"I Love to Read" Month

February is "I Love to Read" month. As most of you probably already know, this year's theme is "Driven to Read." There is a huge display in the front entrance recording the minutes that kids are reading at home and at school, as reported on their weekly reading calendars. Our class is doing OK, although we need more calendars returned to put us ahead of the other first grade classes. The kids also each decorated their own car. Look for your young drivers in the hall during conference time!

"Start your engines! READ, READ, READ!"

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day is a favorite holiday for first graders. They love sharing messages and candy with friends, and getting all that mail is great!

Wow - Look at all the stuff! Everyone made special heart "pockets" to hold all of the valentines. We are learning about alphabetical order, so the pockets were taped to the chalk board in order by first names. Half the fun is passing out all the goodies - just like the post office! I forgot to get a picture of the wall of hearts. The kids were too anxious to get started!

Finally, it's time to open ....
find the candy....
and read the messages!
It's a big job packing everything up and getting it home.
Thanks, everyone, for all the great valentines!

January Students of the Month

It's Students of the Month time again!

Congratulations to some great listeners and spellers!

100th Day of School

Wow! We've been in school for 100 days already! We celebrated on Friday by doing lots of activities involving counting to 100. Everyday during calendar time, we put a stick in a little box for the day. When we get to 10, we make a bundle and put it in the ten's box. Yesterday, we had 9 bundles of 10 and 9 single sticks (99), so today, when we added our stick, we got to ten bundles of ten. We had to put them all together to make a bundle of 100! That's a lot of sticks!

We started the day by making a "100" headband to wear all day.

We all brought in collections of 100 small objects. During Math, we counted our objects into 10 groups of 10. It was kind of tempting to eat a few of these Reece's Pieces!



Q-tips were easy to count, and weren't so tempting to eat!

Chocolate chips made some yummy piles, too.

The smallest objects were little tiny staples - they were tricky to count!

All done -100 pieces of pasta!

During Reading, we heard stories about the 100th day of school. We talked about the different ways to make 100 (2 groups of 50, 4, groups of 25, 5 groups of 20, and 10 groups of 10) and then we practiced reading 100 words. We had 20 kids in class today, so we each got to put words on 5 hearts. Then we grouped the hearts into 10 rows of 10 words. All of the hearts are up in the hall for everyone to read!

We also sang some songs, made a book, and watched a Reading Rainbow called "How Much is a Million?". Now, that's a really big number! And we thought counting to 100 was a lot!

Activity Centers

During our morning Language Arts time, the kids have an independent work time, a literacy group time with me, and an activity center time. Centers are used to practice skills through manipulatives, games, art projects, writing activities, and books. Everyone has a center buddy for the week, and we rotate through five different centers, one each day. The centers are changed about once a month, but one things stays the same - there are always good books to read!

We are currently learning about shelters, so at one of the centers we can use Lincoln Logs to construct a house like people might have lived in a long time ago.

In the book corner, we can choose a good book to read, listen to a tape, or write a story.

At the manipulatives center we can build with Legos, use pattern blocks to make designs, or constuct interesting shapes using plastic straws.

We are also learning about our country, so at the Social Studies center, we can do a puzzle of the USA, read a book, or make a silhouette of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

We will be celebrating the 100th day of school on Friday, so at the Math Center, we can choose a variety of activities to practice counting to 100, including Chutes and Ladders, a 100 puzzle board, an estimating activity, and lots of books.

Centers are a favorite part of the day - we have the chance to work cooperatively with a partner, make choices, and READ, READ, READ!!