Week 14

We had another great week!

Samurai reader

Student working with magnets

Student with "inside a blow dryer" experiment

Samurai reader

Student drawing during indoor recess

Student drawing during indoor recess

Martin the Moose hiding for our writing project, explained above

Samurai reader

Funny Sayings from Kids: We learned about the word “tannenbaum” which means Christmas tree in German.  A few students couldn’t understand that it was “tannenbaum” not “cannon bomb.”

A student gave me an interesting reminder: “Don’t forget to put that away, or the janitor might fire you!”

Some students had been learning “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” in a choir.  A few were telling me about it.  One part says “…let nothing you dismay.”  They said, “…let nothing you display.”   

Special Activities: This week we began Christmas Around the World.  Once a week our class will visit another first grade teacher to learn about Christmas in another country.  Students loved visiting Mrs. Sandlian to learn about Christmas in Sweden this week.   

Academics: This week in math we learned some tricks to adding by 9 and 10.  We also reviewed evens, telling time to the hour, In writing this week we learned about adding where into sentences.  (They don’t just write “He runs.”  They write “He runs by the pond.” To practice this, we hid a stuffed animal moose.  They have to find Martin the Moose each day and write a sentence about where he was hiding.  Our reading and spelling focus was l blends (words with l as the second sound, like slap).  In social studies, we did Christmas around the world, as explained above. In science, we learned some about magnets.  They got to explore with magnets, including what magnets stick to and how they repel.  We also got to see how an electromagnet works by looking at the inside of a broken blow dryer.