Grinch Day

We had a terrific Grinch day!  It was a busy, joyful day!  We started the day, of course, by reading the great book How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  I have the book as an app on my phone.  The book is on sale for $1.99 on the app store.  I love the OM Book apps because the students can read along with the book.  Click here to link to the book in the app store.

After reading the book, each grade level had a different writing assignment.  The second graders studied the similes and metaphors in "The Grinch Song."  We discussed the similes in the Grinch and then worked on writing our own similes.  First, we brainstormed lists of adjectives that describe the Grinch.  The children came up with some great words: furry, rotten, nasty, clever, lonely.  We continued with adjectives by listing words that described the Grinch's heart at the beginning of the story (tiny, empty, cold) and the end of the story (large, caring, happy).  Last the students wrote their own series of similes and/or metaphors to describe the character of the Grinch.

 
 


I loved what the students came up with.  Here are a couple examples from the pieces.

The Grinch was as horrible as rotten cheese.

The Grinch was as sly as a fox.

His heart was as empty as the pool in the winter.

His heart was as tiny as a crumb.

At the the end, the Grinch's heart was full of kindness like Santa.

For first grade writing, we talked about how the Grinch didn't have joy.  Together we brainstormed a list of things that bring us joy.  Then, the students made their own lists.   On the J we wrote nouns that bring us joy and the Y was for a list of verbs that bring us joy.  They worked so hard.

The students used their joy list to write a sentence about how we would make the Grinch grin.  Then we attached the sentences to a Grinch craft.  They had wonderful ideas to bring joy to the Grinch.

Here are some of the excellent examples.  

I would make the Grinch grin by telling him jokes. 

  I would make the Grinch grin by showing him love.

I would make the Grinch grin by taking him to class.

I would make the Grinch grin by being his friend.

 

We made some magic Grinch dust to keep the Grinches away this Christmas.  To make Grinch dust you need a small bag of something sweet.  Then you add two drops of love and two drops of joy.  You must hug the love and joy in the bag until it turns green.  I have to ask you to do the last step at home.  Sprinkle the Grinch dust on your lawn Christmas Eve to keep the Grinch away and keep all your Christmas joy.

 

 

After lunch, we had an enormous QR hunt with the Miss Frey's class.  The Grinch tried to steal our Christmas by scrambling all our Christmas words and sight words.  We had to hunt all around the classroom to unscramble all the words. Such fun!

 

Math was Grinchy too!  We balanced equations but instead of writing the answers, we shaped the numbers with cold, green spaghetti!   Ewwww!

It was such a wonderful day.  The whole first and second grade wing enjoyed Grinchy activities!  I just love our school!  We are still working on one more Grinch day art piece.  Hopefully, I will get our final Grinch project posted on Monday.

Learning to Code

We are up for this challenge! We are ready to code! Click start to begin writing your lines of code. START

This coming week is "Computer Science Education Week." The week was declared to bring computer science into schools and promote student interest in coding. A challenge was put forth for students to participate in an hour of code. The Connected Combo has already begun and wrote over 1500 lines of code in class. I see some future programmers in this class.  We started as a class working through a tutorial on the computer science education week website: csedweek.org.  The students had to solve puzzles to program an angry bird to move through mazes.  While they are "playing" the students are learning how code with repeat-loops, conditionals, and basic algorithms.  They had to use logic and problem solving skills.  The challenges also tested their persistence and "I can" attitude.  As they moved up levels, the students received video tutorials by gifted computer scientists in the field like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.  The children were amazing.  After we worked together for awhile, the students went to the Chromebooks and began their own coding.  Look how intense!  The children can code from their home computer as well.  Just follow the link above.

You may have heard about our most exciting coding adventure....introducing Dash and Dot, our classroom robots!  The children are in LOVE!  We are having so much fun programing these robots!  I purchased this robotics kit through a grant I wrote, the grant was funded by my hero Tom Wardell and the Billings Education Foundation.  Using their iPads the children program the robots.  The students are given missions to complete through the app.  For instance, the groups had to program Dash to do a dance when a student claps.  The students did amazing things!  I couldn't believe it!  You should have heard their squeals of delight when they were successful.  We can't wait to get out the robots again.  We have so much more to learn!  Check out the website for Dash and Dot here.  Dash and Dot are one of the biggest STEM toys on the market right now.  I have a first grader hoping Santa delivers a robot to our house this Christmas.  

Of course, we will also do other coding on the ipad.  We will use the app LightBot where students use programming to move a robot and light up tiles in a series of puzzles.  We have apps called Run Marco and Kodable.  All of these apps are free on the itunes store.

Smart Cookies

The Connected Combo is full of smart cookies.  In addition to comparing and contrasting different gingerbread stories, we did all sorts of learning with the gingerbread theme.   We have six new word wizard words that seem to keep popping up in the stories.  Have you heard your child using these words: fancy, shaped, rather, delicious, boast, and devour.

 

One of our learning centers was to sort the cookies by beginning sound.  Then, in spelling, we made words from the letters g-i-n-g-e-r-b-r-e-a-d.   For writing, the first graders used adjectives and transition words (first, next, then, last) to write a piece on how to eat a gingerbread cookie.  While the second graders also wrote a how to piece, their writing was about how to catch a gingerbread cookie.

For art, we made gingerbread ornaments and giant gingerbread faces.  In math, the first graders worked on fact families and missing addend problems.  For example, I have 15 gingerbread cookies.  8 are in the cookie jar.  How many are still in the oven?  We used a balance tool to check our work.  The second graders started building a foundation for multiplication by making cookie sheet arrays.

Gingerbread even made its way into science.  In one of the gingerbread stories, the fox tricks the gingerbread man by convincing him to ride on his back across the river.  In this science experiment, our key question was: What would happen to the gingerbread man if he "swam" across the river himself?  We made predictions then tested our hypothesis.  The students observed and recorded what was happening to the gingerbread man in water at 20 minutes and one hour.  They concluded that water makes the gingerbread soggy and it will break apart.  Great work, scientists!

 

Finally, we worked computer science into the gingerbread theme thanks to a teacher blogger from Oklahoma that I adore (Brooke Brown @ Teach Outside the Box).   In this "unplugged" coding activity, player one created a path to the gingerbread house.  The path included two treats to eat and one enemy to avoid.  Then, player two had to use symbols to code the path to the house.  The students did amazing playing the game.

 

Gingerbread Stories

We have spent these first days of December reading and discussing different gingerbread tales.  We read several different versions of the story.  We read The Gingerbread Man, The Gingerbread Bear, The Gingerbread Girl, The Gingerbread Cowboy, Gingerbread Baby, Gingerbread Friends, and Gingerbread Pirates....just to name a few.  Did you know there were so many?  While we read, we compared and contrasted the stories.  We recorded our notes on a huge classroom chart.  We wrote the characters, refrain, and endings for each story.

We had some wonderful help meeting this important standard.  Our pen pals, education majors from Rocky, came into the classroom to read three of the versions on Wednesday.  The college students did such a great job reading and discussing the story elements.  Some even dressed up and brought props!  Then, at the end of their visit, the Rocky students gave each of the children a homemade gingerbread cookie that they decorated to go with their story.  So fun!




The students were so lively in their discussions.  I even caught them independently discussing other versions that they had read or listened to on the ipads.  Several students checked out other Gingerbread stories in the library this week.  Mrs. Jensen even had a gingerbread QR hunt for the children in library class.  In addition to reading the stories, we also had learning centers with a gingerbread theme...but you will have to read about that in the "Smart Cookies" post above!

Contraction Surgery

For spelling last week, we turned our room into an operating room and preformed some very important spelling surgeries. Students had to work in surgical teams to remove certain letters.  Then, bandages and apostrophe sized scars were put in the missing letters' place. After the surgeries, the doctors made rounds. Our patients are very happy with the results and are recovering beautifully. We have a very talented group of doctors.

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