An Appleicious Week!

We spent all week learning about the lifecycle of an apple tree, seasons of an apple tree, and learning about the legend of Johnny Appleseed!

Each of our centers were apple themed. They worked on finding the missing letters of the alphabet on the apple task cards. They worked on writing complete sentences about apples and writing them with correct mechanics. They did apple sorting, counting, and graphing. They had to sort apples into rhyming and not rhyming words.

At these centers they worked on adding apple seeds and writing addition sentences. They organized apples with numbers to 25 from least to greatest. They used short a word families to make real or “rotten” (nonsense) words. And they loved the Wild Apple Sight Word game where they had to read the sight words correctly on the apple cards. If they drew an apple with a worm in it they lost all their apples.

A favorite book we read was Ten Apples Up On Top that we did several activities with using math combinations. We used each of the characters from the story to make combinations of 5. Then we got to solve math problems with the power point using each of the kids pictures and apples up on top of their heads. Then they each got a book with all of the students pictures in it. They rolled a red die and a green die and added red and green apples up on top and wrote the number sentence to go with the picture. They LOVED seeing their pictures in the power point and the book!

We finished up the week with the legend of Johnny Appleseed. We did a story sequencing activity and then we made these Johnny Appleseed characters. They turned out really cute!

We also made these “Happy Apple Men” to decorate our classroom! It was an appleicious week!

A note to the follower's:

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at dschmelzer@usd266.com and I promise to get back to you!  You can also check out my teaching blog that I do with my good friend Mrs. Bumgardner at: madefor1stgrade.blogspot.com

Conference Week & Pete the Cat

We had a short week this week with conferences. Thanks to all the parents that came to visit! It was enjoyable to see the families again and to share the progress that the kids are making! They loved making these cute school house folders to hold their “portfolio” of things that I shared with their parents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a VERY fun week with short a and reading and singing along with Pete the Cat by Eric Litwin. These were some new books that we found this summer and I am not sure who had more fun with them…the kids or me! We were reading a story in our reading book called A Day At School and so using the story Pete the Cat Rocking in His School Shoes was perfect! We then brainstormed things that we do at school like Pete and the students created these art projects using their name “________ is rocking in his/her school shoes”. The kids then did a writing project where they told about what they do at school. We then displayed them in the hallway for parents to see when they came for conferences.

  

Of course we had to make a “class” book to add to our library about Pete the Cat. They came up with their own versions of what happened to Pete and how his shoes changed color. They were very creative and love to sing along with our new book!

 

ABC Finale-A Potluck from A-Z!

We ended our ABC week with a fun story called Potluck.  It is about twins named Alpha and Betty that invite their friends from A-Z to a potluck.  Each child brings something that begins like the first letter of their name.  It was a lot of fun eating our way from A-Z!  The kids also made a class book about our potluck to add to our class library of books we have created. 

Here is a look at what the kids brought. Thanks for making learning so much fun and for sending the items to share with the class!  (Aren’t they cute!)

Thanks again parents for helping us out and making the day fun and YUMMY!

ABC Week!

This week we celebrated our mastery of our letter sounds and recognition of our consonants. Our centers were all ABC themed and our literature activities and projects were all ABC themed. We also worked on short a this week and tied that into the alphabet activities.

We read The Mixed-Up Alphabet and then had to put all the mixed up pictures in order from A-Z. We read A My Name is Alice and made a class book using ___my name is __________ and I like ______________. They were really cute. We also read There is a Zoo in Room 22. Then we brainstormed pets we would like to have in room 405! One last book we read was Dr. Seuss’’s ABC and we created our own class book using the riddle from the story: Big ___ Little ___. What begins with _____. _______ and ________ begin that way. Samples of each of the class books is in the picture above. At one of the centers they listened to These Letters Are Lost then they had to match pictures to the correct beginning sound. At another center they worked with pictures and that were missing the beginning letter and they had to decide where to write words from A-Z. Another favorite center was puzzles…lots of ABC puzzles!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Look Who’s In Our Room!

Here are the cute coconut trees we made using our names after reading this favorite abc book.

Classroom Books-We Are Authors!

Students have loved making our own classroom library with their writing samples and illustrations. Here are a few samples that are in our library now. We have used our sight words to help us create these books. Whenever they get free time they go right to the classroom library tub and check out their creations!

Shake the Beans!

This week in math we have been working on combinations of 6, 7, and 8. We used 2 sided beans to “shake” and roll on to a mat to see what combination came up. Then students had to count the red beans first and then the white beans and say what the combination was and record it on their record sheet. This activity was a class favorite this week! We will finish up our combinations of 9 and 10 next week.

We Know Our Color Words!

We finished up our color theme last week and did an assortment of activities that were based on using all the colors together. Our centers were based on using all the color words and sight words. It was a VERY fun week doing the centers for the first time. (And I was worn out!) When doing centers we have “desk” jobs that we do. Here were a few of the desk jobs that we did. We read the story The Crayon Box That Talked and used a cute color poem and made our own crayon box. We also listened to the song The Color Farm by Dr. Jean and then sequenced the pictures and used our color words to create and color the characters in the story.

 

Another desk activity we did was called “The Color Sticks”. This was shared with me by a wonderful teacher that retired a few years ago and it is one of my favorite activities. We used to use sentence strips and the kids would read off a pocket chart, but with our awesome promethean we created a slide show that has the sentences using our sight words and color words. Then the students get to make their own interactive game to take home with a set of color sticks. They loved sharing these with their friends too!

 

Another activity we did at desk job was make our own color books using our sound spelling and creative writing. We then “Pick, Pair, Shared” our books with friends.

If the students are not doing their desk job they will be at a center or at guided reading with me. Here are a few pictures of our centers for this week and of one of the groups reading with me.

At these centers they did sentence scrambles using their color words and sight words to create complete sentences. They used crayon sets to add and create number sentences.

At this center they used the letter tiles to spell each color word. At the other center pictured they put 6 numbers in order from least to greatest. I am sad that I didn’t get pictures of the other centers. It was tough monitoring groups and guided reading and getting kids to each of the centers they needed to be at. They caught on pretty quick and next week should run very smoothly!

Here is a group reading to me. They were excited to take a book home each night to share their reading with their families.

 

Week 3 is done! It has gone by so fast already.  Next week will be ABC FUN!!