Happy Halloween!!!

While talking to Emma's mom this morning we both were saying how nice it is to have Halloween on a Friday! With all the excitement and sugar highs it will be nice to spend the weekend recuperating. After reading The Night Before Halloween we had a visit by our sixth-grade Big Friends. We made food snacks and decorated pumpkin faces to show different emotions. Everyone got a chance to show off their costumes. Our class was visited by such notables as Bat Girl, Harry Potter and two Spidermans!

Later in the day Garrett's mom (who is running in the New York Marathon on Sunday!) and Hannah's mom stopped by to host a Halloween Party with candle making, eating dirt and worms, and reading a great Tedd Arnold book called Inside a House That Is Haunted. It was a good day but honestly I'm quite content to go home and sit in my big chair and put my feet up and wait until all the trick-or-treaters start to appear. Have a great weekend and don't forget to change those clocks back on Sunday!

The Penny Grab Game

We found ourselves working with pennies once again. Today we played the penny grab game. Each student has twenty pennies in their toolkit. They pool their pennies together and then grab a handful. On a sheet they record what they grabbed as well as what their partner did. They finally record which person had more. This activity builds counting skills as well as comparing numbers to see which is more.
Just a reminder that tomorrow we'll be visiting the theater to see the Jr/Sr Kindergarten Sing, which brings back lots of memories for those in the class. On Friday we get to wear our Halloween costumes, meet with Big Friends, and have a Halloween celebration! Sounds like a great way to end the week...and the month!

Reading for Life

I remember at an Open House when a parent asked me to define reading in as few words as possible. After a few seconds of frantic thought I said, "Making meaning." Even as early as first grade it's important to remember that as important as decoding skills are if kids don't understand what they read, they are not really reading. In this first chapter of the book the writers introduce us to 7 keys to help students understand what they read. When I learned about these several years ago I didn't pay lots of attention to them. It wasn't until later while reading books on my own that I found myself doing some of the very things that were mentioned. The 7 keys are: 1) Creating mental images 2) Using background knowledge 3) Asking questions 4) Making inferences 5) Determining the most important ideas 6) Synthesize ideas and 7) Use "fix-up" strategies when reading. In the rest of the book each of these will be explored in more depth.

One valuable point that I took away from this chapter was how important it is to turn off the TV and spend time reading with your kids at home. A few years ago I unplugged my set and haven't watched it much since then. It's not that TV is bad or anything, but I do find myself using that time more for reading, exercising, or doing other things that are not so passive. If we want to grow readers we have to immerse them in books and language.

This is just the first chapter and there will be lots to discuss as we proceed. Don't be afraid to leave a comment and share your thoughts both about what you agree and disagree with. This is a forum for ideas so use it as you see fit. Next month the focus will be on creating mental images as you read...so stay tuned and happy reading!

The Great Pumpkins...are no more...

The two pumpkins in our class were used today in our math exploration to investigate circumference and estimation. We used yarn to estimate the circumference around each pumpkin and then we cut a hole in both of them and reached inside to claim as many seeds as we possibly could. Estimates ranged from 102 to in the thousands and thousands! Low and behold as we counted each and every seed, we discovered that one pumpkin had 350 seeds while the other of similar size produced 560 seeds. I'll take them them home tomorrow and bake them to share for a snack later in the week.  This afternoon Madame Morgan came by and sang some French songs and students created a French monster by following directions in this new language.  Remember that tonight is homework night.  If the paper gets misplaced  you can get another at our website.  If you need a 100's chart it's also there under Handy Handouts to print out whenever you need.

An inch is an inch...

How long is long anyway? It's all a matter of perspective to some degree, but at the moment first graders are examining objects to determine length in comparison to other objects. Today we completed our exploration activities. One group worked with Ms. Carol to group dominoes in patterns while another group worked with me and a bunch of collected objects. We looked at our six-inch rulers then put them away. Afterwards we sorted the objects in piles of longer than our ruler and shorter than our ruler. To complete the activity we placed all the items in line from shortest to longest. The remaining group worked with their rulers to create a many pointed star.

Today we also added new words to our word wall, read some stories of Halloween, played fun games in the gym, weighed pumpkins, wrote about our Theater experience, ate baked potatoes for lunch, began a new art project with Mr. Calhoun and worked with Mrs. Reynolds in Science Lab making candles....just another busy Monday... with lots of learning going on...and on...and on...

and the children will lead the way....

Her "sermon" to the class and to Rusty and me, came so naturally. Though perhaps I should have been scrambling for my camera to video the moment, we all sat in awe as we listened to the truth of her words. We can't recreate the moment, but listen to the "remake" video. Hopefully her words will inspire you as it did us.