Week 16

-->
We had another excellent week!

Star of the week

Measuring activity

measuring activity

measuring lesson

measuring practice

measuring practice

new samurai!!

Christmas stockings the class made

Science experiment (you can kind of see the blue speckles on the leaves of the celery)

Funny Sayings from Kids: “You can spell grass, but never spell just a blank blank (a**). . .and only dads can say it.”

One of our stories this week was about a mom who got a new dress.  As a result of getting her new dress, the story ended with the mom giving the dad a kiss.  One student said, “When we read this for homework, that was my dad’s favorite part.”  Then he continued with, “And you should love that part too…but be sure to cover Charlie’s eyes when you kiss!”  (Charlie is our six month old.)

Since it was cold this week, I let students stay in, but only if they wanted to color or read at their desks.  To play they had to go outside.  However, if they had a note from their parents requesting them to stay in, they could play inside rather than read or color.  One student tried to be able to stay in by handing me this note in first grade handwriting: “Dear Mr. Smith.  I am sick.”

One student said, “I’m going to follow the destructions.”  (meaning instructions)

We did an experiment where celery soaks in blue dye from food coloring and water, and the celery begins to turn blue.  The leaves of the celery get spots at first, and the students began saying, “The celery has chicken pox!!”

Special Activities: This week we had Christmas Around the World.  Once a week this month our class will visit another first grade teacher to learn about Christmas in another country.  Students loved visiting Mrs. Bluemel’s class for that.

Students in the school have had good behavior rewarded with a link to add to our Urie Kindness Chain, which is looping its way through the hallway.  They’ve really enjoyed this reinforcement of positive behavior. 

Students had a sub one day, and that’s always a special activity for them! J

Academics: This week in math we learned about pairs, longest/shortest, and ordinal numbers (1^st 2^nd 3^rd 4^th . . .).  In writing this week we began introducing the combining of two sentences using a conjunction.  (“Wyatt runs, and he bikes” is sometimes better than always writing “Wyatt runs.  Wyatt bikes.”) Our reading and spelling focus was r blends (words with r as the second sound, like trash).  This week we added in words where r was the third letter but second sound, such as thrill.  In social studies, we did Christmas around the world, as explained above. In science, we began our class science fair project of seeing if our hands get stronger from doing a mini rubber band exercise.  We also watched an episode of Magic School Bus.