Holiday Party

Today we played winter dice games in math, read some holiday favorites during read aloud, and had a party to celebrate the holidays and our school break, which starts tomorrow! I also took a photo of each students posing as a gift in a box and we turned them into ornaments! I am including a slideshow of these photos, as well as some from our party, below! Have a wonderful, safe, happy holiday break!

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Poinsettias

This month our class started a social studies theme unit about mapping and, this week, we tied it to both our learning about different December Holidays as well as some upcoming learning about Mexico (in the spring first graders do a country study where we will focus on Mexico). Through our study of maps and globes, our class has spent time talking about our continent, North America, and the three large countries on it (USA, Canada, Mexico). We learned that Poinsettias originate from Mexico and bloom in December, making them a popular plant in people's celebrations of Christmas and Las Posadas (a Mexican holiday celebrated each night from December 16 until Christmas). We read books about Las Posadas, as well as one called The Legend of the Poinsettia, and created a poinsettia art project to hang on the wall outside our classroom. Here are some photos of the kids working on this project!

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Music Assemblies

Both yesterday and today UMS had whole school music assemblies. Yesterday the Colchester High School choir came to school and performed a wonderful range of different songs for us, including a few holiday favorites that we all got to sing along to! This morning we had our annual whole-school holiday sing-along where everyone sang songs the students have been learning in music class, which relate to the many different December holidays we have been reading about in class! Below are a few photos from the two assemblies.

Programming Apps for Kids

Today our class learned a bit about apps that teach kids a bit about computer code, or giving certain commands to the computer to make a program do what you want it to do. This is tied to an initiative aimed at exposing K-12 students to computer science and I hope to learn more and be able to teach/share some more about it! There are some great apps for exposing kids at our grade level to programming, one of which we tried today. Some of these are Move the Turtle (paid), Bee-bot (paid), Daisy the Dinosaur (free), and Kodable (free), which is the one we tried in class today. There is also a website with programming games for kids called, http://www.tynker.com/hour-of-code/. The students in our class really enjoyed trying Kodable, learning how to program the character to move through a maze on the ipad screen. Give these games a try at home and I hope to do more with them in class as well!

Measurement Trees

Throughout December we have been learning about different December holidays through read-aloud books as well as some fun projects. During Hanukkah we read books to learn about the holiday and also learned to play dreidel as a math activity. Currently, in Mexico (a country we will study later this year), the holiday of Las Posadas is going on. We are reading some books about this holiday and will be making a poinsettia art project to go along with it (stay tuned for photos). Christmas, Kwanzaa, and New Year's Day are coming up and we will be reading and doing some projects to go along with those December (and January 1) holidays as well. If I have missed a December holiday that you celebrate at home please feel welcome to send me an email and I would be happy to include it with the other holidays we are learning about! kellyh@csdvt.org

One of the main topics of our December math unit has been measurement so our class tied learning about measurement to reading about holidays and created a measurement Christmas tree! Students started by learning a bit about crayon resist to make backgrounds. They drew snow with white crayon on white paper then painted over it with blue allowing the white crayon drawings to pop out! The kids then practiced using rulers to measure different sized strips of green paper to create the tree. They each chose their own way of decorating their trees (or leaving them plain) as our finishing touch. This was a very fun, festive way to practice measuring with rulers! Below is a slideshow from this project.

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Exploring Math Apps

Our class has been using ipads quite a lot this school year! Lately we have been exploring different math apps on the iPads. We have been working to determine which math apps are good quality apps for first grade learning and which are not good ones for us. As part of the new Common Core state standards, students are learning to give evidence and proof for their thinking. To show our evidence proving that an app is or isn't a good one for us to use in class, our class developed a set of criteria for "good apps." We decided that good apps have the following four qualities. They must be easy to use, allow us to practice first grade math skills, check our answers, and they must be fun. After we explored a bit and developed our criteria, students worked with partners to find apps that fit the criteria. We have now been using these apps during some of our math periods to practice skills we are learning! Some of the apps we liked best (and decided were good quality) are Math Bingo, Hungry Fish, Math Puppy, Amazing Coins, AUM Addion, and Monster Squeeze (which is part of our Everyday Math program).

Flynn Theater Permission Slip Reminder

I just wanted to remind everyone that the permission slips for our first grade trip to the Flynn Theater (which parents received at conferences) are due by this Friday, December 6. The trip is in January but the permission slip along with the $8 ticket fee are due by this Friday so that everything can be processed for all four first grade classes in time. Please let me know right away if you need a new permission slip. Thank you!