Welcome to first grade Spikey and Zander!

Well as most of you probably already know first grade got a couple new additions a few weeks ago. We brought in two Tiger Salamanders that Mrs. Mayer has had for a couple years. Those students in Mrs. Winn's Kindergarten last year had the opportunity to have these amphibians in their classroom, so its fun they can all enjoy them this year! We finally got around to naming them on Friday!

Our students each came up with a name for the salamanders, and then they each voted for their two favorite names! Down below you can see them graphing and tallying the results of their voting. I love when we can add in some additional math practice such as this! 

In the end, we had to have a tie breaking vote and our winners were...

Spikey and Zander!

We are glad to finally get that out of the way so we can start some serious learning about these guys! My favorite part of these two little guys is that they are sparking some serious learning! Free choice Friday is a favorite among all of our first graders, and these ambitious young ladies decided they wanting to do some investigating of their own before choosing an activity to play. 

I love how their named their study too! We will be putting this information down for everyone to see, and I hope we can continue this interest of learning!

Busy few weeks

Hey everyone! We have had a busy busy time in first grade the last few weeks. Getting ready to parent teacher conferences means getting grades done, assessments finished, and lots of organization. Thanks for sticking with us during that crazy time. I want to thank all the busy parents who had the opportunity to come for your child's conference. I'd say things in first grade are pretty awesome right now!

I have lots of halloween pictures to post, but I have to do some editing of some kindergarten faces who don't have permission to be on the blog! It will take me a bit to do that, but when I get that up and running I'll let you know!

Meanwhile, at the end of the quarter we always do an awards assembly to celebrate the great things happening in our classroom. I wasn't able to get pictures during the ceremony, but I got a whole group picture at the end! One of our parents took their award with them. Our elementary awards are open to parents, so I'll make sure to send out communication about that next time for those who want to attend.

Keep looking out for more fun updates from first grade!

You can handle our apples!

First graders have finally wrapped up their first major investigation of the year. What better topic to start off with than apples?

We started our investigation by doing a bit of apple tasting and looking at the parts of an apple. We did some experiments to see if apples floated or not and what items were more or less weight than an apple, wrote apple poems, and looked at the life cycle of an apple and an apple tree. We've really enjoyed doing this project.

We finished our apple investigation by making homemade applesauce (YUMMY!) and making giant apples and writing adjectives about them. These kiddos sure have learned a lot about apples and practiced being scientists at the same time!

Here are some highlights of our apple investigation.

We have moved our science focus to animals now and what better way to stay in that unit theme than by doing an investigation on an animal. I'll give you a hint on what spooky animal we will be starting this week. 

This is a unique type of mammal

As its webbed wings mean that it can fly

They can find their way using echoes

For flying in both caves and the sky

Think you have it? Well keep a look out for updates on this project. We aren't waiting til the end to post about this one! Check out the photos page for updated links to some more recent photos and to check out all the photos from this investigation!

Busy, busy, busy!

First off I'd like to apologize. I have not been doing a great job of keeping up with the blog lately. The last couple of weeks have been a bit busy around here, but I'll work on trying to update more often. Thank you for stick around with us. 

It is October finally and we've done some work to make our classroom a little bit more festive. 

We wrote our acrostic poems on leaves. 

Our class is working hard to settle into our new schedule. They are loving the small group center time we do during reading. I have to say I've had some disappointed first graders when time is up for small group centers. Luckily for them, they get some of this in math too!

As we move into our short week this week, I'll be posting some of the fun spooky projects we have been finishing and starting on. They are just loving first grade during October. Have to admit this is my favorite month of the year and I really try to go all out!

At the beginning of October, we had the opportunity to start off our spooky projects with practicing tally marks. We used bones (q-tips) and monster eye balls (google eyes) to represent numbers 1-20. Each child got to choose four number and then build them. They LOVED this! Success! We even got to listen to some spooky music while we worked. It is times like this that I really love my job. Here are our photos from that activity. 

Yesterday we had another group of students get to cash in their yellow tag coupons for another shot at the big prize box! I'm glad to say we are growing our numbers! We even have a few that were able to earn the prize box two times in a row! WOW!

All in all, first grade has been filled with tons of fun and learning. We are ready for this short week coming up!

Its been awhile!

It really has been a while since we've had anything to post. We've been really busy with homecoming week and getting used to a new classroom routine.

I wasn't able to take many pictures during Homecoming week since it is such a busy week. I want to thank all the grandparents and parents who came to Grandparents Day! Your children really had fun showing off their classroom and knowledge.

We did manage to get some photos on twin day! I even added a picture of my twin.

 

This Friday we had our first students get to pick from the big prize box. Congratulations to these awesome young ladies for having such positive behavior in the classroom. They are really role models! 

Well now we really are scientists!

A few weeks ago I posted about our class working on becoming scientists. They had started looking at what scientists are. As we've continued our investigations on how to become scientists, we have had to discuss what scientists do and how do they get their job done. We created these nifty foldables to help us learn all about the tools that scientists use. We will continue to learn about scientists and how they do their jobs.

Well through the help of a very determined past parent of first grade, we were able to take being scientists one step further and look the part! 

Let me introduce to you, our first grade scientists!

This was one of the best surprises that this group has had all year! I think it will really motivate them to work hard as scientists and take their learning far! Go check out the rest of our photos as scientists on the photo page! 

I need a brain break!

Well, I'm finally am to start posting again. We just finished a very hard week in first grade. We had good days and we had bad days. Our group is really learning how to work together as a classroom family/team. When one succeeds, we all succeed. When we fail, we all feel that fail. Tomorrow starts a brand new week, and I just know that we can get these class procedures and expectations down!

One way we help ourselves during the day is to take brain breaks. These quick activities are exactly what they seem, a break for our brains to stop learning and process what we've just heard. Go Noodle is a favorite of our class! If you haven't checked it out, please do!

I took some videos of these silly kids dancing to a just dance video. Sometimes they really get into it! 

Thank you for your patience as our class learns how to be first graders. It is challenging, but this group of bright first graders can do it!