Fall Party Day

We had so much fun on Friday! We celebrated our Fall Party in the afternoon--complete with a donut competition (Ghosts vs. Bats), eating witch's brew, spider hat craft, and pin-the-nose-on-the-jack-o-lantern! However, we didn't wait until the party to have fun... In the morning, we had a school-wide assembly, celebrating students with perfect attendance, Students of the Month, and Character Kids. Then, we dissected plants to identify and label plant parts. We also wrote about How to Carve a Jack-o-Lantern. Of course, in order to do this, we had to actually carve a pumpkin, with the help of Ms. Foster! The kids had so much fun, especially on the "scooping the guts" part. See the video for some highlights of the fun day! Hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween weekend!

Caring for our Physical, Social, and Emotional Needs

The first graders at Lewis have been learning about caring for one another's physical, social, and emotional needs. This is a project we started at the beginning of the school year. Some of the pieces of work that have contributed include: finding problems and solutions in fiction books, writing about problems and solutions that have happened to us, and asking others in our school building what their common problems are. We have compiled some videos to help teach others how to solve their problems at school and meet the physical, social, and emotional needs of others.

Wonderful Weather!

I hope this is post if finding everyone enjoying their weekend and the beautiful weather!  ;)

Our class has been enjoying the weather this week, too!  We started a project on weather with the question: How does a weatherman or weather woman predict what the weather will be like? 

So far, the students have made their own 5-Day Forecasts to figure out how their observations are similar to those of the meteorologists on KRCG!  We have also been observing weather using our senses!  With our clipboards in hand, and our senses active, we have become professional scientists!...or at least we feel like it! ;) Plus, we get a chance to get outside of the classroom and enjoy the beautiful weather! If you are outside this weekend, encourage your child to observe the weather using his/her senses.  

• What do you feel? (wind, warmth from the sun)
• What do you see? (sun, trees blowing in the breeze, clouds)
• What do you smell? (rain, fresh air, grass)
• What do you hear? (wind)

Happy Weekend! 

--Ms. Brandt

Off to a GOOD START!

Wow!  It's hard to believe that this school year is well under way!  We have been BUSY, BUSY, BUSY learning!  Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of what we have been doing!

This is the first component of Daily 5 that the students learn--"Read to Self." 

The second component is "Work on Writing."  The students have all sort of fun writings they can do: letters, lists, stories, books, cards, postcards, and even text messages! :)  I will post pictures soon! 

The third component of Daily 5 is "Read to Someone."  This part really reinforces cooperative learning.  It helps students develop the confidence to read to others, as well as being mentors for each other in figuring out difficult words and comprehending what the story is about.  

We have been playing a lot of games during Math Workshop that focus on the skills of comparing the values of numbers and combining numbers to form a total.  The game the students in this picture are playing is called "Double Compare Dots."  Each student pulls 2 cards from his/her stack, adds the amounts together, and compares their total to their partner's total.  The person with the greater value wins!  The students really enjoy it...and from comments about the homework, parents and siblings do too! ;)

This is probably one of the most exciting things we have done yet!  FACETIME!!!  As part of our project about Labor Day and occupations, the students have had the opportunity to listen and talk with people from all sorts of professions: teaching, military, law enforcement, construction, martial arts, and much more!  We were very lucky (and very grateful) that most of our guests could come into our classroom and talk to us.  However, this guest, an Air National Guard veteran from Colorado, shared information about her profession via FaceTime.  The students loved it!  Hopefully with some more tech work we can soon FaceTime or Skype our guests using our Smartboard.  Very exciting! 

I will post more pictures soon!  :) 

Enjoy your weekend and the beautiful weather!

--Ms. Brandt