Mercer Slough

We went to the Mercer Slough on Friday in Bellevue.  Our day consisted of a nature walk and investigating wetland creatures in the lab.  We found all kinds of bugs, tadpoles, and fish!

There are more pictures if you select read more!

Family Groups

We had our first family groups yesterday! This is a time for students to meet with a mixed grade group and do activities.  The family groups stay the same year to year, so the students get a chance to really get to know each other.  I love family groups because it gives the older students a chance to step up to plate and help the younger students.  It also makes the middle schoolers seem less "scary" and helps students get to know more teachers and kids at our school.  

All we did yesterday was get to know each other and do some ice breaker type activities.  Each teacher chose their own activity, but I decided to do a superhero creation.  I had each student draw their superhero's costume, give their hero a name, and pick their power.  Then we went around and shared our superheroes.  It was really fun!

Next month we are carving pumpkins!

Toymaker

My favorite assembly and visitor we have all year is the toymaker! Rick Hartman is an inventor and shows the kids about all kinds of simple toys made out of wood and materials found around the house.  We attended a whole school assembly on Monday and then got to have our own workshop to make a toy today.  The kids LOVE this assembly and it's fun to see them using the tools and making everything themselves. 

The Little White Owl

There's a great book called The Little White Owl by Tracey Corderoy.  Reading this book leads to discussions about kind words, including everyone in activities and what it means to be a good friend.

After reading the book, we started a chart on what it means to be a good friend.  We needed to get up and move around, so the discussion will be continued later so more items can be added to our chart!

Finally, we painted our own unique owls using paper plates.  They turned out so cute! Later we will write out some words and phrases that good friends would say and add them to the board. 

Curriculum Night

In case you weren't able to make it, here is the presentation that we give during curriculum night! 

You can watch it all here:

Lean and Tell, Turn and Talk

We practiced how to share with a partner last week during our shared reading time.  Lean and tell is when we have a quick answer to a question and turn and talk is when we move our bodies to face each other when an answer to a question is more than a couple words.  

Sometimes their concentrated faces are so serious...I swear they're having fun! ;)

Science Unit: Trees

We are starting our FOSS kit on Wood, Paper, and Trees! Today was our introduction to the unit, so we....

looked at pinecones, wood pieces and leaves with magnifying glasses,

made leaf rubbings,

and built with fun branches and pieces of cut wood. 

At the end of our exploration, we made this chart to document what we know about trees and want to learn about trees. When the unit is over, we will fill in all the things we learned about trees onto the chart!

  

Zero the Hero

We celebrated our 10th day of school yesterday by having a surprise visit from Zero the Hero! First we read The Story of Zero the Hero.  Then, we listened to the Zero Song by Heidisongs and learned the dance that goes with it. The rest of our activities included making Zero the Hero puppets, practicing counting by 10's and sorting lots of lots of lids (shaped like 0). I was so impressed with their lid sorting, the whole carpet was filled with lids sorted by color!

Dot Day

Yesterday was International Dot Day based on the book The Dot by Peter Reynolds.  

We celebrated by making our own dot day hats using dot markers and we got to meet our second grade buddies! We decorated our own dots with our buddies and then used an awesome app called colAR to turn our dots into 3D pictures.  

Pete the Cat

We do a lot of Pete activities in our classroom! On Friday, I introduced the class to graphing by choosing our favorite Pete the Cat books.  We read 5 different Pete books over a few days, decorated shoes, then posted them above our favorite books.  It gave us a chance to have some great conversation about which book had the most and least votes. We also did some counting together and talked about graphing.  

One of our first day of school activities was making these paper Pete the Cats, they look awesome hanging in the hallway! 

Mini Books

A couple times a month, we make a class book together.  It usually follows a predictable pattern or has a fun tune to sing during reading.  I love making these because every student can read them and they become their favorite books in the library because it's their own work inside.  This year I had the genius idea to make paper mini versions of our class books.  I just print 4 pages to a sheet, cut, and staple the pages together.  This way, every student can have their own copy to put in their book boxes to look at during reading time.  The students are able to bring their mini books home with them when they are reading to replace it in their book box. 

Here is a sample page from our Pete, Pete, Who do you see? book. 

Listening Center

One of my favorite ways to use the iPad is for our listening center.  I have a couple apps that I use on a regular basis including One More Story and Millie Books.  I like to have the students listen to books together in a group rather than giving them each their own individual iPad.  Sharing the iPad helps them discuss the story better and voice their opinions to the group easier because they all experienced it at the same time.  When we finish the story, we rate the book and draw our favorite part.  This helps them develop their reading comprehension skills by working on forming opinions and retelling their favorite parts in stories.  

For the first month, these stations are monitored by the teacher but soon this station will become independent so I can work with small groups on reading.  I made these stands that I can interchange with different activity directions, this really helps them learn how to be independent.  Here is what the directions look like for the listening station. 

Pete the Cat Sorting

Since we've been reading lots of Pete the Cat books, I thought it would be fun to sort our shoes in math after reading I Love My White Shoes.  We took all of our shoes off and put them in the middle of the carpet.  Then we took turns picking two shoes and giving a reason why they were the same.  We did the same thing with how two shoes were different.  After that we did some rounds of making piles of shoes around the room of shoes with velcro vs. laces, blue shoes vs. other colors, sandals vs. tennis shoes and more.  It was a fun way to do some interactive sorting in math! 

Then we sorted a bunch of buttons! Also Pete related from My Four Groovy Buttons!

Pillowcases

During our open house, we send the students home with a special pillowcase with all of the first words we will learn on them.  We do the heart word sets from Nellie Edge, so the pink and purple sets are printed on the pillowcases.  This year we decided to print onto iron on transfer paper and iron the words on.  We also send the kids home with a special poem to read the night before school starts!