Sunday, August 30, 2009

Color Days: Orange, Purple, Pink, Black/White/Gray, and Brown and Centers!

Orange Day: We enjoyed yummy orange Cheeze Its brought by Todd. We read the stories The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater, Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes, and Cat's Colors by Jane Cabrera. We also made some cute orange cats and wrote sentences about things that are orange using our sight words and sentence formation. With the story Chrysanthemum we learned about bullying and how it affects our friends at school and also worked on syllables in names and worked on writing our first and last name correctly and neatly.
Purple Day: We had delicious purple ice cream cookies brought by Dorothy's mom. We read the story Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes and made some purple "purses" or "backpacks" (for the boys) and worked on sequencing story events. We also read the story Purple, Green, and Yellow by Robert Munsch. This was a funny story about super indelible never come off until you are dead or later markers. We also read a cute book called Purplicious by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann It was our first check out day at library too!
Pink Day: We had yummy pink iced animal cookies brought by Meaghann. We did several things with the story the Three Little Pigs and made pink pigs. We worked on rhyming. We liked the story Pinkalicious also by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann.
Black, White, and Gray Day: We had black and white cookies brought by Savannah! We did some brainstorming on opposites and then we read a pop up book by Chuck Murphy called Black Cat, White Cat about opposites. We then watched a story on our promethean through the website Tumblebooks and learned more about opposites. We then made our own opposite book. We also read the story Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion about a dog that is white with black spots but gets so dirty that he ends up black with white spots. The kids then made some cute black and white dogs.
Brown Day: We used the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, Jr. for most of our activities. We acted out the story using the characters from the story, made our own Brown Bear book, and our art job was making some cute brown bears. We loved our brown graham crackers brought by Emma.
We completed our first week of centers and they went pretty smoothly. Thanks for the help from our parent center helpers and for all you do to support your child's learning at home. They enjoy bringing their books home to share with you each evening. Thanks for helping them remember to return their folders each day!! Keep up the good work!!

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Our First Week of School and Color Days!

Enjoy the pictures of our first full week of school! We had a good week despite the rainy start. We are working hard to adjust to all day in first grade. Our color days have been fun.
Red Day: We enjoyed Fruit Roll Ups brought by Tyler's mom. We read the books Little Red Hen Makes A Pizza by Philomen Sturges, Who Said Red? by Mary Serfozo, and Clifford Goes to School by Norman Bridwell. We also made some cute Clifford puppets.
Blue Day: We had some yummy blueberry muffins made by Joshua's mom. We read the story Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey. We worked on counting blueberry sets, patterning, adding sets with blueberries. We also did a story map learning the characters, setting, and what was happening in the story. We then made a blue whale to go with the story Dear Mr. Blueberry by Simon James.
Yellow Day: We learned the importance of being yourself and making good choices with the story Dandelion by Don Freeman. We also made cute Lion puppets. We read Gus the Bus by Howie Schneider and worked on rhyming and made a bus art project. We were very glad the YELLOW SUN came out on Thursday so we could get outside to play! We also had yellow bananas from Jack's mom for our treat!
Friday was a lot of fun with our Green Day: We learned that red, blue, and yellow are the primary colors and we use these colors to make other colors. We read the story Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Lionni and saw that blue and yellow make GREEN!! We then used frosting colors of red, blue, and yellow and mixed them to make green, orange, and purple. That was fun and yummy!! We also read the story The Aminal by Lorna Balian. The kids loved the story and we worked on story predictions and outcomes. We also did a character study with the book Verdi by Janelle Cannon. Alli brought us green apples, green cucumbers, and green M&M cookies to eat!
It was a great start to our school year!!

Our First Full Week and Colors: Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green!

Monday, August 17, 2009

First Day Fun!

Our first day went very well. I hope your child came home and shared about our day! We spent a lot of time going over classroom procedures and rules. We read a lot of fun stories and learned some creative ways to remember our classroom rules. It was a long day with inside recess because of all the rain, but they adjusted well. We are going to have a fun year!

First Day of First Grade August 17, 2009

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Welcome to First Grade!

It was so fun to see everyone at our Open House and to put faces to all the names I have been adding to nametags for our classroom. I am excited to get started and to get to know all the kids and the families that are a part of our First Grade Family! This is my first attempt at doing a blog and I am learning from my friends here at school. I am hoping you will enjoy seeing activities that go on in our classroom throughout the year. I have also posted educational links that you can check out. Throughout the year I will post pictures of special things we do in our classroom as well as notes and reminders. You can also share this address with grandparents and special friends to see what we are doing in our classroom.
It is going to be an exciting school year!!