Once Upon A Time

Once Upon A Time...

Thank you Mary K. for making our clock.

I enjoyed visiting at conferences about your children. They bring me such joy. We returned with great enthusiasm on Monday.

Sam's half birthday. Donuts for a treat. Hooray!

To begin our Integrated Language time we usually start with a Fairy tale. This week we read Hansel and Gretel, The Ugly Duckling and The Three Little Pigs. In our guided reading groups we finally read Goldilocks and The Three Bears. This is one of the most loved fairy tales. After each fairy tale we discuss the common elements found in Fairy tales and we identify them. Fairy tales are always set in the past, they usually begin with a statement like "Once Upon A Time", they have good and evil characters, and involve magical elements, they have animals that talk or have witches, dwarves, and giants in them. Fairy tales also have things in "threes."

Mrs. Marquette introduced alliteration to the class. Alliteration is a phrase or sentence that starts with the same letter sound. They are often tongue twisters. The class composed a few alliteration examples with Mrs. Marquette. In fairy tales they are noticing alliterations.

Mrs. Wiedeman used the characters in the fairy tales we read in guided reading to diagram adjectives with the students. In the middle of the week Mrs. Marquette took the guided reading groups and one group read the play Little Red Riding Hood. The second group read Grandma's Pie. The third group read The Popsicle Boy and the fourth group read The Frog Prince. We both commented on the expression they used when reading their parts. They love doing things in parts. When the students finished making their Little Red Hen puppets on popsicle sticks they converted chairs to puppet theaters and did plays on their own, in parts.

Mrs. Wiedeman and Mrs. Marquette divided the class in half and worked through the theme notebooks in math. They tackled word problems with unifix cubes so they can tangibly touch and move the pieces according to what the word problem says. We played a game of The Measurement is Right. It is just like the Price is Right but the contestants are guessing the length or width of a selected item in the classroom. Students spent time measuring specific things around the room and finding things that are 1 foot long. Several students had 10-15 minutes to work on their number scrolls. They love that!

Story maps are a favorite of the first graders. They work in groups and together they design a map that begins at a place that their Fairy tale begins and ends where their chosen fairy tale ends. For example, Hansel and Gretel begins in their cottage in the woods and makes a stop at the candy house of the witch and then ends at the cottage. The story maps should show a path to these important locations from the fairy tale. They began as a draft and then put their masterpiece on large butcher paper.

We made castles in our independent center this week.

In computer lab the students completed a crossword puzzle on fairy tale terms. Then they were able to help Jack grow a beanstalk on http://www.braingle.com/. In Hands-On science the students talked about Earth Day. We talked about different ways to recycle, reuse and reduce. They used droplets of water on wax paper and discussed the properties of water. They came home with a great worksheet for homework. It's a simple checklist they can complete to help them keep track of great things they are doing to help our Earth!!

Reminders:

Book Banners due Monday, April 18th

Field Trip to Lakeside Nature Center on Wednesday, April 20th

Spelling test on Thursday April 21st. New Spelling packets were given on Thursday, April 14th. Please note that the practice sheets all are on plural nouns. Not all the sheets have the spelling words on them. They should all be completed.

Spelling words: brushes, foxes, bikes, mice, lunches, dresses, glasses, trees, women, dishes

Challenge Words: story, setting, comma, and geese

April 29th Big fun!! Your child can come dressed as their favorite fairy tale or folktale character. It can be simple. We will also celebrate our theme with a pizza party donated by the Brisch family for Sammy's bday.

Thank you for sharing your children. We love them.

Mrs. Wiedeman

Mrs. Marquette