Our Special Projects

Dear Families and Friends from Far Away,

Here is the special project your special first grader gave their family today. Please click on the box below to see a scrapbook of pictures. To see a picture bigger, just click on it!

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Week 15 in Review (finally)

Greetings from room 119 (or more appropriately Mrs. D's house after four kids are tucked in bed and she has a moment to catch up on our blog...). This time of year is always busy and fun and our final week in first grade in the year 2011 could be summed up with those two words... busy and fun!
We were quite excited about the holidays the last two weeks of school but most of us did pretty well knowing that our elf was watching us each day. We ended the week with a lot of fun activities, but thankfully Mrs. D. took some other pics throughout the week which spurred her memory of all of the things we did. The week began with two of us on the news sharing our PBS stories with the school. Both Bryan and Sarah did a wonderful job sharing their stories!


Because we had a lot of work on our special projects and we couldn't keep them hidden most of the week, we only had math volunteers on Monday. Izzy's mom and Luke G's mom both came in and played the Dreidle game with us. This was a game that Mrs. D. told us about but it also happens to be a game that uses math concepts. We all enjoyed the game!

In writing this week we learned how to write a letter. This was good because Loon Lake's Post Office is now open. We can buy stationary for two cents a sheet. Mrs. D. bought all of us one sheet and we wrote notes to our fifth grade buddies. Most of them responded and we loved getting letters back in the 'mail'.

In reading this week, we focused on another important strategy in reading- expanding our vocabulary. We can sometime learn new words by the context of what is happening in the story or we can ask what a word means. We found some interesting words in our Reader's Workshop this week and shared them with our class.

Two books in which we learned new vocabulary were about the December holidays, Christmas and Hanukkah. Mrs. D. read us books that shared the historical reason that these holidays are celebrated as well as stories with some common traditions. While this year no one in our classroom celebrated Hanukkah, we learned a lot of new vocabulary words about the holiday. Ask us about it!

On Friday we had our book exchange! We began by sitting in a circle with the book that we brought in. Then Mrs. D. read us a little story and every time she said the word "right" we had to pass our book to the right and every time she said the word "left" we had to pass our book to the left. We all laughed and had a good time! We loved reading and looking at our books and thanking the person who gave it to us.

Speaking of gifts, Mrs. D. gave us each our own little notebook with our name on it. She also gave us a pencil and some envelopes. We were all very thankful and enjoyed writing in our notebooks.

Near the end of our 'regular' day on Friday our fifth grade buddies came down to wish us a Happy Holiday! We had fun seeing each other in our comfy pajamas since it was Pajama Day at our school. It was fun to tell them we'd see them "next year" when they left our room!

Although it was a party day, we still had a Mystery Reader and we were very excited to have a dad come and read to us! Luke G.'s dad came in and read Mrs. D's favorite Christmas book, "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" by Dr. Seuss, and while we were very excited for our party to begin, we were a great audience and loved the book! Thanks to Luke G's dad for coming in and reading to us!
Check out the videos below to see extra pictures from our week and a video from our party. Mrs. D. has also put together a movie that is scheduled to be posted on December 25th. Have a wonderful time with your families and we'll see you next year!

To view the movie above directly on You Tube, click HERE.

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Week 14 in Review

Greetings from room 119! It is hard to believe that in one week we will be off for the December break! Next week we will be learning more about the history behind the December Holidays. Mrs. D. took a poll and learned that everyone in our class this year celebrates Christmas. We worked on a special project this week and because some of us will be giving that special project to you on Christmas, Mrs. D. will post pictures from that project on Christmas day (this is why there are not as many pictures in this week's slide show...).
It was an exciting (and often times LOUD) week in our room. We are all excited for the holidays and we were also very excited when we learned Monday that we would be having a new student come and learn with us. Alexis is new to our classroom and we are so happy to have her in our room. She is already picking up on all our routines and fitting in great to our classroom community!

There was another visitor that showed up this week in our room. We have an Elf on a Shelf! Mrs. D. has a different elf that comes to her house and after reading us her book about the "Elf on the Shelf" we were shocked that an elf showed up in our room!! The elf (who we named "Ryan Gilbert") watches us all day and then flies to the North Pole at night to report to Santa. The next day he comes back in a different location. Since Ryan Gilbert's arrival, our noise level has gone down a bit. We were worried someone may have touched him on Friday (causing him to lose his magic)... We guess we will see what happens on Monday!

Speaking of holidays, just a reminder that Loon Lake is collecting new hats and gloves on our Giving Tree which is located next to the office immediately when you walk in the building. If you would like to donate some items, please send them in with us and we can hang them on the tree. All items will go to children in need in our area. This community service project was sponsored by our Student Council. We also learned that on Friday Loon Lake will be having a school wide pajama party! Since it is winter, we need to make sure they are warm, cozy pajamas! There will be more information coming home on this early in the week.

In math this week we did a lot of work with numbers and using hundreds grids. Then we learned about 'scrolls'. If we haven't yet told you what a scroll is, it is a place where we are counting (in writing) and as you know there is no end to numbers so like the Energizer Bunny, we keep going... and going... some of us have four or five sheets glued together in one long scroll and have written numbers into the 500s. It is great practice. Thank you to those of you who sent in empty toilet paper rolls (and keep sending them in), almost everyone has one now to house their scroll.

We were very excited that Mrs. D. got the shaving cream out this week. We worked on spelling some word-family words from words that are on our word-wall. For example if we could spell let, we could spell get, set, met, fret... We love working with shaving cream! Thank you to those who have sent it in!

We added our November portfolio pieces (that were showcased in the hall and the room) to our portfolios this week. Mrs. D. has moved them down off her shelf so we can get them down and read our work. We have really come a long way since we first started school and love looking back at our work. These portfolios will come home at the end of the year.

If you are signed up to get this blog via email, you already knew that Mrs. D. has finally updated our writing blog with our new portfolio pieces. We wrote all about what we like to do in the winter. We tried to 'narrow the focus' and create a piece about a 'small moment' we had in the snow. We really did a great job with this and all of our writing turned out really nice. Feel free to leave us a comment on the writing blog. Any comments left on any of Mrs. D's blogs she shares with us.

And finally we ended the week with a Mystery Reader. Izzy's sister (who is a senior in high school), came to read us a book and she did a great job! We were a good audience and after she was done, we were able to ask her some questions about high school. It was very interesting and we learned that high school and elementary are very different.
For more pictures from the week (minus many from our 'secret project'), you can click below!

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Mid-Week News

Dear First Grade Families (and friends),

Now that our writers are growing, it has taken me a bit longer to update the writing blog. There are two new pieces that have been published today. Remember if you would like to read just your special writer's pieces, you can click on his/her name on the right side of the blog.
To go directly to the writing blog, you can click HERE.

Also, many students are coming to school without a snack. Please remember to pack a fresh fruit or vegetable for your child every day. I do not provide snack.

And finally, the weather is cold! Please make sure your child is dressed for the weather. I do have some mismatched gloves and hats they can use if they come without them. I do not have spare snow pants or boots. You may also want to keep a dry pair of socks in your child's backpack in case their socks get wet.

Have a great day!

Mrs. Doran

Week 13 in Review

Greetings from room 119! It was a cold week full of lots of snow! Mrs. D. taught us a song to help us keep track of our hats and gloves. She also suggested we bring an extra pair of socks to leave in our backpack in case our socks get wet from the snow. You may also want to help us practice getting our outdoor gear on.
A very exciting thing happened this week. Mrs. Doran got a letter in the mail. The return address looked strange to her but when she opened it up, she knew why... it was from Afghanastan! You may recall a while back we drew pictures and sent letters to the troops there. We were thrilled to actually get a letter back! This also reminded us that there are many who will not be able to celebrate the holidays with their families. so we got right to writing and drawing more notes in hopes to brighten up their tents this holiday season!

We also had a fun assembly this week. Buster the Bus came with some of his friends to teach us about Bus Safety! We learned all about how to be safe in and around busses. Unfortunately, the day of the assembly it was raining so we couldn't practice a bus evacuation but we were told the bus drivers would talk to us about it on our way home from school that day. You may have seen the finger puppets that were sent home from Buster.

Matthew lost his first tooth this week right during our math workshop! We had been waiting for it to happen, so Mrs. D. stopped all our groups and we cheered for him. He was really excited and was able to go down to the office to get a special necklace to keep his tooth in. Just to be on the safe side though, the tooth went right into his backpack tso it would make it safely home for the tooth fairy. This brought up some discussion about if the tooth fairy is real or not. Mrs. D. says that if you believe in the tooth fairy, she'll show up at your house... :-)

We loved math this week because we did more with measuring. We measured with different tools like rulers and tape measures. Mrs. D. also recorded our heights on the wall outside our room. We will be making a graph about our heights next week. We did a really nice job and LOVED measuring things. Mrs. D. may have to give us some extra practice next week because we really did have a lot of fun!

We also spent Friday in the computer lab working on our math facts. Our math program doesn't spend a lot of time on the facts which is why Mrs. D. has our parent volunteers work with us to practice them too. Remember the Everyday Math Online site can also be accessed from home and we really do love it.

We are getting so much better with reading and Mrs. D. has been excited to see our growth and is eager to test us 'officially' in January to see how we've grown. She moved up instruction levels again on most groups and we've risen to the challenges! We are beginning to use the strategies we've learned more automatically which is really improving our fluency. Also, during Readers' Workshop we are getting better at identifying things we do well as readers as well as things we'd like to work on!

On Friday we got to meet with our fifth grade buddies. Mrs. D. read our classes a book all about snow and then our classes turned into a little snow factory. Mrs. D. taught us how to make snowflakes and we made a ton! We are going to hang them up in our classrooms next week. We did a great job and our buddies were really helpful when it came to the folding which can be a bit tricky!

We ended the week with our Mystery Reader, but it wasn't quite a Mystery... Nathan found out his mom was coming in and spilled the beans... Still it was great to have her come in and read to us. She did a great job and we followed along with the story and really enjoyed it! Remember there are still times available for Mystery Readers and Mrs. D. would really like for ALL of us to have someone we know read to the class. It really is a wonderful treat for us. Don't forget to check out the slideshow below for some extra pictures from the week!

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