100 Days of fun, friend and learning!

On Wednesday, we celebrated our 100th Day of school.  The students started their celebration right away by making a necklace of 100 Fruit Loops for their morning work.

Then I challenged them to be quiet for 100 seconds and if they met the challenge, they would earn a $100!

They did....and did it well!  No laughing, giggling, snorting...nothing!







We read Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten.  The students really enjoyed the story, making a lot of text to self connections between what was happening in our classroom and what the characters would be doing.  There were also some "Do we get to do that too?".  :-)

Next we read the poem "100 Is A Lot" by Meish Goldish.
The last line claims that the poem even has 100 words.  The students and I were skeptical so we counted and sure enough, there are 100 words in the poem.  Students took a copy, circled all of the 100's they could find, then colored it and placed it in their Song and Poem folders.








We decided we knew 100 words as well, so we made our own list.  The students came up with 10 things in 10 different catagories.

                

The big event for the day was making our 100 Day snack mix.  Our wonderful parents donated an assortment of bite size foods.

Students chose 10 items and using a 100 grid, counted out 10 of each item.  There were more than 10 choices, so students had to think ahead, decide what they wanted before they began and keep track of how many "skips" they had taken. Using a cookie sheet, they slid their grid down the table to get 100 items for the mix. 

 

 At the end of the table I helped them put it in a baggie.                                                                     

Mrs. Renfro let us borrow her copy of I'll Teach My Dog 100 Words and we read it while we ate our snack.
At the end of the day, we decided we have learned A LOT during these first 100 days.  We are looking forward to an exciting and knowledge filled rest of the year!

Snowflakes

As a follow up to our study about snow, we read the story Snowflake Bentley and discussed the work of Wilson Bentley and his passion with snowflakes.  The students learned several fascinating facts, including the fact each snowflake is unique!
Mrs. Renfro invited us to "grow" some snowflakes with her class. We formed our snowflakes using chenille stems and took them over to her classroom.

The snowflakes were placed in a solution of boiling water and borax.

We let them "cook" (a student's term for it!) overnight.  The next day we went back in to see what had happened.  We found the solution had crystallized, much like the water molecules do in the clouds in order to create snow. 

We also were able to view the pictures Mr. Bentley took on http://snowflakebentley.com/WBsnowflakes.htm.

Snowball Fight!

Wow...what a crazy few weeks!  Between snow days, forgetting my camera and getting everything and everyone caught up, I haven't had a chance to post in a long time.  So....here's some of the fun learning activities we've done!
We have been working on identifying the ending sound of a word.  This is proving a little tough for us because we've worked so hard at training our brains to listen for the beginning sound.  First, the students and I discussed the concept and practiced with a few "easy" words.  Then I passed out sheets with a picture on it to each student.  I asked them to identify the picture and, using a partner if necessary, the ending sound.  Were they surprised when I told them to wad up their papers!  Most of them even asked, "Really?". 

 Then we had our snowball fight...inside!

After each "fight", the students chose a snowball, looked at the picture and identified the ending sound.  They then went and stood by in spot designated by the letter that makes that sound.  When everyone was in a spot, we double checked and celebrated our success!

                     

Mmmm...cocoa!

As a reward for getting 10 stars in our Compliment Jar, the students chose to  have some hot cocoa with marshmallows while we watch a Magic School Bus about space.  But I couldn't JUST let it end there...we had to graph something! 
I gave each student a small mug cutout that they labeled with their name, then colored while I prepared the cocoa.  After it was passed out, the students had to decide whether or not they wanted marshmallows.  (They were super cute little snowman marshmallows too :-))  We then graphed whether or not they like marshmallows in their cocoa and found that most students (all but 1) liked them!

To infinity...and beyond!

Our F.Y.I. topic for this week was space.  I haven't done a space unit in a long time and we had a blast (no pun intended)! 

We started out by discussing what we already knew about space and made out schema chart.

We discussed stars and constellations.  We are having a review week this week so the students played a rhyming matching game where they first traded stars then found their rhyming partner at the signal.

Then I created a rhyming pairs worksheet for the students to complete.

After viewing a Power Point of real constellations, I asked my kids to pretend they were astronomers looking through a telescope.  They had just discovered a new constellation and I wanted them to write about it.  We talked about how the entire picture wasn't made by stars...that it was more like a connect the dots and you have to form the picture around the stars.  I gave the students a piece of black paper and a strip of foil stars. When they finished, they wrote about what they saw.  They turned out sooooo cute!

Another one of our F.Y.I. words was the Sun. We made another chart about why we need the sun.

Then we made these cool little sun sheets with the rays labeled with some of the same reasons my students came up with.  But I forgot to take a picture...grrrr!
We ended the week discussing the moon and it's phases.  I started a class Moon Log that I found on thefirstgradeparade.blogspot.com .  Super excited to see how it turns out!

Winter Literacy Centers

Well, I am home today with strep throat.  NEVER EVER had it before and it's not anything I ever hope to have again!  I'm using my time wisely and getting caught up posting all the cool learning activities we have been doing since coming back from Christmas Break.

We have been doing Literacy Work Stations since the end of November.  We started out with two students in a work station and slowly added stations until everyone was working with a partner.  I used that time to do some reteaching and begin my DRA testing for small reading groups.  All activities cover familiar skills that the students have previously covered in class.  I change my activities out monthly.

Here are the new activities my students have been enjoying since returning from break.  Many of these ideas I have gotten from other blogs and for the life of me can't remember where.  When I find out where they are from, I will certainly give them credit!

 

Listening Center

Write the Room.  This month, words are on snowflakes posted around the room.  They are catching a "blizzard of words".

Beginning sound snowmen.  They "catch" a snowman, decide the beginning letter is then color over that letter on their recording sheet.  We had a similar one in December with the Gingerbread Man and they loved it!

http://mrsleeskinderkids.blogspot.com/2010/12/gingerbread-activities-and-centers.html

Playing card Addition.  The students draw two cards, count the symbols then record their math sentence.  One of those "procurred" activities".

Stamp and Write.  We had a LONG discussion about how to use these materials appropriately.  I've had problems with this station in the past.  So far, so good!

Magic Snow sight word bottles.  There are tiny penguins in the bottle with sight words written on them inside the bottle filled with salt.  Students search for words then record them on the sheet.

Build a Word Snowman.  My students have taken a sudden interest in building words so I created this for them.  There is a CVC picture on the snowman's belly.  They build the word using letter tiles then write their word on the recording sheet and draw a quick picture of the word beside it.