French: Les Animaux de la Ferme

Bienvenue à la classe de français! The girls have been learning about farm animals in French class. They have been playing games, singing songs, acting out the animals, and making the sounds they make in French. For example, the duck (le canard) says "coin coin" and the rooster (le coq) says "cocorico." Today, the girls listened to "La Ferme de Mathurin." When the song sang about a stuffed animal a girl was holding, she stood up, danced, and showed it to the class! 

Addition and Writer's Workshop

 Yesterday, we began our new math unit--addition--with a bang by having the girls play candy corn addition.  The girls are also working on reading and solving addition sentences, using the plus and equal sign.

In Writer's Workshop, the girls continued to work on their personal narratives.  Today, our mini-lesson focused on using picture labels and changing them into phrases or sentences. The girls were incredibly excited to start the process of turning their stories into an actual book.

Number sense, ants, and fall

We are getting ready to move onto our next math unit, but before taking that step the girls reviewed the different ways to write a number:  the actual number, number word and showing the number using dots.  To celebrate the upcoming holiday, we used a candy corn as an organizer for our number work.  One student was called up to write the example on the candy corn while her peers did the same work on their individual iPads. While the girls enjoyed this activity, they were a little disappointed that our math lesson did not contain actual candy corn.

The girls learned about the life cycle of an ant yesterday during science. The girls then used a cotton ball, q-tip, and pipe cleaner to depict each stage.

Here is a pic from our Spirit Day--the girls had sooooo much fun (who doesn't have fun when bead necklaces are involved?) even though our parade was canceled.  The first grade led an impromptu indoor parade which we jumped onto.  We are already looking forward to our next out-of-uniform day....HALLOWEEN!!!!!!  Bring on the craziness :-)

With the change in the weather, comes a change in bulletin boards :-)  We were thinking it was about time to change our summer board over to the fall.  To celebrate the season of fall, we read the story It's Fall, which gives wonderful examples of the changing colors and textures of the new season. 

The girls brainstormed different phrases and words that reminded them of fall.  Then the girls copied the phrases we brainstormed--or came up with ideas on their own--and wrote them onto apple sheets.

The girls worked in math centers today, all focusing on number sense--with a fall theme, of course :-)

Matching numbers, number words, and corresponding ten frames.

Matching numbers, number words, and corresponding stickers.

Playing memory, matching the number with the number word.

Busy in Tech

Pre-first has been busy in tech this month!  The girls have learned a variety of new iPad skills and apps.  During the first week of school, the girls learned iPad basics (home button, lock key, volume, how to close an app, changing the home and lock screen image) and acceptable use (how to hold and travel with the iPad, rules of use, etc.).  Next, the girls learned how to use the Face iMake app while Google Drive was set up on each iPad.  This year, students will be able to save work to Google Drive.  Information on accessing your daughter's Drive will be coming home in the future so that you can view the work from home!  Finally, the girls learned the app My Story in order to create a book about themselves.  The girls have also started using some of the Creation Station centers.   

Short a and Cooperation

We started reviewing the short vowel sounds this week and today we focused on the short a sound.  We watched a short Starfall video on the short a sound and then did a class sort where the girls matched short a words with pictures.

We also added the fifth petal to our daisy people today--cooperation.  The girls listened to Horsefly and Honeybee and we had a class discussion about what it looks like when a group of people cooperate.

After that, we gave the girls a cup, paperclips, a gummy worm named Sam, and a gummy lifesaver.  The girls had to cooperate and "save" Sam (flip the cup over, put the lifesaver on Sam, and put him in the cup) without touching anything except the paperclips.

Check out their cooperation below!

Make sure you ask your daughter if her group "saved" Sam!

Prediction, Mystery Reader and Word Wall BINGO

On Friday, the girls became fortune tellers as they learned about prediction during our author's study.  We read Shortcut by Donald Crews and discussed why predicting what happens next in a story is important to overall understanding.  We stopped reading the book halfway through and gave the girls "crystal balls."  The girls had to draw what they predicted would happen next in the story.

When they were done, we turned off our lights and held a flashlight to the bottom of their "crystal balls" while they shared their predictions.

The girls also had their first Mystery Reader!  

We are encouraging the girls to use our Word Wall as a reading and writing aid.  Today we played Word Wall Bingo (which the girls love) and it was wonderful to watch the girls as they grow more comfortable with these words.

Art: Stamps to Our Imaginary World

The girls used art materials to make oversized stamps which we will use to "travel" to their imaginary worlds in art.