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!

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!)

Back from Break

On Tuesday we were busy busy busy getting back into the swing of things. It was so great to see all the smiling faces  bouding into the classroom.

We spent a bit of time in the morning reviewing some of our rules and expectations in the classroom. After spending a few weeks away from school it never hurts to do a bit of review. We got right to work on our new reading unit. This week we are reading stories about the season winter. We started off with a classic: The Mitten by Jan Brett. Many of the kids in the class had heard the story before and wanted to help participate in the reading. After the story we practiced retelling as a class. Then each student set to work creating their own mitten and animals to use as puppets when telling this story. They should have brought those home already, so ask them to retell the story to you!

Our writing project involved writing something about our winter break. We put together this cute person in a snowsuit, and used the handwriting page to write a sentence or two about our break. They turned out really cute:

On Wednesday we read a different version of The Mitten. This one was written by Jim Aylesworth. As a class we created a double bubble to compare and contrast the two versions of the story. Everyone was really excited to see how the stories had the exact same idea but each author added their own creative touch to make the story their own.

Next we talked a little bit about New Year's resolutions. I was very impressed with how much they know about resoutions. One student told us it was "like making a promise to yourself to do something that year" and another chimed in "yeah, and the promise is to do something to make yourself a better person." I couldn't have said it better myself. We did some brainstorming about things we could resolve to do this year and then everyone wrote their own resolution. We finished off this lesson by creating these super cute party people!

On Thursday we did a visualizing activity using the book Owl Moon. I read the story aloud without showing the pictures, and as I read each student used a piece of blank paper to draw what they saw in their head. After reading, we looked at the pictures in the book to see how the illustrator interpreted the story, then we looked at some of our artwork to see how it was alike and different. We realized that while everyone had a lot of the same ideas, no two pictures were exactly the same.

For writing, we made a flip book for the new year. Under each flap students had to write finish each of the following statements:
- Last year I learned....
- This year I want to learn ....
- My favorite part of last year was ...
- This year I hope to ...

 This one made my heart smile! "This year I hope to... stay with my teacher". So sweet! :)

Yesterday we finished off the unit reading Snowmen at Night. We made connections to the story by writing about what we would do if we were snowmen at night. After they completed the writing portion of this project, we made these cute snowmen using tiny pieces of cut paper. I love how they turned out!

Q-Tip Paintings

Today we finished up our mini unit on the season fall.

We began our day by reading There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves. I just LOVE this series of books. They have one for just about everything. The kids love them because they pick up on the patterned text quickly and enjoy reading aloud with me.

After the story we worked on our retelling skills. Each student folded a piece of paper into fourths and used the front and back to number the boxes from 1-8. In each box they were asked to write a sentence telling what the old lady swallowed and draw a mini picture. We focused on our sequencing words and they had to use first, next, then, and last.

As students finished up their retelling they got to begin working on a fun fall tree painting. I found this idea on Pinterest, but the original idea came from La Classe Della Maestra Valentina.

First students used a circle tracer to lightly trace the outline of the top of the tree. Then they had to use crayon or marker to draw the trunk, a few stems, and the grass below the tree. When that was completed they used q-tips and tempra paint to add dots to the tree as fall leaves. Some decided to have some leaves falling down as well. Everyone had a lot of fun with this!  I was cracking up at their comments about the q-tips. "Ms. McCormack! These are for ears, not for painting!" "Ms. McCormack, have these q-tips been used before?!?" hahaha

 Next week is going to be a super exciting week in first grade! Stay tuned!

Autumn

This week we have been studying the season fall. It seems a little out of place to do this unit so late, but since Thanksgiving fell so early this year we sort of had to squeeze it in when there was time.

We found that PebbleGo was a GREAT nonfiction resource to help us study this season. Each day this week we read one section on PebbleGo. After reading, we practiced retelling facts as a class and then each student was asked to record 3 facts on a special leaf shaped paper and illustrate. Yesterday, we completed our last page, created a cover, and stapled it all together to make a book.

A Pilgrim's Life

Sorry I've been so behind on updating the last 2 weeks. I promise I'll be better after the holiday this week. Is anyone else as ready for a break as I am?!?

After we learned about Squanto at the beginning of the week, we took some time to learn about the life of a pilgrim boy and girl. We read Samuel Eaton's Day and Sarah Morton's Day, which take the children through the daily chores a Pilgrim child would have been expected to complete. After reading each book the students were asked to write a short paragraph describing what the child had to do first, next, then, and last. Then we made cute little Pilgrim boy and girl faces to go on the top, just like our Squantos from earlier in the week.

Everyone was surprised to learn what a hard life the Pilgrim children had and how hard they had to work from such a young age. This led to a discussion of things that we are thankful to have in our own lives that the Pilgrims may not have been so lucky to have had. On Friday we created a huge list of ideas of things we are thankful for, then each of my friends created a square to add to our I'm Thankful Quilt. On their square they had to list things they were thankful for in each box and then color the pieces to make it beautiful like a quilt square. Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a picture of one of these. I'll see if I can take one today and post it later this evening.

Today, I am thankful that it is only a 2 day week! We have some fun Thanksgiving activities planned for the next 2 days to keep everyone busy before the extra long weekend!

Apples!

Sorry I've been MIA from the blog the past week. Wednesday I left straight from school to head to the airport for the Reading Recovery conference in Dallas and it's taken me a few days to get back into the swing of things. Here is a quick catch up of what we have been working on:

On Wednesday we used Pebblego.com to do some research on apples. We learned about the different parts of the apple and made these cute apples with labels to show each part:

On Thursday the students read Apples by Gail Gibbons with the substitute. After reading they had to make a flow map showing the stages of an apple tree, then they made an apple using construction paper and recorded 3 facts they learned from the book.

On Friday they read some more nonfiction books about apples, practiced retelling facts, then made these cute tear art apples:

When I got back on Monday I found a great report left by the sub! I'm so proud of everyone for working so hard and showing the sub such respect. :)