Counting Higher Numbers

Today students worked on counting and writing numbers accurately.  Students created their own number lines. We looked for patterns in our number lines.

Guess How Many?

During our math time we having been working on estimating and counting larger numbers.  Today students had the chance to estimate how many tiles it would take to cover the area of their shoe!  We had a great time counting and comparing our shoe data!  Ask your child how many tiles it took to cover their footprint!

Holidays Around the World!

Our first stop on our world tour is in the country of Israel!  We landed here on Thursday and had a chance to celebrate Hannukah! We enjoyed a special guest reader, thanks Rich, and everyone had fun playing the dreidel game!  

We also enjoyed learning a few fun facts about the country of Israel.  Did you know children there go to school 6 days a week?  We also learned all about the Dead Sea.  Ask your child why they call it that?

Newsletter

Snowy Day Writing!

Today in first grade we started our winter writing projects.  We started out by reading The Snowy Day and having a class discussion about the story.  Then we made a storyboard sketch of our own winter stories.  Each child planned their beginning, middle and end of their story.  We look forward to writing our bold beginnings soon!

Turkey Math

Today first graders put their math facts to work by creating turkey math.  Students made a fact wheel on a festive turkey.  They chose a number to put in the center of their turkey and then made an equation with their number on each feather!  Gobble, gobble! Have a great Thanksgiving break.

Buy, Produce, Sell

Today our first graders finished their collaborative posters on the farming buy, produce, sell cycle.  Students worked in teams of 4 to create a poster that represented one of these 4 types of farms: Apple, Pumpkin, Vegetable or Dairy.  Students then presented their poster to our class as a group.  Each team member had to present at least one part.  Ask your child which farm poster they worked on!

Newsletter 11/15

Dot Addition

Today in math students played a fun partner game called Dot Addition.  Students had to use common dot patterns to create equations. Look how many we came up with!

Digraph Dectectives!

Today during literacy students worked on fluency, trick words and digraphs. We read a silly story called Cod Fish.  Then students got to "mark it up". They searched for digraphs and trick words! Ask your child to tell you a word that has a digraph in it.

4 Winds

Today we learned all about camoflouge during 4 Winds.  Students got to make camoflouge posters.  Can you find the hidden pieces?

Next, we got to go outside and pretend we were little birds searching for pretend worms.  We learned that bright worms were much easier to find than the darker worms.  

CSA Farm Share Vegetable Soup

Finally our Farm Share arrived!

First we sorted our vegetables and decided which ones should go in our soup.

Then we got busy washing, peeling and chopping!

We put everything in the crockpot to simmer for the day. While our soup bubbled and cooked, we made our Growing Vegetable Soup collages.  

Our artwork is hanging in the hallway! Stop by and check it out! We ended our day with a delicious soup tasting.  14 out 15 students loved our CSA Farm Share vegetable soup!

Spooky Math

Today we had a spooky math time in first grade.  Students made Halloween Math books by counting combinations of mini ghosts and pumpkins.  Then they wrote an equation to match their picture.

Guess My Rule

Today in math first graders learned all about the attributes of shapes.  We practiced describing and grouping like shapes.  To finish our math time, students played a game called Guess My Rule!  In this game, one student grouped shapes by one attribute while their partner tried to guess how they grouped them! We had a few tough rules to guess! Each group picked their favorite rule and made a poster of it. Way to go!

CSA Farm Share is coming...

We are learning all about vegetable farms this week in our class. Farmer's Markets and CSA farm shares are a great way for small farmers to sustain their business.  It has been great to hear our class discuss how important fresh fruits and vegetables are for them. They had great ideas about why buying local produce is great when you can. Today we ordered a pretend farm share.  It will be delivered Friday! We can't wait to see what delicious vegetables come in our box!

Friday Letters

Our first Friday Letters will be coming home tomorrow!  These notebooks are a great way to hear about what is happening at school! They are also a great way to see your child progress as a writer throughout the year.  Even if you cannot make sense of the sentence your child has written, ask them to read you what it says!  They can share things they enjoyed about our week at school. 

Please take a minute to write back to your child in the journal and return it by the next Friday! The kids love getting your messages!

Thank you for your support! 

Whitcomb Farm

Today our class traveled to the Whitcomb Farms Pumpkins Patch! We learned more about the pumpkin life cycle and how pumpkin farms operate. 

Did you know that farmers in Vermont often barter with other farmers?  At Whitcomb Farm they share their blooming pumpkin plants with a local bee farmer!  They get pollinated flowers and the bee farmer gets delicious honey!  

Here are a few pictures from today!

This pumpkin weighs 751 pounds!

Behind Mary Whitcomb you can see a few of the pumpkins they sell!  We liked the Gooseneck and the Cinderella varieties!

In the corn maze!