Photos from Australia

Mrs. Price and her class are on summer vacation. (This is why Regina was able to make her trip to visit the United States and our school.) Mrs. Price has been sharing some pictures and videos of things she has seen while she travels. If you get this blog post by email, you will need to go directly to the blog to view the videos.

A koala napping in the sun.

A kangaroo joined her picnic.

An echidna out for a stroll.

A lovely view

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.13 More "What's My Rule?"

Important Dates
2/13 No School - Professional Development Day for Teachers
2/16 No School - President's Day
2/26 Winter Voyage ~ Day 1 - not an overnight trip (Day 2 will be in April - also not an overnight trip)
3/23 - 4/3 Spring Break

Lulu and the Brontosaurus

Lulu and the Brotosaurus is our current read aloud. Lulu wants a brontosaurus for her birthday but her parents say that she can't have one. She decides to go off and find one for herself in the woods behind her house and this is the beginning of her adventure. There is a repeated refrain in the book that the crew loves to join in on. Check out the video below to see them doing the chant. Ask your child to tell you all about this book and how much they enjoyed it.

Homework
No homework for the long weekend. Enjoy some great books with your child.

IA
Our IA next week is PE.

Parts of a Story

We have been learning about the parts of a story and the vocabulary that names those parts. Knowing this language helps us be able to talk about the stories we read. We are also learning to summarize the stories we tell both orally and in writing. We learned that retelling and summarizing are different. Retelling is when you retell everything that happened in a story and summarizing is when you only tell the most important parts. This has led to some great discussions about determining what is important in a story. Ask your child to tell you about the chart below that we use in class to help us remember the parts of a story.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.12 What's My Rule?

Library
We have library tomorrow. Please help your children remember to return their books so that they will have some new books to read on the upcoming long weekend.

Patriotic Symbols

This week we are starting a study of patriotic symbols and famous Americans. It will help us understand a little bit more about what it means to be a good citizen of our country. This will be a fairly short (3 weeks) but exciting study. First graders are always fascinated by the symbols of our country so I am sure that you will hear all about it at the dinner table for the next few weeks. Below are just a few of the books that we will have in our classroom to read and to use as resources for our research - more are on the way.

Why study this? 
We study patriotic symbols and famous Americans as way to begin to learn about how to be an active, responsible citizen of our country. The official outcomes/standards for this study are below:

Evaluate the roles, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship

Symbols, songs, holidays, traditions, places, and people help to provide identity for the community and nation. 

Citizens exercise the rights and obligations of citizenship at the local or wider community level by showing interest and being involved. 
 

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.11 Adding 0 and 1

Building and Creating

As you may recall, you all (the parents) gave our crew a great gift at our Winter Party. You gave us a set of Keva Planks. I was so excited and now the crew is, too. (If you get this post by email, you will need to go directly to the blog to view the short video clip below.)

Keva Planks are great for all ages - Dads love them, too.

While we do use them everday during Exploration Stations in small groups, the crew began asking me if we could try to build something as a whole crew. So last Friday, we tried it. I dumped out all of the planks and then got out of the way so that they could plan, discuss and build.

A group leader emerged right away. He even used our attention getting signal of clapping to get everyone's attention.

Then another leader stepped up.

Now we had co-leaders. Ms. Wendy and I still stayed out of the discussion. It got tense a few times but they worked through all of their issues and made good decisions as a whole group. It was a great team building experience for the crew. A few children did opt out because they didn't like being in such a large group which was fine. I can completely understand their point of view.

Finally the building began.

We even had a blueprint to work off of.

And an updated blueprint.

The crew worked and worked but ran out of time to complete their castle (we had to go to Art). I promised them that we would have another group building session soon so at snack time a group sat together to plan out what they would do next time. They can't wait.

Thank you so much for this wonderful gift. As you can see, it is not only fun but it is a great educational tool as well teaching communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.10 Turn Around Facts

Important Dates
1/16 No School - Professional Development Day for Teachers
1/19 No School - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
2/13 No School - Professional Development Day for Teachers
2/16 No School - President's Day
2/26 Winter Voyage ~ Day 1 - not an overnight trip (Day 2 will be in April - also not an overnight trip)
3/23 - 4/3 Spring Break

Visitors from Australia

Regina and her dad, Mr. Kevin came to visit our crew today. They came all the way from Australia! They have been touring the United States on their summer break. Regina was in Mrs. Price's class last year and Skyped with my class. She is in a new class this year but has Skyped with our crew this year, too. We were so excited to see her in person. We got to talk to her and ask her lots of questions. It was so nice to meet Regina and Mr. Kevin today.

Ashlee and her buddy, Regina

Homework
No homework over the weekend. Enjoy some great books with your child.

IA
Our IA next week is Music.

Difference Game

A game we learned recently in math is the Difference Game. The directions are below if you would like to play it at home. You can easily modify the game to make it easier or more challenging by changing the number cards that you use.

Difference Game
1. Partners create a bank of 40 pennies.
2. Shuffle a deck of number cards - 4 cards of each number 1-10 - and put the cards number-side down in a deck in the middle of the playing area. (A regular deck of cards with the face cards removed will work for this game.)
3. In each round, each player takes 1 card from the top of the deck and takes the same number of pennies from the bank as the number shown on the card.
4. Both players then find out how many more pennies one player has than the other.
5. The player with more pennies keeps the extra pennies. The rest go back in the bank.
6. The game is over when there are not enough pennies left in the bank to play another round.
7. The player with more pennies wins the game.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 5.9 Comparing Sums