Mrs.Shirley's 1st Grade

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Luck 'O the First Grade

St.Patrick's Day fun!!

On Monday I had the students write about what they thought was better than gold. They came up with some great answers! Here are some examples.

At our writing center for the week there were 4 "Fill in the Story" stories to pick from. Everyone from the group had to work together to fill in the blanks on the story.

We also did a leprechaun "craftivity." We made our leprechauns first...

Dayne and Alyssa

Jayce, Taylen, and Dakota

Jocelyn and Jonathan

Finished project! After making the leprechaun, we brainstormed as a class how we could catch a leprechaun. We named tools we could use and everyone wrote 4 steps using First, next, then, and last.

We also had some lucky fun in math! We used Lucky Charms cereal to make a graph of the marshmallows.

Blake, Aspyn, and Abimael

Mason counting his marshmallows

Jocelyn and Joree

Our theme snack for the week were Shamrock Shakes! They were delicious! We used a recipe book to follow the directions. First, we put lime ice cream into our cups. Then, we poured leprechaun juice (sprite) over the top of it. Last, we put rainbow sprinkles on top and enjoyed!! The students also filled out a recipe page to take home.

Jonah and Alyssa

Green chairs

Joree showing off her shake!

Mason recording his recipe.

Red chairs recording their recipes.

A Little Card Writing...

One of my best friends recently received the honor of being named Teacher of the Year for Woodward district. I decided that I would use a writing lesson to have them make cards/letters for her. The kids had so much fun. I told them a little about her (subjects she teaches, her favorite color, interests, etc) and they went from there! They did such a great job!

Jonathan and Jocelyn busily writing their cards.

Alayna and Dayne

Taylen and Jayce showing off their cards!

Congrats Ms.Roberts! :-) We are proud of you!!

Suesstastical Week!

Dr.Seuss week is one of the most fun weeks of the year in first grade. This year we celebrated this wonderful author by having dress up days that coordinated with his books. We also had some very fun Seuss activities throughout the week.

One of our super fun dress up days was hat day. On this day we read the book 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. We also wrote about our hats and compared them to the hats in the story.

Another fun activity to go along with this book was a comprehension puzzle. The students drew their favorite part from the book into a puzzle template. Once they had their pieced cut out they could go around the room trading with others and completing other puzzles. Once they completed a partner's puzzle they had to tell what that picture was from and what was happening in that part of the story.

Jonah cutting his pieces out.

Jocelyn, Joree, and Francisco

Justice, Jackson, Jayce

Delani, Blake, Aspyn, Abimael, Nubia

On Cat in the Hat day we dressed in all red, white, and black. I somehow did not manage to get a picture this day! We used this Cat in the Hat template to write all the story details for comprehension practice.

Friday we celebrated The Lorax with mustaches!! This story gave us a great opportunity to talk about how important it is to take care of our Earth which we will do more of on Earth Day!

Monday, March 4, 2013

100th Day of School!!

The 100th day of school is a very important day in 1st grade. We count all year up to that day and have so much fun celebrating it! We have several ways of celebrating being at school on our 100th day. Here are a few of the lessons/activities that we enjoyed!

Our first lesson of the day was to brainstorm and come up with 100 words that we knew. When we were finished, this is what our "Kiss Your Brain We Can Read 100 Words" wall looked like!

The students were then given a piece of paper to write 100 words on in a list.

Our next step was to take the list they wrote their 100 words on and roll it up into a "kiss" to take home. :-)

Ashten with his finished product.

Jimmy showing off his "kiss."

Dayne, always such a ham!

Jocelyn waving her "kiss" high!

Also, love seeing Abimael and Aspyn in this picture correctly using their "help" signal! :-)

Another fun project for the day was more math oriented. We made 100 Day Hash. Each child counted 10 of every 10 item that was in our recipe. We talked about how 10 groups of 10 equals 100!!

Devin and Justice counting out their pieces.

...more counting with Ashten, Alayna, and Jonah...

Mrs.Hesser and Jimmy checking out the recipe and counting pieces.

Mason and Autumn

Jonah LOVES 100 Day Hash!

So does Dakota! And check out that awesome hat! :-)

Jackson with his hat and hash!

Jonathan and Mason counting all 100 pieces into their baggies.

100th Day was such a blast! My favorite comment of the day that I got from several students was "So, since we've made it to 100 days school is over, right?"

Back to Bloggin'

Holidays have come and gone, a new year has begun, and Mrs.Shirley's 1st grade class is back in blogging business! :-) Things got a little crazy for a few months but hopefully the blog will be kept up better for the rest of the school year!

Here are some photos of the students using some of our extra large math worksheets we had left over from Saxon lessons. They loved working together on these!

Orange chairs hard at work!

Red chairs having fun with our extra large worksheets!

...more orange chairs...

Green chair group working on math facts!

Jonah and Alyssa working together!

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Pumpkin Pals

In the past, I have sent home medium sized pumpkins for the children to decorate as a family project. This year, I used an idea from another teacher friend! I still sent home medium sized pumpkins with each child but this year they had to decorate them as their favorite literary character. When they brought their pumpkins back they also brought the book to display with it and share with the class. This made the activity more of a learning experience and was so much fun! Here are pictures of how they each turned out.