Today's Number

We have learned a new math routine called, Today's Number. For this routine, I give the crew a number and they have to try to make that number in as many ways as they can using addition and subtraction. See the examples below.

Photos

Front entrance - lost and found has been moved to the cafeteria

Tending our plants

Sparkly shirts

Sharing our writing

Creating chopsticks from two forks

Working on spelling

Important Dates
1/18 No School for Students - Professional Development Day for Teachers
1/21 No School - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
2/14 Valentine's Day Party 3:00 pm
2/15 No School for Students - Professional Development Day for Teachers
2/18 No School - President's Day
2/19 Winter Voyage for First Grade - Day Trip - No Day of Rest
3/16 - 4/1 Spring Break

Melting Snowman

Melting Snowman
As we are beginning to work on spelling more words correctly, we are playing a game that will help us with that. It is called Melting Snowman. It is basically just the game Hangman but I didn't want to have to explain "hanging" to first graders so I changed the hanging man to a melting snowman (photo below). Play is just the same, you guess letters to complete the phrase and if you guess incorrectly, a part of the snowman "melts" (is erased). You have to guess the word or phrase before the snowman melts. This would be a great game to play at home with your child. It really makes them think about letters, words and how words work. You can play this on paper but it would work better with a small whiteboard or chalkboard since you are erasing parts of the snowman.

Learning Basic Math Facts

We have been focusing on learning basic addition and subtraction facts. Some of us are just beginning to learn them while others of us are much more comfortable with them. This is such an important skill to practice at this age. Familiarity with the basic addition and subtraction facts will make such a difference in your child's math career. I know I have mentioned this before but I have taught grades 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 (including Algebra 1). I can tell you that those students who had a solid foundation with their basic facts were so much more ready to tackle new math concepts and to use those basic facts to solve more complicated problems.  Now is the time to practice those facts with your child for a few minutes each day. We have begun to learn new games - both online and offline that will help us practice our basic facts. You can also help by asking your child to solve a fact as you are driving in the car and then ask them how they solved it or you can play various games both online and off to practice (rules for one game you can play are below). You can use whatever method you and your child enjoy. It's just important to work at it a little bit each day and to keep it fun and interesting.

Having said all of that, I do want to emphasize that what I feel is most important for students to learn in math is how and why things (like addition) work the way that they do. I want to develop their mathematical thinking and problem solving skills. If I had to choose between memorizing basic facts and developing mathematical thinking, I would absolutely choose mathematical thinking. Thankfully we don't have to make this choice. I will, however, always focus more on mathematical thinking in class and spend smaller amounts of time learning the basic facts. In our every day lives, we have so many tools at our disposal that can help with basic facts but we don't have tools that can do the deeper thinking and understanding for us so that is where my focus be.

Double Compare

The game is played with a deck of number cards, 4 cards for each number 0-9. (This can be a regular deck of cards with the face cards removed.) As many as four children can play, but at first, children should play the two-player game.

1. Shuffle the deck and place it on the desk with the cards face down.

2. At each turn, players turn over two cards and call out the sum. Players should check each other's sums.

3. The player with the higher sum takes all the cards. In case of a tie, players turn over two more cards and call out the sum. The player with the higher sum takes all the cards from both plays.

4. Play continues until there are fewer than 4 cards left in the deck. The player who took more cards wins.

Information for Parents
Learn math without fear, Stanford expert says 

You can find more math resources for parents on the Parent Resources page of our crew blog.

Fun apps,websites and board games to help practice basic math facts:

Apps:
Addimals
Subtractimals
Hungry Fish
Mathtopia

Websites:
Resources page on our crew blog has links to several good websites for addition and subtraction practice

Board Games:
Tiny Polka Dots - many games can be played with this deck of cards - only one is shown at this link - I bought this game for my nephew for Christmas and we all enjoyed playing the games
Prime Climb - This game can be modified as your child grows up. You can start with addition and subtraction at first and add multiplication and division later. I bought this game for my niece and again, we all enjoyed playing this game. It is good for kids and adults. My 5 year old nephew played with us, too, with just a few adjustments to the rules for him.
Mobi - The Numerical Tile Game in a Whale Pouch
Shut the Box 

Bedtime Math

A great website/app for you to use at home with your child is Bedtime Math. This site tells a short story each day and then follows it up with three levels of math problems for wee ones, little kids and big kids that you work on offline. The idea is to read the story as a bedtime story and then complete the math problems that go along with the story - a great way to do a little reading and a little math each day. It is not an app that kids just play on their own. Click on the picture to visit the site.

I read an article about Bedtime Math on NPR over break and thought I would share it with you. It explains some research that shows how doing the Bedtime Math stories really helps kids. The link is below:

Where The Wild Fractions Are: The Power of a Bedtime (Math) Story

Spelling

As we continue to work on spelling more words correctly, I wanted to share a few ideas with you that you can do at home to help your child work on spelling.

First, I wanted to share this article about spelling again:
Why is My Kid Allowed to Make Spelling Mistakes

Commercial Board Games
Have a family game night and play a board game with word play like Scrabble, Scrabble Jr., Boggle, Boggle Jr, Upwords, Bananagrams, Zingo, Word Yahtzee, and many more.

Other Word Play Games
You can also do word searches, crossword puzzles, hangman (or our version called, Melting Snowman which I will teach the crew this week) or other games that just need a paper and pencil. You can buy books of this type of puzzle or you can go online and print some off. Also, many of these games have online versions that are fun to try, too.

You can also just write a long word on a piece of paper and see how many shorter words you can make using just the letters in that word.

Games to Play in the Car
You can have a spelling bee in the car and give each person a word to spell that is at their level.

You can say a word like "hat" and say what would that word be if I changed the "h" to a "c", to an "f" and so on. Experiment with changing beginning sounds, ending sounds and middle sounds.

Play a game based on word families. Name a word family like the "ate" family. Go around the car and have each person say another word in that family: late, skate, fate, date, gate, and so on.

Online Games
Search for word games on your computer, iPad or smart phone for your child to play. There are many, many variations out there.

Be Creative
Make up your own games. Anything that makes kids think and talk about words and how they are spelled will help.

Welcome Back!

Dear Crew,
I hope that you have had an exciting winter break, have read lots of great books and are ready to come back to school on Tuesday. I know I am ready. I can't wait to see you. I have really missed you.

Here are a few things that we have to look forward to after break:

Winter Voyage
We will be going on our Winter Voyage on February 19th. It is a day trip but it will be so much fun! Here are a couple of photos from previous years.

Patriotic Symbols
In between our Expeditions, we will take a little time to learn about patriotic symbols of the United States and some famous Americans. We will learn so many fascinating facts. Here are a few of the resources we will use. More are coming!

  
Writing
Ms. Cate will be teaching a unit on writing "how-to" books soon after we come back from break. Be thinking about what you want to teach your friends to do!

New Build and Create Station
We will add a water color option to the Build and Create Station.

All of this and so much more is coming like learning more about addition, subtraction, vocabulary, vowel pairs, learning a new game called Melting Snowman, a Valentine's Day party, researching animals and reading lots and lots of great books! I can't wait to see you and get started on Tuesday!

Important Dates 
1/7 No School for Students
1/8 First Day Back for Students
1/18 No School for Students - Professional Development Day for Teachers
1/21 No School - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
2/14 Valentine's Day Party 3:00 pm
2/15 No School for Students - Professional Development Day for Teachers
2/18 No School - President's Day
2/19 Winter Voyage for First Grade - Day Trip - No Day of Rest
3/16 - 4/1 Spring Break