Counting by 2s Patterns

 Since our popsicle inquiry, we are still practicing counting by 2s. We like this song:

 

 We also did our first entry in our Think Books today. We colored numbers on a 120 grid that we say out loud when we count by 2s.  We noticed the pattern right away!

Rockin' with Pete the Cat

 Today we read the book Pete the Cat Rocking in My School Shoes.

We also enjoyed listening to the rhythm of the book in this video:

 

 Then we decided what we were doing in our school shoes! Watch this video to see what your child did in his/her school shoes.

Friday Dance Party

On Friday mornings I would play this song for a "dance party" right before our Morning Meeting.  The kids loved taking turns showing off their dance moves.
Surprise them and play it for them at home and have your own dance party!

Happy Friday!  We made it through our first official week of quarantine!

Alligator Greater

We have been comparing numbers using the greater than and less than signs.  This is a fun song we heard in class to help us remember which way the sign goes.



A few kids said their parents told them about this tip while they were working on last night's homework! Perfect timing!

Friendship Day & Valentine's Day

It was challenging to try and get all four of our LEADS classes together for a Friendship Day celebration, so we had a quick meeting and then we all contributed projects to a Friendship mural.

We started with a song from Kindergarten about how love grows:

Then, 2nd grade sang us a song about friendship and shared the friendship pictures that they made.

After our quick meeting, we worked with Kindergarten to create hearts for our Friendship Day mural.

We ended our day passing out valentines, looking through them all, and reading them.  The ones with puns really got us laughing!

Here is the finished Friendship Day mural:

Happy Valentine's Day!

Counting By Fives & Backchanneling

An exciting way we share our learning sometimes is by backchanneling.  I use a website called GoSoapBox.

It's a great way to practice reading and writing for a purpose.  Through the GoSoapBox website I can post a question and each student can digitally respond with an answer.  As each student posts their answer, they can read each other's responses.

We finally got to take a look at our sea star quilt and discussed how it could help us count by fives.  We used GoSoapBox to share our answers of patterns that we saw in our sea star quilt.

One of our favorite songs is Count By 5s by Jack Hartmann.

We added the song to our Poetry Notebooks after we ordered all the numbers, counting by fives.

Sound and Light Stations

We started our Light & Sound Inquiry this month.  We immersed ourselves in light and sound stations.  We had everything from flashlights to instruments to our light table.  Watch the video below to see us exploring and learning about light and sound!

We're Amazing!

One of our favorite songs is "I'm Amazing" by Keb Mo.

During Reading Workshop we thought deeply about the book Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman.

We made text-to-life connections and wrote about how we are amazing.

Room 408 is amazing!

The Three Little Pigs

We have read several versions of the Three Little Pigs and have been comparing them.

We also have been singing The Three Little Pig Blues by Greg & Steve.

Some of the kids in Room 408 found a play in the back of one of the versions we found in our "Just Right" book baskets.  They spent a few days in Choice Time putting it together to perform for the class!

Next we'll read this version of the Three Little Pigs and see who's version of the story they believe:  the pigs or the wolf's?

Getting into the Groove

We have been working on learning some of the routines in our classroom--the kids are getting into the groove of our workshops!
Math Workshop was full of exploration.

We were also very focused in getting stronger at reading during Reading Workshop.

We got our Poetry Binders and had plenty of practice being safe and clicking our binders open and closed...

One of our favorite songs is The Fifty Nifty.  I have had some requests to post it on the blog, so here it is!


Here is a sneak peek into our classroom from the past few days.

What is your favorite part of first grade so far?