Introducing Kevin Henkes!

Have you ever heard of Chrysanthemum, Owen, Lily, Wendell, or Sophie? These are just a few of the amazing characters created by Kevin Henkes! We are so excited to embark on this new Author Study :). If you click on the picture of Kevin Henkes above it will take you straight to his website. There you can learn more about his amazing books :).

Our Sunshine Band will start their week with "Making Connections" to Kevin Henkes' books. We will learn that good readers activate their prior knowledge and experiences when reading books. When a reader "connects" to the text with their own personal experience; we call this a "Text-to-Self Connection" . We will begin our connection journey with the tale of Chrysanthemum.

In the book, Chrysanthemum, our students will learn the story behind the main character's name. We may be reminded of how we got our names or nicknames just like Chrysanthemum. Our memories brought alive by this particular story event is what we call a "Text-to-Self Connection"! Practice making a "Text-to Self Connection" with your student. Think together about when their name was decided...just like the day when Chrysanthemum's name was chosen for her! Click on the picture of Chrysanthemum above,listen to the story, and make connections together :).

Happy Valentine's...Happy Presidents' Day!

We hope you have had a wonderful weekend as a family! We had a great time as a class on Friday. The Sunshine Band made strawberry floats and exchanged notes of friendship and appreciation for each other!

We also learned that two of our former Presidents have their birthday this month and that is why we had such a long weekend! We hope that you have enjoyed your day as much as we have and are ready for this week. Check out our next post to learn more about our new Author Study... Starting tomorrow!!!

Milestones in Math

We began our month with our eyes set on the 100th day of school and while we were wating we took a closer look at 2-diamensional shapes.

We used what we knew about 2-d shapes to group them with our friends and our sorting brought out great discussions! We wanted to know if they could be grouped by size, number of corners, numbers of sides, curvy or straight lines.. and in our groupings we discovered a trend.. some were Polygons and some were not!

Our rules for Polygons set the stage for our 2-d Shape Presentations where students shared how they understood the relationship between shapes. Sides,corners, and lines oh my!

As we have been sharing our findings and growing closer to Second Grade, we came across a giant number on our Calendar Math Board... 100! In order to better understand this number, the Sunshine Band made their own special snack with groups of 10s,wrote 100 words they knew, met two 100 year old ladies (their teachers:), and counted by 1s, 2s,5s, and 10s to 100!

Can you believe it has been over 100 days of school.. so much learning past and so many more Math Adventures ahead!
Check out our 100th Day!

Have You Heard About Sleepover!

We hope you enjoy our First Grade Sleepover! We have had a wonderful time under the stars in our great adventure into space. Our students have amazing schema for space and all that we know of in our solar system. Thank you for all of the support and assistance during this unit!!!

With your help we are blasting off to Second Grade!!!!
Check out some pictures from our day :D.

It's Official...Six More Weeks of Winter!

Check out this cool video on Woodchucks :)!