You're a mean one....Mr. Grinch!

Green here, green there, green everywhere!!! The Grinch has invaded Erie Elementary. The first grade hallway and classrooms were filled with green as students celebrated this famous Christmas character. Students drew portraits of the Grinch and wrote about ways to make him grin and be kind. The class enjoyed Grinch floats made with mint chip ice cream and Sprite as they watched the original How The Grinch Stole Christmas. They also unscrambled Grinch themed sentences, brainstormed adjectives to describe the Grinch, made masks, and used tens and ones to color code a picture of the Grinch on a 100’s chart. First grade is definitely looking forward to the school wide field trip on Friday to see the new Grinch movie!

Let the countdown begin....

Here's to a fun filled week of Christmas cheer and holiday excitement.  I hope I can keep up with these kiddos!  Merry Christmas from 1st grade!

Penguins

Sorry for the picture overload😊 We learned about penguins this week! The class sorted fiction and nonfiction text about penguins, did some research and discovered new interesting facts, filled out a KWL chart, and drew their very own penguins. The best part of all was our blubber and waterproof feather experiment. I think it is safe to say that if we were swimming in the Arctic Ocean, we would want to have a layer of blubber and waterproof feathers covering our bodies like the penguins. The kids couldn’t believe how cold the icy water was when they stuck their bare hand in the bowl vs. the hand that had blubber (a glove) and waterproof feathers (a plastic bag)!

All Dressed Up!

First grade did such a great job at the Christmas program!

Tens and Ones

We had fun in math yesterday practicing our tens and ones with pretzels and marshmallows. It was a yummy lesson modeling double digit numbers.

Elves For Hire

First grade had a blast last week writing to persuade Santa to pick them as his “TOP” ELF! My kiddos came up with some really clever reasons!!! I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I did. Aren’t their little elf faces adorable😉

Animal Habitats

First grade has been very busy learning about animal habitats in science. Each student picked their favorite habitat and created s 3D diorama. They turned out amazing! Students used non-fiction text from the epic! app on our iPads to research their habitat and write 4 interesting facts. Some of these books were a little difficult to read but they worked together in habitat teams to decode unfamiliar words and discussed what facts they wanted to include on their graphic organizers.

Author's Purpose

Today we discussed author’s purpose and sorted books from our classroom library into two categories. We learned that author’s sometimes write books to INFORM readers and also ENTERTAIN readers.

Welcome Back!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving break + an extra snow day😊!!!! Here are a few pics from our Thanksgiving activities before break. We wrote about how to catch a turkey and created a fun turkey craft. Students made bracelets about the first Thanksgiving and we learned about the Mayflower. During center time students used pattern blocks to create turkey feathers, played real/nonsense word games, and played a “make ten” math turkey race game.

Let's Make A Pizza!!!!

Boy, we have had pizza on the brain all week!!!!! Students brainstormed adjectives to describe pizza and then wrote a sentence using commas in a series to separate the list of adjectives they used to describe their own pizza. We also read Little Red Hen and Little Red Hen Makes A Pizza and used a Ven diagram to compare and contrast both stories. After our field trip yesterday, students wrote about the different steps you have to follow when making a pizza. They used words like first, next, and last when describing what to do based on their experience at Happy Joe’s. Finally, we read the story titled Pete’s A Pizza and then turned Remington and Brooklyn into pizzas!!!!Lol. The rest of the class were the pizza makers and they kneaded and stretched the dough, added the tomato sauce, sprinkled the flour and cheese, and added the pepperonis. I had the task of carrying the pizzas to the oven to bake! Let me tell you, there were lots of giggles!!

Fact Family Feathers

First grade has been very busy learning about fact families in math. We have learned terms such as related facts and part-part-whole. One of our favorite center games has been roll a fact family using the double dice! This week each student created their own fact family turkey craft and used the feathers to represent part-part-whole.

Pizza and Bowling

First grade had a great field trip today at Lee’s Lanes and Happy Joe’s in Geneseo. The kids had a blast bowling and there were even a few spares and strikes. Everyone did a great job listening and following directions when making theirs pizzas. We ended the afternoon with an ice cream treat and each student received an official Junior Pizza Artist certificate.