Spider Stories

The stories from the "Boo" bag spiders were WONDERFUL! Thank you for your support with this at-home writing project. Wow! The children shared their stories today. I wanted you to be able to hear all the creative ideas for this assignment. I only had time to record three of the stories. So...this is just a taste! Here are three stories and there is more to come! Enjoy!

Spooky Halloween by Sydnie by niemeyerc
Webhead by Philip by niemeyerc
Facts About Spiders by Kira by niemeyerc

Field Trip

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Leaf Art

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Doubles Snap

Adding fluently sums to 20 is an objective for the first quarter in first grade. Using the doubles facts is a great strategy to develop this objective. The doubles are easy and fun to memorize. We played a game in class to help the students memorize these facts. To play the game...all you need is a di! When you roll the di, the players have to say the double. The first one to say the double wins! For example, when a 6 is rolled the players must say 12.

Budding Botanists

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Fill Your Bucket

We read a great book: How Full is Your Bucket. It was a perfect book for teaching kindness and compassion. Please ask your child about the story. We discussed that when you are happy, your bucket is full. Kindness fills all our buckets. To make the concept more concrete, we each have a bucket. Throughout the day, kids write kind things to each other and put the writing in the buckets. If a student is feeling down, we are able to take out some kind words and fill up his or her bucket. The children are LOVING filling buckets.

Math Game with Buddies

Every other Friday we meet with our 4th grade buddies from Mrs. Hankin's classroom. Last week, we played a Native American math game. For the game you need 8 pumpkin seeds. Each of the pumpkin seeds has a drawing on one side: two seeds have a bird, two have a cow, two have a fish, and two have a turtle. Each of the animals are worth points. You get a point for rolling a bird, 2 points for every cow, 3 points for a fish, and 4 points for rolling turtle. When it is your turn, you roll all 8 seeds. You have to add the drawings you get. The person with the highest sum wins the round. The children were mentally adding up to 8 addends! They had a blast and didn't even realize how much math they were doing!