Week 16 in Review

Greetings from Room 119!  We usually call our Fridays "Fun Friday" but this week, we all agreed it was just a huge, fun week (and little did we know how many curriculum standards we were actually doing).  Our fabulous mom volunteers didn't come in this week because we were busy making a special project for you and couldn't have anyone peeking!  We sure hope you like it!

We had a Mystery Reader in the middle of the week and were surprised because no one really recognized her.  This is Miss Coe and she is going to be joining our class in January!  Mrs. Doran is going to be her mentor teacher and is really excited because she is very enthusiastic and is eager to learn!  She read a book to us and did a great job!  Look for a bio on Miss Coe to come soon.

We had another December birthday to celebrate!  Michelle turned seven!  Happy Birthday, Michelle!

Mrs. D. started testing some of us and was really impressed by the gains many of us have made.  She will be testing more in January so it is really important that we don't forget to read over break.  If  you don't use it, you lose it so be sure to still take a bit of time to practice!

We finished up our unit on letters, but that doesn't mean that we have to stop writing them.  Much like "old" writing lessons spill over to new lessons, so too should our practice with letter writing.  Mrs. Doran and Mrs. Hill gave us our very own stationery and would love it if we would write letters to family and friends this holiday season.

We finished up a unit on measurement this week (though this is a skill that we will continue to work on throughout the year).  We also took an assessment this week.  We did well using rulers as a tool to help us find the length of objects.  This is an introductory skill in first grade.

We also measured capacity.  We made our very own play-doh in class using one cup of flour, one cup of salt and one cup of water.  We made an absolute mess but had a great time!  We wrote directions as a class and learned to take turns and work together.

Some of us noticed that if we didn't measure just right, the consistency of our play-doh was off.  If it was too sticky, we learned that we needed to add more flour.  If it was too dry, we added a bit more water.  It was fun experimenting and then creating something with our play-doh.  We are letting it dry and when we return to school next year, we are going to paint our creations during the second half of our block recess.  We can't wait!

Fun Friday was fun from start to finish! After our PE and Music in the morning and our morning routine, we visited our fifth grade buddies.  They made us special cards and then together we made reindeer by tracing our feet and hands.  Some of us had time to learn about reindeer by reading a nonfiction article.

When we returned, we insisted Mrs. D. open gifts from us!  She felt so special and was so thankful for everything (and loved that she has some new nice notes to pin to her bulletin board).  After that we had our book exchange and enjoyed reading our books with others.

Again we did some measuring by mixing some Reindeer Food.  Be sure to read the directions on the bag!

Mrs. D. read us the book, "The Polar Express" and even had a magic jingle bell!  After the book, we watched the movie and enjoyed drinks and treats from Mrs. Hill and Mrs. D.  We cleaned up the room and got some presents from Mrs. H & Mrs. D. and hugged one another and said, "See you next year!"

As always, this is just a snapshot of our week and you can see more by clicking HERE.

Enjoy this time with family and friends!

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year~from the Dorans.  See you in 2014!

Math Games for Home!

 

Dear Families,

 

Holidays are a time to visit and enjoy friends and family. 

I have created some math games that you can play together as a family at home that are quick, easy and will also help your child continue to build this or her math sense.

I made these and tried them out with my own children (grades 1, 3 & 4) and they were a huge hit.  We've also played them in the classroom.

All you will need is a printer.

If you have any questions or comments about any of the games, please let me know.

Click on the games below to print view and print those you are interested in.

 

Please let me know if you'd like to see more games like this.

 

A Game for Counting by 2s

 

A Game for Counting by 5s

 

A Game for Telling Time to the Nearest Hour

 

A Game for Telling Time to the Nearest Half-Hour

 

Enjoy,

~Laura Doran

 

 

 



Week 15 in Review

Greetings from Room 119!  We had a busy week and will have an even busier week next week.  It's hard to believe that we only have one week of school left in 2013!  

Here are a few reminders:

*You can bring in non-perishable food items until Wednesday (for the Hospitality House).

*On Monday, Smencils (smelly pencils) will be on sale for $1.75.

*Pajama Day is FRIDAY.  Bring in $1 for charity and wear your pajamas.

*Our book exchange is Friday. Please bring in a wrapped book for a boy OR girl before Friday (so Mrs. D. knows if she needs to run out and get some extra books).

*We have NO homework next week (but paper books will still be sent home for practice).

*PLEASE label mittens, coats, hats and boots.

*Bagel Sales are collected through Wednesday.

Happy Birthday Ward!

We also had two birthday to celebrate this week!  It's like "heaven" to be "seven!"

Happy Birthday Shane!

We continued to practice writing letters and most of us are getting quite good.  The fifth graders are now selling stationery for two cents.  Mrs. D. bought us all a piece of stationery so we could write our fifth grade buddies.  We also learned how to address a letter.  Now that we know how to write letters, we can write to others in our family.  We can also write thank you notes and other greetings.

Mrs. D. met with reading groups this week, but is going to begin testing again soon.  It is really important that we practice reading over the holidays, too.  She will need to finish testing in January so if we don't read at all over break, we could drop in levels...

In math we've been learning about measurement.  We learned you can measure time, weight, length and temperature.  We talked about different units as well.  One thing we did during workshop was measure our feet using unifix cubes.  Then we used a ruler to see how big our feet were.

We also compared our feet talking about whose were bigger, smaller and the same size.  We've really enjoyed this unit of study thus far.

As always, we ended our week with a mystery reader.  Shane's mom came in to read and she did a great job!  She read us some books from Hawaii which made us dream of warmer days (or maybe just Mrs. D).  We've been really enjoying the snow.  Please help us practice getting on our winter gear so that we can do it by ourselves.  

As always, this is just a sneak peek at what we did.  To see more, click HERE or check out the video below.

Week 14 in Review

Greetings from Room 119 and LLE's PBIS CLASS OF THE MONTH!  Of all of the classes, our class received the most tickets from other staff members!  Way to go!!  We are spreading kindness all over Loon Lake and beyond!  Did you know that our Student Council is collecting non-perishable food items for the Hospitality House?  Please bring canned or boxed food items so we can help those in our community.  If you're wondering what other events are coming up, be sure to check the side of Mrs. D's blog.

We may have told you by now, but we have a new elf in our classroom!  Mrs. D. read us a book called, "Elf on the Shelf" where we learned all about our elf.  We voted and decided to name him St. Nick.  On Wednesday, we were able to watch a short movie about the Elf on the Shelf because we completed another Potato Head (which means we've had good behavior in our FAPES classes).  We voted to watch a short movie as a reward.

We continue to work hard on our reading and it's really important that we keep practicing.  Remember to leave those paper books the Mrs. D. sends home each week home so that we can practice them over and over again.  This week we took a look at how authors tell their readers "when" the story takes place.  It's good for us to notice details in reading because it helps with our comprehension.

This week, Mrs. D. taught us how to write a letter.  We learned that letters have 5 things (ask us what those 5 things are).  We put our newly learned skill to the test when on Thursday we wrote a letter to the Schmidt family.  You may recall that we wrote get well cards to a boy named John when he was battling cancer at the Ronald McDonald house.  Sadly, Mrs. D. learned that John lost his battle.  She did not tell us this, but said that the Schmidt family could use a little 'cheer' in the mail so we drew them pictures and wrote them letters.

Every morning, we begin our day working in our math journals.  This is great reinforcement of what Mrs. D. teaches us during math workshop.  It's also fun because many of us have started 'teaching' others who may have some questions.  What a great way to reinforce our own learning.  Mrs. D. has enjoyed watching us teach others.  

In math workshop (in addition to problem solving), we reviewed tallies by playing a fun "I have, who has" game with tallies.  What we've learned is that if we don't use it, we lose it!  Mrs. D. will be bringing time and money back to math workshop next week to help us cement those skills as well!

We are learning about maps in social studies (ask us what we know about maps).  We also made some maps of our school and will be making a map of our classroom on Monday.  In addition, instead of writing homework next week, Mrs. D. will be asking us to make a map of a room in our house.  This is a fun activity that students have enjoyed in the past.  Mrs. D. would like to put them in the hallway so is asking you to remind us to make our work nice and quality.  Be sure to take a look in the homework bag on Monday as this is not an assignment you'll want to save until the last minute.

For Fun Friday, we did a "Snow Time" activity where we made snowmen AND worked on telling time.  First, Mrs. D. showed us how to do the activity and then we thought about the different steps and wrote them down as directions.  We're doing a great job and hardly realize how many things we are learning during our Fun Friday activities!

We ended our day in the BEST way!  James' mom came in with his twin sisters and read a story to us about a loose tooth which is perfect because we've got a lot of loose teeth in room 119 (and a waiting list for the tooth tote)!  She did a great job (and his sisters were a great audience too).

Just a reminder that if you'd like to read a second time you may email Mrs. Doran.  For those of you who haven't signed up, PLEASE consider doing so.  This really is such a special memory for us and it only takes 10-15 minutes and then you can take us home.  Thanks for considering coming in.

And as always, this is just a little window into our week.  To see more (including what we did with our fifth grade buddies), be sure to check out the video below or by clicking HERE.

Week 13 in Review

Greetings from Room 119!  It was a very short week, but we still managed to get a lot of learning packed in while still having a lot of FUN.  If you would like to see our Thanksgiving Play, click HERE.

 To get ready for our play we had to make our costumes.  Mrs. Doran's former first grader (turned college senior), came to observe Mrs. D. (because she is going to be a teacher soon, too) and she also helped out!  We had so much fun and making our costumes really got us into the Thanksgiving spirit!

In Social Studies this week, we learned more about the environment and why it is important not to pollute our environment.  We also loved making the T-charts we have made in social studies so many of us tried a T- Chart in our Writers' Notebooks during workshop!

We learned that writers can use words to show when something happened (like 'last week', one cold, chilly evening... etc.).  We are working on including 'when' in our pieces.  Mrs. D. also made us some paper books so we can write our own stories in the morning while people are book shopping and eating breakfast.  We love to write!

We've really been practicing our reading and are getting more fluent.  Even though it was a short week, hopefully we'll read a bit over the break!  This week we found favorite parts of stories and talked about them with our buddies and also explained why the parts we chose were our favorites.

In math we continue to work on solving story problems and work with number patterns.  We learned that there are a lot of ways to solve a problem.  On Monday, we solved the problem Mrs. D. gave us in four different ways.

 Some of us made a table, others drew a picture, some used a rek-en-rek while others used number models.  We enjoyed sharing HOW we solved the problem and learning how other students solved the problem too.

Knowing our math facts is important too and we have fun ways to do that.  A new activity in our math rotations was domino math.  We had to get a domino, add up its dots and put it on a card with it's sum.  We had fun and hope to get quicker and quicker at this task!  This is a fun game to play at home too!

Of course these are just some of the things we did and you can see more by clicking HERE.  Also, Mrs. D. is now opening up Mystery Readers.  Sadly, not everyone has signed up but she does want to fill all the slots.  PLEASE consider signing up if you have not yet.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Week 12 in Review

Greetings from Room 119!  Next week is a short week and we'll only have three days of school due to the Thanksgiving Holiday.  Hopefully we have continued to practice our Thanksgiving Play line.  We will be performing our play for our 5th grade buddies and perhaps a few other classes.  It is a short play which is why we aren't inviting our families to watch.  Don't worry, Mrs. D. will be sure to tape it!

 In reading, we've been finding what a story is mostly about and we've been practicing retelling it.  At the end of workshop, we've been meeting with a buddy to tell them about our book.

 Each week we meet with Mrs. Doran for reading and we work in different books.  Sometimes we do activities related to the books we read, like cutting up sentences from our book and rebuilding the sentence.  This is a fun activity that you could do at home too.

In math, we continue to work on number puzzles. This time Mrs. D. showed us something called a 'frames and arrows' puzzle.  We caught on right away and loved solving them and making new puzzles for our friends.  We'd like to have these for homework but *WE HAVE NO HOMEWORK NEXT WEEK DUE TO THE THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY!*

 We have begun learning about the environment in Social Studies.  An environment can be any 'place', but when someone talks about 'the' environment, they are often talking about outside. We learned that things in the environment can be 'man-made' or 'natural.'  We sorted pictures of things we see outside into these two categories using a "T-Chart" we will do more with T-Charts next week in writing.

With Thanksgiving around the corner, we've been doing some fun projects with our 5th Grade Buddies.  We've written persuasive pieces from the point of view of a turkey who doesn't want to be eaten and we also tried to camouflage our own turkeys in a creative way so no one would recognize them.  We then voted on the turkey we thought was the most creative.  Ward's turkey got most of the votes for our class.

Fun Fridays are the best and we did some fun placemat paper weavings.  Mrs. Doran first showed us how to do the activity using words demonstrating what we should do.

Next, we put those directions in words.  This is something we do each "Fun Friday" we work together to make sure that our directions are clear and in order.  This week, we suggested Mrs. D. add some pictures to help us.  We really worked together on this task and did really well explaining how the project was done.  We only had a handful of people who made mistakes and had to try again.  Mistakes are great learning opportunities!  We all left will a really neat projects!

We didn't have any parents who had signed up to be our Mystery Readers, so Ms. Qonja came in to read to us.  We loved the clues Mrs. D. read throughout the day and were really surprised to see it was our principal who came to read to us!

Mrs. Doran has sent out emails and notes and mentioned Mystery Readers at conferences.  Still many families have not signed up for Mystery Readers.  PLEASE sign up if you haven't yet!!  Beginning next week she will open up Mystery Readers to those who have already read once.  She really wants ALL of us to have someone that loves us read to our class so please contact her this week!
As always this is just a snapshot of what we did this week.  You can see more by clicking HERE or viewing the slideshow below.  Also, remember to pass on your "Pay it Forward" card if you haven't yet.  We've only gotten two responses from first grade cards so far (Yeah Zahraa!).  Hopefully we'll get more responses soon.  To read all the acts of kindness that have come in so far, check out the PBIS blog by clicking HERE.