Easter Egg Fun

We finished off our week with a little Easter egg fun. Yesterday we started this project, and today we finished it up. Each student was asked to use cut pieces of paper to design their own unique egg.

Then, they were asked to be creative and think of what kind of creature might hatch from that egg. Oh my goodness the creativity was flowing!! I wish I could share all of these with you, they are just that awesome. After students got their creative juices flowing by illustrating their creature, they were asked to write a few sentences describing it and telling some things about it. Here is one great example:

Remember, there is no school tomorrow! Hope everyone enjoys their long weekend. :)

Fairy Tales: Cinderella

Today we finished off our fairy tale unit. I am so sad the week is over because I LOVE fairy tales and there are so many more good ones we did not have time to read!

Today was all about royalty in fairy tales! We started off the morning making our very own crowns and tiaras. We had a crowning ceremony and each student was presented with their crown to wear. We discussed waht it means to be royalty, and how you have to set a good example and be a good leader. We all agreed that as long as you were wearing your crown, today you would be referred to by your prince and princess name. We had a ball with this! Plus, it really promoted good behavior. Double win!

We read the story Cinderella, then looked at each of the elements to see if it qualified as a fairy tale. It did!

hahaha oh my gosh please ignore the fact that I spelled prince wrong! We were in a bit of a rush so everyone could get started working on our daily project. oops!

Next, everyone set to work writing their own original fairy tale starring themself as a prince or princess. Their work turned out so cute!
 

Fairy Tales: Jack and the Beanstalk

We continued our unit on fairy tales today by reading Jack and the Beanstalk. After reading, we looked at our chart to see if this story would qualify as a fairy tale. We had a great discussion of good vs bad characters once again. Some of my friends felt that Jack was a good character because he was trying to help his mom and make her happy. Others felt that he was a bad character because he was stealing things that didn't belong to him. In the end the class decided he was in fact a "bad guy"and that only the mom and the man selling beans were the "good guys". The reasoning was that those two characters did not trick anyone, nor were they mean or doing bad things. Everyone agreed that Jack was naughty, but not necessarily all bad, so they asked me to write that he was "kind of a bad guy".

To retell this story we focusing on the different story elements. Each student created a small beanstalk and wrote about the different elements on each of the leaves (It's hard to see since it's done in pencil, sorry!):

For writing today, we started by reading a mixed up version of this fairy tale. We read a Texas style fairy tale that I just love: Wynetta and the Cornsalk.  Everyone LOVED the "country voices" that were used in the story! We briefly looked over our chart and determined that this was also in fact a fairy tale, even though it was a bit mixed up. We made a connection to this story in the form of a class book. Each student drew themselves climbing the beanstalk and wrote about what they would be willing to climb the beanstalk to get.

Fairy Tales: Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Today we read Goldilocks and the Three Bears. After reading we took a look at our fairy tail elements chart to see if this book fit our definition of a fairy tale. We had a great discussion about good vs bad characters in this story. Some of our friends thought that Goldilocks should be the good character since she was the main character, but many of them argued that she was actually very naughty, and therefore the bad character. After much debate, the class decided that Goldilocks was indeed the "bad guy" of the story, and the 3 bears were the "good guys".

Next, everyone made a little bear book to retell the story using the words first, next, then, and last. We can never get enough practice with this skill!

Fairy Tales: The Three Little Pigs

Today we continued our unit on fairy tales by reading The Three Little Pigs. Everyone loved this story because they could use the pig and wolf voices and help read aloud! After reading the book we looked at our chart to see if the story would qualify as a fairy tale based off of the characteristics:

Then we practiced retelling the story using beginning, middle, and end with this cute chain of pink pigs:

For writing today, we read a mixed up version of this fairy tale. We read The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark. After reading, we talked about how an author goes about making a mixed up fairy tale. Each student was then asked to brainstorm ideas for their very own mixed up version of this fairy tale. Goodness do we have some creative friends in this class!

Over the next week we are going to work on turning our ideas into our very own published versions of this fairy tale!

Fairy Tales: Little Red Riding Hood

This week we are learning about Fairy Tales! We started off the unit by discussing what makes a fairy tale special and what elements to look for in a story to determine if it is a fairy tale or not.

(sorry about the glare, I had this chart laminated)

Next, we read our first fairy tale: Little Red Riding Hood! After reading we filled out this chart to see which of the fairy tale elements were in the story. We determined that Little Red Riding Hood is in fact a fairy tale because it contains each of the 7 elements.

After that each student was able to create their own finger puppet play to practice retelling the story to their friends and family. We used paper bags to create the scenery: one side for the forest, the other side for the grandmother's bedroom.

Finally, everyone created these cute little finger puppets. Some of my friends were disappointed that there was not a finger puppet for the hunter in the story, so using scrap paper they created their own!

These should have come home yesterday in each student's folder. Ask your child to retell and act out the story for you tonight!

Valentine's Week

The week of Valentine's Day is always one of my most favorite weeks of the year! We started off our week by reading The Biggest Valentine Ever. This book is one in a series by Steven Kroll. Around Halloween we read The Biggest Pumpkin Ever so we were able to compare and contrast the two stories. This story is also a great one to teach author's purpose because it has a clear lesson. We talked about what the author's purpose meant and we discovered in this story the author was trying to tell us that when we work together we can often accomplish more than we can alone.

In the story, Clayton and Desmond work together to make a mouse shaped valentine for their teacher. As a connection to the story, we put together valentine bags by making heart shaped animals. I LOVE these!

Next we read Clifford's First Valentine's Day and practiced retelling the story elements on a chain of hearts.

On Valentine's Day, we read the book Valentine's Day by Gail Gibbons to learn a little bit about the history and symbols of the day. Everyone was very interested, and we learned a lot of new information. After reading, each student traced and cut out a large heart. Inside the heart they wrote 3 facts they learned about Valentine's Day:

Then, after getting their work checked by me, they flipped it over and used watercolors to paint the other side. These turned out great and are currently hanging in our hallway!

To get ready for our Valentine's Party, we put together these books:

During the party in the afternoon, students were able to open all the Valentine's from their friends. We talked about making sure to say thank you and actually read the valentine, not to just take the candy or prize and throw the rest away. To help the kids remember to do these, we used these books. As the opened a card from their bag they would read who it was from, say thank you, then glue it into the book. This makes sure they take the time to look at the valentine's and leaves students with a nice keepsake to take home.

I LOVE watching the kids open their valentines. All you can hear in the room is "THANK YOU ___" "THANK YOU ____" over and over. Melts my heart every time.

I loved spending the week with each of my 20 little Valentines!

Doctor DeSoto

February is dental health month, so we are spending a bit of time this week focusing on what dental health means. We opened up the topic yesterday by reading a fun book: Dr. DeSoto.

To make connections to this book, each student made a page for our class book using the patterned text: I am Doctor _____. I would work on a _____.

Some of my friends had such creative ideas and took the time to really think about the details in their pictures! (I was also happy to see how many of my friends knew how to spell their last names!)

Polar Bears in the Arctic

Last week we finished up a unit on penguins who live in the Antarctic, so this week we moved on to polar bears who live in the Arctic.

On Monday we read a nonfiction book about polar bears, and then did a little research about them on Pebblego.com. After reading, each student made a polar bear using construction paper, and wrote three facts they learned on it's body.  We learned a lot of interesting facts! For example, did you know a polar bear can swim up to 60 miles? Or that they build a snow den for the 2 babies they have at a time?

On Tuesday we learned a little bit more about the Arctic environment and the people who live there. We read the book Angela from the Arctic and then had  discussion about how her life is the same and different to ours. After the discussion, everyone made a double bubble comparing and contrasting their life to Angela's. We were surprised to learn that even though her daily life looks very different than ours, we have a lot of things in common with her as well. For example, we found we all love to eat pizza and watermelon!

On Wednesday we read Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear? This is a fun book because the kids pick up on the pattern pretty quickly and can help read along. After reading we brainstormed our own list of animals and the sounds they make. Each student completed a page for a class book by following the story pattern. They did such a nice job!

On Thursday we read a little more about life in the Arctic and the Inuit people. We had a discussion about their way of life and how it is very different than ours, but that doesn't make it bad, just different.  Each student put together an Inuit person and wrote 3 facts they learned on the body.

Friday we had a little fun and painted an arctic scene. We did this as a directed drawing, and as we drew each piece of the scene we reviewed what we had learned. Did you know it only takes two hours to build an igloo? Neither did we!

Penguins!

Sorry for the lack of updating; I've fallen a bit behind in the blog! I'm going to try to do a really quick catch up, then be more on top of it starting this week.

The last 2 weeks we studied Penguins. We read ALL of the Tacky the Penguin books (which everyone just LOVES) and we spent some time discussing character traits in regards to Tacky. As a connection between reading and writing, we wrote our very own Tacky stories. Each student was responsible for creating their own character like Tacky and following the story frame to write about their character. Each story told why their character was odd, what the problem was, how the friends tried to fix the problem, and finally how their original character did solve the problem. These turned out SO cute!  Here is an excellent example:

We finished off our penguin unit learning a bit of nonfiction information about penguins. We read a few books together, and did some research on pebblego.com. After learning about the different kinds of penguins, each student completed this worksheet as sort of a key to help them identify the different types:

The next day, they put their knowledge to use and created their own penguin. Each student had to choose one of the penguins we learned about and use construction paper to make that penguin. They were allowed to use their penguin "key" we made the day before as a reference. This was a fun project, but also a good assessment piece to see what they knew about how the different penguins looked.

Emperor Penguin

Macaroni Penguin

One more fun thing we did this week was measure ourselves against a life size picture of an Emperor penguin! We learned from pebblego.com that the Emperor is the largest of all the penguins, standing at about 4 feet tall. We taped our penguin to the back of the door and each student got to come up to see how they measured up.  We found that the Emperor penguin is about the same size as the average first grader! A few of us were a tiny bit taller or shorter, but most of us were almost the exact same size (well, except for me of course haha)! How exciting! Here you can see how we measure up as a class: