Festival of Lights in 1st Grade!

We're definitely in the holiday spirit here in 1st grade!  We've taken off into our new theme, "Festival of Lights".  This week our focus has been on Hanukkah and as you will see, we had a great time learning about this special holiday.

Practicing spelling words on the Menorah

Sophia is using letter tiles to build Hanukkah words.  

John is listening to a Hanukkah story on the ipad called "A Light in the Darkness".

Maya is practicing typing skills on "Dance Mat Typing".

Emma is on a word hunt and is recording words she knows on her white board.

Carmen is practicing spelling words by saying them, writing them on top of a screen and then tracing them as she says them with her finger.  This skill is a good way to help retain the spelling of each word and it's just plain FUN!

In guided reading we worked on characters, plot and compared similar texts in both fiction and non-fiction books.

 Mrs. Waller worked in small groups to build words.  They used certain letters and then had to listen to the sounds she made to build each word. 

Carter is using the portable word wall to help him write sentences.

Lily is practicing her spelling words by saying them, tracing them and bubbling them.  Beautiful!!

Naomi is making arrays to show groups of numbers. 

In math we worked on place value.  We reviewed where numbers are when they are in the ones, tens, and hundreds.  We focused on looking at the places as houses.  Each house has 9 rooms.  Once the rooms are full the numbers have to move to a new house.  

Jackson is using base ten blocks to show tens on the right and ones on the left as he builds a number.

When learning place value, we sang a song that taught us "tens are tall and ones are small...first we count up all the tens, then add up the babies onto the end".  In these pictures we made a number.  See if you can guess what it is...  Count the talls as tens and smalls as ones.  If you're not sure of the answer, ask your super smart first grader!!

Oh, this is a number in the teens...Can you figure it out?

DeLano built a BIG number!

In TNT we made Menorahs.  In social studies we talked about the reason a Menorah has 9 candles.  Eli has been a great help as he has taught us the special names to symbols and things such as the middle candle on the Menorah.  It is the worker candle and is called the Shamash.  

 Special thanks to Eli and his parents for sharing their artifacts with us!

Menorah

Gelt

We also learned how to play the dreidel game.  They became pros very quickly and have even requested to play the game during inside recess!

They learned that depending on which Hebrew symbol the dreidel lands on, they may have to give away a coin, do nothing, take a coin or, if they're lucky, they may land on the gimel side and win the whole pot of coins!

Nice spin Sophie!

In hands on science we investigated how to make shadow puppets.  We made our own puppets with black paper and used flashlights to figure out how to make them appear smaller or bigger.  We also tried our own hands out to see what characters we could create.  Lots of fun, creative stories were acted out!

In computer lab we went on abcya.com and played "base ten bingo" and "base ten fun".  Both games are great for practicing place value.

What a nice looking group we have!!  They sang their little hearts out and sounded beautiful!!

Thank you to Sophia's mom and Carter's mom for coming in to help out in our class and read to us!

Spelling Words- Week #9  December 9-13, 2013

Phonics Skills: controlled vowel /or/, or, ore

1.       form

2.       more

3.       store

4.       sort

5.       long

6.       fort

7.       corn

8.       horse

9.       born

10.    storm

Challenge Words

11. Christmas

12. winter

13. angel

14. presents

“Surprise the Teacher Word”

15. ??? (This is your choice)

Reminders:
Dec. 19th-- Chapel in the Sanctuary
Dec. 20th-- Chapel in the Commons, Spirit Day! Talent Show in the morning for teachers and students only & Christmas Party in the afternoon 2:00-3:00pm in our classrooms & first floor commons. You are welcome to join us for the Christmas Party!
Dec. 21st-- January 7th Christmas Break
January 6th-- P.D. Day for Teachers
SCHOLASTIC BOOK ORDERS DUE MONDAY!!! 
Please let Carey know if you'd like her to hold any back for Christmas presents.

Have a wonderful, warm, winter weekend!
Sara and Carey