Last Day of School!

We had a great last day of school! We even got to make some really yummy ice cream with Zach's dad. Thanks Jim!! :) Have an awesome summer everyone!!

Painting Project

Today we finished up our little painting projects. The first graders made signs with their names on them. They chose the font and colors. I made stencils with my Silhouette machine and the kiddos painted them. They turned out awesome!! :)

I will be so sad to say goodbye to these first graders tomorrow!! Yes, I'm looking forward to a nice summer break, but I have grown attached to them and I'm so proud of the progress they've made this year!! Just wish I could keep them a little while longer! Have a wonderful summer! :)

Walking Word Wall

We took our word wall down after our final spelling test and made ourselves into "Walking Word Walls"! :)

Our New Pets

Earlier this week the first graders "adopted" pets! We used the website Bunny Hero Labs to adopt the pet and name it. They learned how to "copy the HTML code" and followed the steps to paste that code into a new Kidblog post. That's fancy talk for first graders!! :) They did an excellent job following the steps!

Today they were able to see everyone else's pets ("play" with them AND feed them!!) and then leave comments for each other on our Kidblog. Check them out!

(I'm really not sure why this blog post is formatted this way...not sure about THAT HTML code!)

adopt your own virtual pet!

Pizza, Please!

Last week after reading The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza we made virtual pizzas using ABCya.com. The first graders did a fantastic job creating their pizzas and saving the jpeg images to their folders. They also used ABCya.com to make "word clouds" about their pizzas. They chose a font, colors and layout before saving that jpeg image, too. 

Today they inserted both images into a new Kidblog post. They had to follow several steps to do this. I was very impressed with those that listened well and helped their friends when they needed it! You can check their pizzas out at our Kidblog. They love getting comments on their Kidblog...thank you! :)

Word cloud and virtual pizza made using ABCya.com.

The Little Red Hen

We are talking about folktales and fairy tales this week in first grade. A favorite story is The Little Red Hen. We found several versions of the classic story. I read some of them to the class and the kids read several to themselves or with a partner. We are really working on reading with fluency (NO robot readers) and expression!! They are becoming such good readers! :) 

 We talked about how hard the Little Red Hen worked and that her friends were not helpful at all. The first graders offered examples of how they are helpful at home and why they thought it was important to help their families and friends. During our writing time the kids wrote in their journals about what they would do if they were the Little Red Hen. Would they share the bread with their friends? Here are some of their ideas. You can go to our Kidblog to see the rest of them.

We discovered that the different versions of the story have some similarities and some differences. Some of the kids even found similarities between The Little Red Hen and Cinderella. Sooo smart!! This afternoon we will work on filling out this venn diagram to compare two versions of the story:

Last, but not least, we will read this version of The Little Red Hen:

Bossy R: er, ir, ur

This week we are talking about words that have the er, ir and ur chunks (that make the "er" sound) in them. Today the first graders went on a hunt for er, ir and ur words in our classroom. Several of them found books with LOTS of words with those chunks in them. We even discovered that some words have those chunks, but they don't make the "er" sound.

After the first graders worked with partners to find the words, then we made a LONG list of those words on the Promethean board. From those lists we copied and pasted the words into Wordle and made words clouds. (We also had fun playing around with the fonts, layout and colors!!)

Searching for er, ir, and ur words in a book with a partner.

Making a list of er, ir, and ur words.

Our word lists on the Promethean board.

Here are the word clouds we made using Wordle:

Look Mrs. Dietsche, they even thought of Vermont!! ;)

Awesome Amphibians

Last week we re-visited the topic of different animal groups. We talked about the characteristics of different animal groups and which animals belong in which group. Then, we studied the animal group Amphibians. Most of the kids knew quite a bit about this animal group, but it was a good review and we had some good discussion about their life cycles. We talked about how frogs and toads start out more fish-like with gills and then their lungs develop and they breath just like we do when they are fully grown.

We read several non-fiction books, including Awesome Amphibians to learn more about this animal group. We also talked about the Table of Contents and Glossary. Ask your favorite first grade if they know what those parts of a non-fiction book are for!

The first graders wrote in their journals about what they learned about amphibians and then we posted them on our Kidblog. They are getting really good at typing on their own and remembering to use capital letters and punctuation. Click the picture below to view our Kidblog.

We also spent some time reading some fiction books about frogs, too. The "Frog and Toad" books were a hit! I checked as many out of the library as I could (thanks, Sherry!!) and the kids have been reading them like crazy! :) Another favorite was Froggy Builds a Treehouse that one of the first graders bought at the book fair for our class. So sweet! :)

Next week...BEARS!! :)  Only 30 days left of school and lots to do... :)

If I Ran the Zoo

I FINALLY got our "If I Ran the Zoo" Google presentation finished. (Sorry for the delay Mrs. Hilsabeck!!) We had a Skype session a few weeks ago with our Flower Mound, Texas first grade friends to introduce this activity. Then, Mrs. Hilsabeck read the Dr. Seuss book If I Ran the Zoo to her class and I read it to my class. The next day we had another Skype call with them and we drew animal names from a cup with a partner from Texas. The kids then had to think like Dr. Seuss and create a new animal by combining those two animals.

Mrs. Hilsabeck set up a Google presentation to upload the pictures of the animals. After several technical difficulties I finally have our creations on the Google presentation. We viewed all of them on our "magic board" and talked about how different and alike the pictures were from their partners. You can take a look at the presentation by clicking on the picture below.

This and That

This morning we participated in a Google presentation with our Skype buddies in Texas and Vermont, among others. It was started by Mrs. Hilsabeck in Flower Mound, Texas to go along with the book On the Same Day in March:A Tour of the World's Weather, by Marilyn Singer. Together (on our "magic board" and wireless keyboard) we composed a paragraph about our weather and included a picture from www.weather.com that we use to check our weather every morning.

The Google presentation "On the 28th Day of March".

Our page of the Google presentation.

Reading what the weather was like in other parts of the country today. We were amazed that we could even see when someone was typing on their page. The kids were predicting what that person was typing by using context clues!

In Math we did some graphing using jelly beans this week. The first graders had to work on their own to make the bar graph and answer questions using the information on their graphs. In order to meet the Common Core standards I also included some writing on this paper. They did a great job!

This afternoon when the kids came in from recess they found eggs hidden throughout our classroom. ;) So, we had a little Easter egg hunt before our early dismissal. They are always so appreciative when I do some fun little things for them every once in awhile. That's why I love first grade!! :)

Happy Easter!! I will enjoy the long weekend! :)

I can't believe we only have 40 days of school left...