland.

 


 I learned so many new things today.  We saw a lot of historic buildings and churches and also heard lots of interesting facts about Portland. Did you know that Franklin Towers is the tallest building?

After touring Portland, we drove over the bridge to South Portland and went to Bug's Light.  We drove right into the water!!! It was lots of fun but a little scary too!  Next thing we knew we were in the water and touring the bay.  We even saw a seal! The kids loved that!

We drove right out of the water and headed back over the bridge.

When we got back to school we made a list of our favorite part of the day.   Here it is:

1. We saw a seal
2. All the things we saw that was ancient (that means old) lol
3. Reny's(when we passed it they sang "A Maine adventure")
4. When we were in the water
5. Going in the water
6. All the churches


Here are some of the papers that we did when we returned to school.

Sums of 10 Song and Talking Tom!

Well, this was a very busy week but we managed to learn our sums of 10 and have a little fun along the way. I learned about this idea at a technology conference that I attended in June.  Originally, the idea came from Ms. Carnazzo's Class.  She has some great ideas of how to use iPad's in the classroom and really gets her students thinking critically.

We have been working on sums of 10 for about two weeks and we love the song she created with Songify.  The song really helped us to know our facts!  So, this week we decided to take what we know about sums of 10 and share it with our parents in this movie. As soon as I opened the Talking Tom app, and it started repeating everything I said, they were in fits of giggles.  It's just so silly!  BUT... when we started recording, you could have heard a pin drop in the room.  Everyone was quietly awaiting their turn.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we loved doing it.

Sums of 10

What a busy week we have had in First Grade.  My liitle ones worked so hard and they are really getting the routines down.  This past week we had our first assessment in Math and are ready to move onto Chapter 2 and adding sums to 10.  I decided to spend Friday's Math time doing a lesson with ladybugs and the sums of 10.  We started out by each student using watercolors to paint a ladybug. We will be using this lady bug as a sorting mat for the next week or so. If you would like a copy you can click here:   Ladybug Sorting Mat.

  Once everyone had painted there ladybugs, and they dried, we used 10 black buttons to make math stories.  After lots of practice everyone got to choose their own math story to represent sums of 10.  They used black sharpies to make black spots.  Then we used our iPads to record each other telling our stories.

 Click on the link below to watch a movie of the videos my little ones made.

It's All About Animals

This week in First Grade, we are learning all about animals! We have learned that there are six animal types and we can even tell you some of the characteristics of each type. First we did a foldable craft project.

It took us a few days to finish our foldable.  Then we played our matching game which is a lot like the game Memory.  We had to find a pair of animals of the same kind without picking up a BAM card.  If you get a BAM card you lose a turn.  So much fun!

We will be finishing our lesson on different kinds of animals this week with our animal booklet that we started today.  My students are writing about each animal type and then adding a picture. Here is a sneak peak at our books.

IPads and More!

I am so blessed this year to have four iPads, an iTouch and a Smartboard!  This week we used them all in math, reading, and handwriting.  In math, we have been working on knowing numbers in three ways, tallies, ten frames and the number.  We used a fun app on the iPad called Ten Frame Fill, and it was FREE! 

 Interactive

Math Journals

 Interactive Math Journals are a hands on way to reinforce the skills we are working on.  It usually takes the form of a lift the flap, a foldable, a graph or a word problem.  We will continue to add to these throughout the year, a couple of times a week.  Check them out.