Look at all the book characters who showed up in first grade today!
Remember those pumpkins from yesterday? Today we went to work counting the seeds to see how accurate our predictions were. Notice the groups of 5 and 10. It was great counting practice and we were surprised by our answers!
We have been busy at work here in 1st grade this past week. In math we are learning about patterns. Patterns repeat themselves and are kind of like the cycles we have been learning about in science. Children used a variety of manipulatives to create their own patterns at school.
And the next day we even wore clothes with patterns to school!
There is a new station available at Choice Time. It is a Lincoln Log building center. It’s been very popular with the kids.
We published our first books! In 1st grade, “publishing” means the children choose a favorite narrative story they wrote, edit it, go back to add more details, and then make a cover, dedication, and All About The Author pages. To celebrate all their hard work, we invited the kindergarten class to come in to listen to us as we each read our stories to them. Notice the pretty, orange pumpkin lanterns? We made them too and the kids took them home this week. It made the room feel like a coffee house all set up for our first public reading! Congratulations to our hard working writers!
Today we carved pumpkins! We read a book called “How Many Seeds In A Pumpkin?” Tomorrow we will count the seeds by grouping them into groups of 2’s, 5’s and 10’s which we are learning in math.
At the end of the morning we had 4 empty pumpkins and 4 bowls full of seeds ready to be counted tomorrow. We made PREDICTIONS today about how many seeds we thought were inside and tomorrow we will do our actual OBSERVATIONS (our two new science words!). 
Which pumpkin do you think will have the most seeds? You may be surprised! Ask your child about it.
It’s looking like Fall around here. Deb brought in these beautiful pumpkins from her garden and kids are making pumpkins at creation station to hang up on our windows. Don’t forget Book Character Day is next Friday, October 31, where children are invited to come to school dressed up as their favorite book character.
Something has inspired our young writers to be poets. Several 1st graders have brought little poems to school that they’ve written on the tiniest pieces of paper or notebooks. We invite them to read their poems to the class at morning meeting. How brave they are!
Mrs Gravina came in this morning to give us a challenge. Part of our technology goals this year are to help children learn how to generate multiple solutions to a design problem and make a drawing to represent one of the solutions. Our challenge today was to build the tallest tower we could that could stand on its own, using just marshmallows and toothpicks. Look at our designers and builders at work!
At the end we reflected on our work. You will see these papers coming home today. 
On another note, THANK YOU so much to everyone who helped at Harvest Festival!!! We made over $150 and that money will go right to help pay for two field trips we have planned for the year. In March, the kids will go to UMASS Fine Arts to see a play and in June we will go to Northfield Mountain for their pond program, and also to have a class hike and picnic. Thanks again for supporting our classroom.
Yesterday for our science class we did a few experiments with sound. Children learned what made sound, how it traveled and how it can have different pitches. Next week we will experiment with light.
Speaking of sound, today at writing time we took out new “offices” to help keep the sound away! These are cardboard dividers that children can put up to help them concentrate. We needed some quiet space to work today because each 1st grader read through their writing folder to find their one BEST story to publish. In the next few days we will work on editing and revising these stories so we can “publish” them and share them with an audience.
Don’t forget that Harvest Festival is this Saturday at LES! Hope to see you there.
Everyday at school we add cubes to a jar every time the class does something well together like clean up the room after choice time or shows kindness to a friend. If someone gives a compliment to our class about the nice work we are doing, we’ll throw a cube in, too. Anything that reinforces kindness, teamwork and hard work. When the jar is full the class votes on a way to celebrate. This time the kids voted to have a Popcorn and Dance Party! Oh, what fun!!
Today we got into groups to do some research on questions about the changing seasons. We used PebbleGo.com (which you can use at home!) to find answers to our questions. Then children worked together to create a poster that answered the question and presented it to the class. You can see them tonight when you come to OPEN HOUSE!!! 5:30-7pm at LES! 
