On the 4th day of First Grade...

August 28, 2017

one of my sweet firsties called out "does anyone know how to help me get syrup from breakfast out of my hair?" #bless

Also today, we explored math pattern blocks and practiced our counting my completing these adorable math pattern block pictures.

Other pictures students made were: emojis, sailboats, flowers, spaceships, houses. 

Then we continued our ABC order phonics unit by learning how to put words into ABC order. We started by simply putting the ABCs in ABC order. Then we learned how to sort words into ABC order by sorting some class words. 



THEN we practiced sorting words on our own and the rest of the week the students were able to complete this type of work independently.  YAY for independence!! 
Andrea Sign

Two for Tuesday

August 28, 2017
Favorite From Today #1
So last night, I had a spur of the moment "IDEA." My beginning of year lessons are so much "read book then do craft." I love this because the books all emphasize some type of life skill (persevering, working as a team) as so the students really get the foundation for starting the year but I just wanted something a little more exciting for our 2nd day. 


So, right after recess we headed to our campus IDEA lab (aka Makerspace lab)! Now, I typically do these types of lessons in my classroom but this space offers students the opportunity to use a green scree, drimel saw, 3-D printer, & more. So it is definitely a place we visit several times during the year and it's important they are introduced to the place. 



We began our lesson by reading this adorable book! It is absolutely PERFECT for these types of lessons! It talks about the entire process of creating a physical version of what you can imagine. After we came up with agreements about how people should behave in the idea lab, the students began to use materials such as paper towel rolls, tape, cups, pom-poms, etc. to make "The Most Magnificent Thing" they could think of!

I was SO IMPRESSED with their creativity & problem solving skills!! They made pom-pom bracelets, purses, baskets, pencil holders, binoculars, ships, and more! Just by trial and error, students learned that putting glue on one side of tape does not make tape stick to stuff but that rolling the tape allows both sides to be sticky! It was such a special day & definitely one of my favorites! Made me excited to go to teach that day! The students LOVED this too - the next day they all said "do we get to go back there today?!"

Favorite From Today #2

We also started our phonics unit by refreshing our knowledge of the alphabet. The students created this classroom alphabet - one of my favorite things to have up in my classroom! 



Andrea Sign