Cat in the Hat Day

  Monday we celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday by participating in a school wide read in.  The first half hour of school all the students lined the hallways and just read.  Even the teachers and our principal dropped everything to read.  The Connected Ones brought silly hats and smiles to school Monday to celebrate Dr. Seuss's Cat in the Hat.  The first theme day of our Dr. Seuss week!  Dr. Seuss was a master at rhyming.  In his honor, we made rhyming hats.  Each student received a different word family on the brim of a hat.  They had to write a word in that family on each stripe of the hat.  We tried to make the hats as tall as possible by spelling more and more words.

 The students worked very hard on their rhymes.  I love how they used their tools.  Many students used word family sliders from around our classroom.  They also used the app Word Wizard.  Word Wizard is a moveable alphabet for $2.99.  The app says the words as the students build them.  It also lets them  know if words are spelled correctly.  So students could build and try words with the word family and check their spelling.  Awesome.  Many students found their hats were getting too big for their desks and had to move to the floor.  Our hard work is hanging up in the hallway.  We have several Dr. Seuss literacy centers this week.  One used rhyming hats similar to the ones we made.  The students chose a hat, read the words on the hat, then made a silly Seuss sentence using at least three of the words.

During math we played some Thing 1 and Thing 2 Bump, an addition game.  Students had so much fun with the game, they didn't even realize how much adding practice they were doing!

Later in the day, after reading both The Cat in the Hat and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, we did our daily graph.  At the end of The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss asks if you would tell your mom about the adventure if it happened to you.  The kids answered the question in a graph; however, they didn't use their names....in case moms were going to see it!  Instead we used our "Thing" numbers!   Good news, most kids would tell mom!

We also read a little about Dr. Seuss and had some birthday treats in his honor.  We made ourselves into "Things."  Then we did a guided drawing of the Cat in the Hat.  The students were so careful and followed the directions carefully.  The drawings turned out fabulously!  Take a look at a few of the examples.

 We love The Cat in the Hat!

Read~A~Thon

We are half way through our Read~A~Thon! The children are so excited. I hope you are recording those minutes at home. We will be honoring the top three first grade readers, the students reading the most minutes. There is also a class trophy for the classroom that has the most students meeting the 300 minute reading goal. I have been telling all the classes that we are going to win! I may be slightly competitive! We NEED that trophy! Trophy and joking aside, this Read~A~Thon will only benefit our students. Extra at home reading makes a huge difference in academic success! Please work hard these last five days and READ, READ, READ! If I can support you in anyway, feel free to call. Don't forget to join us at Reading Club every morning this week 8:00-8:15 in the library. We had 75 students reading Friday morning! WOW!

Tech It Up

We just recieved a new tool called Osmo!  You have never heard children cheer and beg for more spelling like they do with this tool!  Watch them work as a team and try to fill in the missing letters to match the image projected.  The Osmo is so interactive.  There are three free apps that interact with the Osmo.  We have used the spelling/ making words game and the tangram game that has a geometry focus.  We can't wait to explore the tool more.

This week was incredible.  Mr. Wardell visited.  Mr. Wardell is the man that generously donated the iPads and other technologies used in my classroom.  He has been visiting and following our learning for the past three years.  This visit he visited all the kindergarten, first grades, and second grades at Eagle Cliffs.  Mr. Wardell also met with a group of parents to ask them what they have noticed about their children's learning.  He was amazed with the level of learning and use of the technology in our building.  He made yet another extremely generous donation.  He wants to make sure every Eagle Cliffs student kindergarten through second grade has access to an iPad.  We will all be teaching and learning in an optimal 1:1 learning environment.  So amazing.  If you are interested in how Mr. Wardell started this movement there is a video about our first year of this journey.  Click here.  We also have a site that the Eagle Cliffs primary teachers all contribute to: http://eaglesnestccc.weebly.com/.  We use this site for our own professional development and to share and celebrate our own learning.

Place Value Fun

The students are getting very proficient at place value concepts.  They have been working so hard.  We have now moved to adding large numbers with in 100.  You would never guess that they are first graders with how they add, subtract, and build tens.  They are amazing.  Certainly part of their success and achievement with place value has to be the apps and online computer games.  The ipads and computers provide such engaging practice.  Further, the apps give the children immediate and specific feedback about their math work.  The apps also allow the students to work at their exact level, pushing and strengthening their conceptual knowledge right where they need it.

One recent favorite app is Place Value Slide.  In place value slide the students are given a math problem in the center of the screen.  The first player to slide the answer wins the round.  The students are having so much fun playing each other that they have no idea how many math problems they are solving!  Look how engaged!

Of course, the students love time on the computers as well.  Here are some games that we have played on the interactive white board and on the computers.  You can access them from home as well!

Comparing Numbers

Guess my Number 

100s Chart

Number Grid Fireworks

Whack A Mole

Give the Dog a Bone

Happy Heart Day

We had a lovely Valentine's party celebrating kindness and friendship. We started with a candy bar hunt. The students had to work as a team to find 5 candy bars. The candy bars had words on them. The students had to assemble the words to make a sentence. The reward....chocolatey goodness!

Next we had our yummy sundaes!  Thanks for all the sweets!  We also played a relay game called "Don't Break My Heart."  Students had to pass a tissue paper heart down the row using clothes pins.  They had to be so careful not to tear the heart.

Last was the children's favorite part...they got to open all the Valentine cards.  They loved reading the sweet notes from their friends.  Here is a quick collage of our party!

Digital collage personalized with Smilebox