Holidays Around the World

This week was been focused on studying holidays all around the world. We talked about how some people celebrate different holidays with their families because they are from different countries and have different religions. This is a great time to share our cultures with one another. It's so interesting to learn new things about each of our students and their families each year.

Monday, we learned about Hanukkah. Our class read The Count's Hanukkah Countdown which I had picked up at the book fair this year. Being a Sesame Street lover, I just couldn't resist! The kids loved the story. It taught about the history of the holiday as well as some of the celebrations people have. Then we researched the holiday on PebbleGo, too. We were happy that we had our background schema so we could understand PebbleGo more easily! After we were done, we created handprint menorahs. I found them on Dr. Jean's website. She is a fabulous resource for teachers! Then the students wrote down facts they had learned about Hanukkah.

We also learned about Kwanzaa this week. We researched the holiday on PebbleGo and learned quite a bit of good information! We used our new knowledge to write some sentences about the holiday, then we created a beautiful Kwanzaa quilt. Since the kids have already woven with Ms. Carney in art class, they had a pretty easy time. I was very impressed! Usually weaving is ridiculously difficult, but we powered through it and helped one another! I must say that I am extremely grateful to have a class full of helpers. They'd rather help each other finish projects than go to Free Daily 5. What a blessing!

We also learned about Christmas around the world, researching on PebbleGo once again! (It never gets old!!!) I told the students about how the tradition of wreaths started in England. We found England on a map and made connections to the Pilgrims and how that's where they came from! Very exciting. Then the students created wreath ornaments to take home and hang up on their trees, windows, or doors. These are absolutely beautiful!

Our class also traveled to Mexico to learn about how they celebrate Christmas there, too. We read The Legend of the Poinsettia and talked about Las Posadas. Then we created our own poinsettias by tracing our hands. We were very interested to learn that the red part of the plant is actually leaves!

Friday was all about Christmas in Germany. We read Cobweb Christmas and learned about the tradition of tinsel. This is a wonderful story about a little old woman who had a Christmas tree in her house. One Christmas Eve, Kriss Kringle lets the spiders back into her home to see her beautiful tree. When they're climbing around her tree, they leave cobwebs everywhere. Kriss Kringle turns the cobwebs into silver and gold tinsel. We learned that many German families even place spider ornaments on their trees! I also taught the kids about another German tradition of the pickle ornament. Parents hide one pickle ornament on their tree. Whichever child finds the ornament first will get an extra present from Kriss Kringle. We made our own pickle ornaments and are hoping Santa might leave us an extra gift! :)

We also made nutcrackers. I had seen this idea on Pinterest and loved it! Using toilet paper rolls and construction paper, we put together our nutcrackers after we read the story as a class. Since first grade won a popcorn party for bringing the most toys in for Toys for Tots (yay!) we also got to watch Carebears Nutcracker movie, too. We had a great Friday!

We were such busy bees this week! We also researched reindeer on PebbleGo and learned another name for them is caribou! We talked about adjectives and created Bubble Maps for candy canes after reading Gingerbread Mouse which is a very cute story about a little mouse who moves into a gingerbread house. We also created a couple class books and will be working on more next week, too!

I am very excited for next week. I can't wait for the holiday party and sing-along on Friday! :)

Field Trip!!!

Today was one of my FAVORITE days of the entire year! We went to Dewberry Farm!!! The purpose of our field trip is to help build schema for our writing. While a lot of kids know what the different farm animals are, they don't always get a chance to see them up close and personal. The trip (as always) was AWESOME! We got to see farm animals, corn fields, pumpkin patches, hay rides, and all kinds of other great things. I wish I could post all the pictures of the kiddos that I took. I'm sure you're going to hear all about it tonight!

Thank you to all the parents who came out to volunteer and chaperone. We really couldn't have done it without your help! You were rock stars!!! :)

Now I'm off to take a nap because I am exhausted!!! Have a wonderful weekend!

Pumpkins galore!

This week was all about pumpkins. We love celebrating the fall, and the weather has been pretty lovely for it! We're focusing on nonfiction texts right now, so we're learning all about pumpkins and harvests.

We activated our schema and talked about all the things we knew about pumpkins already. Then we read about pumpkin harvests on PebbleGo. The kids were in charge of making their own Circle Maps to brainstorm all the things they knew about pumpkins. We were very excited to learn that they can be blue, red, and even green! They can also weigh as much as a cow. Yowza!

Wednesday was Pumpkin Day in first grade. We had such a wonderful time! This is always one of my favorite days in the whole year. Seeing how excited the kids get is one of the highlights of teaching kids at this age.

We read Seed to Pumpkin and talked about the pumpkin's life cycle. We even learned a new word photosynthesis. These kiddos really love to learn new vocabulary! We were excited to learn that the pumpkin's life goes on and on and on!

We also created Bubble Maps for our class pumpkin. We talked about adjectives that would describe the pumpkin in detail. We worked on helping another person visualize our pumpkin without actually being there. After the students made their bubble maps and wrote corresponding sentences, they were able to paint a pumpkin picture with their watercolors. They worked so hard, and these really came out beautifully!

We ended up doing a Brace Map for the parts of a pumpkin. The kids really understood that you are taking a whole object and breaking it down into its important parts. This tied in wonderfully to the book we had read as well as to PebbleGo!

We did a Sink or Float experiment with our tiny pumpkins, too! The kids were so excited to hypothesize and do their experiments. We talked about why some pumpkins float and why others don't. Everyone concluded that if there is more air inside and less pulp, the pumpkin must float! One of our friends even hypothesized that the shape must have something to do with it, too. If a pumpkin has a wide, flat bottom them it's more likely to float on the water like a boat! These kids really use their higher-level thinking!

Since we've learned that one way to use pumpkins is to carve them into jack-o-lanterns, I went ahead and carved the pumpkin while the kids were working hard all day. We read a couple "spooky" stories by the "pumpkin light." It was a great way to end the day and get excited for Halloween!

Thursday ended up being Pumpkin Day Part II. :) We were SO busy the day before that we didn't end up doing a lot of the fun activities. I wanted the kiddos to experience all the greatness that Pumpkin Day is, so we added an extra day!

The students compared their mini pumpkins with another student's in class. We talked about color, shape, and they measured their pumpkins using cubes. It was a great way to work as a team and have fun while secretly learning! :)

We also talked about visualizing and comprehension again. We talked about the importance of understanding what we read and making pictures in our heads. While I read The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything, the kids visualized and drew pictures of what was happening in the story. We used the pictures to create a little book to practice retelling. This is a really fun book, and I love using it on Pumpkin Day. They love seeing everything turn into a scarecrow!

Another one of my favorite books for Pumpkin Day is Spookly the Square Pumpkin. This story has a wonderful message of acceptance and not judging a book by its cover. The kids always enjoy it and really take the message to heart. After reading the story, we did a fun math connection to it. The students created their own pumpkin patch part-part-wholes. Then they filled in the parts with fun pumpkins, inspired by the book! We wrote fact families for our part-part-whole pictures.

At the end of the day, we played Pumpkin Bingo. This is always a HUGE hit (for obvious reasons!), and I find that it's a great way to teach vocabulary and tie into reading and phonics. We were definitely using our schema while we played! This was a great way to end off our pumpkin extravaganza.

Tomorrow is our field trip, and I could NOT be more excited! I wish the weather were a bit cooler, but what can you do? This is Texas after all. :) We're going to have a blast!!!

Fires, spiders, and other things :)

This week, we finished up studying fire safety. We'd colored our firemen last week but had run out of time. We read Firefighters on Raz-Kids as a class and then discussed all the things firefighters do for us. The students created their own tree maps for firefighters. They used the tree maps to write sentences about their firemen. This was the first time that the students were responsible for their very own words in their tree maps. I was so impressed by how well they listened and could follow directions for writing their sentences! They really did a wonderful job.

We also created Thinking Maps for fall. We discussed our schema (yay we remembered the word!) and I asked them to do a Circle Map, or a Tree Map if they wanted to challenge themselves. They really turned out great! These kiddos really understand Thinking Maps, and they seem to enjoy them. We are understanding that they help us to organize our thinking so that we can better understand these topics.

We also talked about spiders this week. With Halloween around the corner, it's always fun to incorporate a little bit of scary things into our schedule. :) We read Itsy Bitsy Spider one day and talked about our sequencing words to retell the story. The kids were very excited to learn all the new verses in the song. We made connections to the character by having a discussion of what we would do if we were the spider. Would we keep trying hard to climb up things or would we just go home and take a nap? :) We got some pretty funny answers.

We also researched spiders on PebbleGo and used the information we learned to create a Tree Map as a class. I made a SmartExchange tree map so that the kids could actually manipulate the words themselves. We used our Airliner to move the words on the screen. It was the first time that I've let the kiddos use this form of technology, and I was SO proud of how well they did. They truly listened to the rules and were very gentle with everything. Basically, the Airliner is connected to the computer wirelessly so it can be used like a remote pad to control the computer. The kids can hold it anywhere in the room to manipulate the mouse on the computer. It's very fun, very hands-on, and very tech-savvy! :) Then I had the kids make their own tree maps and write sentences about spiders. It was a great activity full of learning and hard work!

We also made scarecrows for long a week. Then we wrote stories about what we would do if we were scarecrows. The kids had a fun time coming up with creative things that they would do if they were scarecrows. I was also proud of how they colored really well. We did a whole lesson on tracing and coloring in the lines, so I'm seeing hard workers doing their best!

After the kids did such a great job with the Airliner, I wanted to incorporate it more throughout the day. In math groups one day, we worked on subtraction stories and identifying numbers on a ten-frame. What a fun way to integrate technology throughout our day!

We created sun dioramas and researched the sun on PebbleGo as well. We used our information to help us study light and heat for our science lessons. I'm glad that the kids love PebbleGo so much. It really is a wonderful resource. The first grade teachers actually wrote a grant last year so that we could purchase it for our school because we love it so much! :)

To finish off our week, we read There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. No matter how many times anyone has read this book, it's always a riot. To practice retelling the story, we made an old lady puppet using a paper sack, and we colored our different animals to "feed" her. We found the song online so of course we had to have a couple sing-alongs. We then made a Double-Bubble Thinking Map to compare TWAOLWSAF to There Was An Old Monster that we'd read during monster week. The kids did another wonderful job, of course!

We also got another extra recess on Friday! Our class won the sticker competition for the week again. I was so proud of them, so we got to enjoy the beautiful weather. :)