Flower and Plants!!

 

We just recently finished up our plant unit. A little bit ago we did these parts of a flower art project. The flower itself is actually a coffee filter. The students used markers then went over the marker with water and a paint brush to give it the water color look!

I am sure you noticed the plants I sent home. Are they still growing? We sure had fun getting them started in class!

 

 

Did you know you can watch Magic School Bus and Bill Nye The Science Guy for free on YouTube? Follow the links below and they will take you to their videos about plants!

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bvMb-8BTdQ

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQXlX9glBL4

 



Unpack Your Adjectives

 

Over the last few weeks we have been going over the different parts of speech. We started with nouns, next verbs, and now we are onto adjectives. The other day we made self portraits, and wrote down adjectives that describes us! It was so much fun!

 

Also below you can click the links to watch the video clips that helped us learn about adjectives.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkuuZEey_bs

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JZi2oDvPs4

Plants Part 2

 We are diving in deep with this plant unit y'all! What a fun time it has been. I forgot to mention that we started our unit with the 6 kingdoms of living things, with a main focus on Kingdom Plantae.

 

 

We also have gotten to know more about plants and their life cycle.  Check out all about the life cycle in our pictorial below. I think pollination is what was most interesting to the students.

 

 

 

 

Morgan and David have been studying about leaves in our class. They did their own presentation on leaves with a pictorial poster they created. SO much fun! Check it out below they did amazing!!!

Plants, Plants, PLANTS!

 

We have been busy studying all about PLANTS! We are having so much. We started off our unit with an "Inquiry Chart" to see what we knew and what we wanted to know. We now have talked about what plants Have, Can do, are, and need. We also have compared plants and people. There are a lot of differences, but we also found some similarities. Check it all out below on our class anchor charts and student samples!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be a Perfect Pig!!!

You may have heard your child say. "I made it to perfect pig today!". Well that is a very good thing. That means that they must have been absolute gems all day! Each student has a pin with their number on it. I will move it up or down through out the day depending on how they are doing. When I move a pin up I will generally say something like "Billy is working hard and not talking, I appreciate that! I am going to move his pin up!".  

 

 

The next day we have a person (it changes each week) whose job it is to give the stickers for each child's coupon pad. If the student is on "Right on Rhino" they get 1, if they are on "Happy Hippo" they get two, "Amazing Alligator" 3, "Perfect Pig" 5, and if they surpass Perfect Pig then they will get 6!!!

 Once their coupon book is full then they get to pick a prize from the "Pink Perfect Pig treasure Chest". It is full of all different things. I go out and purchase various items to fill it. If you would like to donate, feel free to! They also get to take their coupon pad home, and I give them a new one.

 

On the off chance that a child is below right on rhino they do not get any stickers. If the student gets all the way to "Sad Skunk" they might get a sticker taken off of their coupon :(, or loose out on a fun activity we are doing that day or week.

 

I have used this system the last few years, and my kiddos have always loved it!

A Bad Case of Stripes- Story Structure

As I discussed before in our "Mac The Cat" post we have been working on story structure. Last week we dug a little deeper with it when we read as a class "A Bad Case of Stripes". This is one of my ABSOLUTE favorite children books. We created story structure houses to help us think about story structure. If a house is missing a foundation, a door, a roof ect. is the house going to work very well? No! Just like a story, if a story is missing characters or a setting then it won't flow or sound right.

 

In first grade we are all working at different levels, and I love that. The growth in first grade is amazing!! Above you can see examples of two different story houses. 1. The student wrote it out 2. The student drew pictures to represent the characters and ect.

A Day at School

 

 

We read the story "A Day at School" this past week. Each student got a chance to be an illustrator, and we recreated the pictures of the story in partners. It was so much fun, and they now know this story inside and out!

A Smiley Sum of Seven

 In our classroom we have been talking all about addition. Especially using number pairs. We focused on number pairs that make 7 the other day! We created some Smiley Sums of Seven to help us remember. We also learned a saying to help remember what a sum is (look at the picture below). We also watched this video to help us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT_wvvEvkw4

Plot with Fly Guy

Over the weekend I picked up the most recent Fly Guy book at a book fair in another elementary school. I have an obsession with books by Tedd Arnold. He is one of my favorites, and one of the class favorites too! We read it together then they each got to draw out the plot in pictures. Didn't they turn out great!?!

Shape Monsters

We have been learning about shapes the first 5 days in school. These are firsties so I tried to keep as age friendly as possible. They love learning about shapes. Especially since we can do fun things to learn about them. We started the unit on shapes with a Chart that was students/ class made of shapes we knew some things about. I wish I would have taken a picture of it, but I didn't :(. We then talked about the different shapes. They also had had explore time during center with the shape manipulatives.

 

I have a daily math power point I do in which videos are embedded into. I can't upload the power point due to clip art terms of use, but I will but the links for all the you tube videos we used to help in our discussions and learning about shapes.

 

 

Square:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOr2eRBluUs&index=2&list=PLPphPHIzdSQMzUesl8-n9tjvIoGkghlGQ

 

Circle:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc7gPfysIU8&list=PLPphPHIzdSQMzUesl8-n9tjvIoGkghlGQ

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Q_a7zAtY0

 

 

Triangle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA2ney3n0wY&index=3&list=PLPphPHIzdSQMzUesl8-n9tjvIoGkghlGQ

 

 

Rectangle:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WHJio4TRNY&index=4&list=PLPphPHIzdSQMzUesl8-n9tjvIoGkghlGQ

 

 

Rhombus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5B_ScUs1oo&index=5&list=PLPphPHIzdSQMzUesl8-n9tjvIoGkghlGQ

 

Trapezoid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZG68tUOG28

 

Pentagon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M44hNrLgT3I

 

Other basic shape videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v38vp3IwLho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NcXVAviq-8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyGAyTc4DPI

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiMwcxaFsIY

 

 

 We just focused on these 7 shapes for now. We then made a chart together as a class. The students wrote the numbers in for the sides and corners.

 

 

Mac The Cat- Story Structure

Last week we had the story "Mac The Cat". We did a lot with story structure. We focused on the setting, characters, and plot. We made a class poster to represent all of these things from the story. The students also individually got to record in their reading journals about story structure.

 

The -at Family in Mrs. Barnes' First Grade Class

 

We have been learning all about the at family as a class lately. I always make a power point each day that has embedded videos that help emphasize the phonics subjects we are covering. Although I can't load the PowerPoint onto this blog I can post the links on YouTube where I found many of the videos, that you can use them with your kiddos if you want to review what we went over. Also ask them to  "SPLAT" the -at clap for at words. They should know what to do.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W0xeWNNZE8

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm0QHt9VrBU

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhAryniNMeQ&list=UUngLKHdv-yJnSy-hxqUUZKA

 

 

 

 

We then made a "at" family poster as a class. They then got to make their own in their journals for reading.

 

 

 

 

We also made a class sentence using the at words we learned, and our "words to know" of the week. Also this was illustrated by one of our amazing students!!!! 

 

 Finally,  I gave each group a bag of words that had "at words" and the "Words to Know" and they each got to make a sentence as a group! Check out their great sentences and artist skills!!! WOW!

A Bad Case of Stripes May 14th at 1:00 p.m.

Perimeter and Area

 Lately we have been learning about perimeter and area. We dug a little deeper today, and did a flip book to help us understand. It was a huge help! I really got to see where everyone was getting stuck, and who REALLY had it. We started off watching a perimeter and area song/ video. If you want to check it out or watch it again with them here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk-PyhjFWw4

 

We had  a discussion with an anchor chart, and did one flip book together. Then they went back to their seats, and made their own. They got to make their own shapes to find the perimeter and the area out of graph paper. The only stipulations were 1) 2 of them had to be squares and rectangles and 2) They all had to be "whole" squares inside the shapes.

Kevin Henkes ~ Chrysanthemum

 

I just love the author Kevin Henkes. Over the next few weeks we will be reviewing some important reading strategies while studying his books. Today we started off with his much beloved book "Chrysanthemum". We talked all about Chrysanthemum and what she is like. They then did a Venn Diagram and compared her to themselves (text to self).  I don't know if you can make out what they wrote around her, but some them really are a hoot such as "She needed tougher skin".  

 

 

Weaving Details and Conclusions

About a week ago we read the story "The Goat in The Rug" it is a Native American Tale. In the story we learned about the process that goat fur goes through to become a rug. We were also learning about details and conclusions. So we weaved our own rugs of details and conclusions.
Check it out Below!: